By Hannah Green and Serena Hawkey
“His mom sold drugs and abused him. Some nights he slept outside. But after seeing the Zip Zap Circus School performing in Khayelitsha, something told Aviwe Mfundisi to travel the 30km to central Cape Town and apply to join…”
Read more about Aviwe’s story at select.Timeslive.co.za.
By Hannah Green
Continue reading at select.Timeslive.co.za.
By Hannah Green
Researchers at the University of Johannesburg may have come up with a silver bullet for certain cancers.
Laboratory tests suggest a newly discovered family of silver-based anti-cancer drugs could provide smaller dosages‚ lower toxicity and fewer adverse side-effects.
Read more about their discovery at Timeslive.co.za.
School for International Training (SIT) students tour the Luthuli Museum. Located in Groutville, in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, the museum captures Chief Albert Luthuli’s life, from his birth in Zimbabwe to South African parents, his role as a chief in Groutville, his ANC activism and presidency, and his death in 1967. Luthuli was the first African to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and his call for nonviolent protest to achieve progress still resonates in South Africa today: “May the day come soon, when the people of the world will rouse themselves, and together effectively stamp out any threat to peace in whatever quarter of the world it may be found. When that day comes, there shall be ‘peace on earth and goodwill amongst men’, as was announced by the Angels when that great messenger of peace, Our Lord came to earth.”
— Hannah Green
Image: Sophie McManus, Programme Lead (far right), meets with a group of students from the School for International Training (SIT).
By Hannah Green
What would happen if it was possible to text the government and receive a personal response? What changes would we see if community information was recorded and distributed in a more accessible manner? What would be the impact of teaching data analytics in school?
These are the types of social data questions the team at Open Data grapples with.
Open Data is a non-profit civic technology lab located in Durban. The organisation’s mission is to share knowledge in mediums and languages that are accessible to all citizens. They recognise that technology can play a role in connecting people and communicating important information. Their final products can take the form of graphics, websites, reports or workshops that share research results with local communities.
“What we start with isn’t a platform or a tool or a solution. We start with a problem. It starts from capturing user needs,” explained Sophie McManus, Programme Lead. She said that Open Data’s projects usually arise from concerns raised by the government, non-profit organizations, and the media or community members.
One of the team’s current projects, codenamed Durban Answers, is to revamp local government websites. McManus said that ordinary people found the current sites difficult to interact with and lacked information needed by the public.
“We are going to take all the information on government websites and turn it into a more usable format,” she explained. To do that, Open Data needs to collect information on what people want to know.
For this, Open Data uses methods like SMS polls but McManus also noted that technology excludes many South Africans.
“Many people have the problem of access to Internet or to data. They have, I believe the term is ‘dummy phones,’ that don’t have (web) access,” she said, “What we have found is that people who have access to technology and are comfortable using it are the people most likely to answer in our campaigns.”
As a result Open Data has taken information gathering offline, holding meetings and workshops for each project. Recently, the Durban Answers project team met with a range of people, from fishermen to businesspeople, to see “what information they need and how we can bring it to them,” according to McManus.
The team also holds workshop throughout the year to engage techies and non-techies alike. Their monthly meet-ups feature guest speakers, hackathons and collaborations on projects. McManus said that this promotes Open Data’s mission to be accessible to all South Africans.
You can read more about Open Data, explore their meet-up schedule and share project ideas with the organisation here.
Main image: President Jacob Zuma seen during an interview live-streamed on the national broadcaster, in which he said he felt he had been unfairly treated.
By Hannah Green
South Africans were glued to news networks today as the ruling African National Congress party issued President Jacob Zuma a formal recall and an ultimatum: resign by the end of today, or face a vote of no confidence in Parliament tomorrow.
This comes after weeks of internal dialogue in the ANC about removing Zuma from office. This prolonged uncertainty has left many South Africans eager to see a resolution, and to finally reclaim sleep lost following several nights of standing by for news.
“#ZumaExit stole hours of sleep and anticipation from me! I feel like I am binge watching a reality show…a really bad reality show,” reads a tweet by @uncleIsaiah16.
“Can’t eat, can’t sleep. TV analists [sic] go on & on. We need & deserve closure & a country we can survive in,” writes @SowterTracy.
President Zuma was expected to hold a media briefing at 10 a.m. today, but this did not materialize. Instead the president held an unannounced television interview with a single journalist on the public broadcaster, during which he said he disagreed with his party’s decision to request him to resign with immediate effect and insisted he had been provided with no reasons for his recall.
A further statement from the president was expected to be delivered before the midnight deadline.
By Hannah Green
Cape Town Mayor Patricia De Lille, Democratic Alliance (DA), has been stripped of her responsibilities for her ineffective response to the city’s water crisis. This comes at a critical moment for the DA, which just recently overcame years of minimal political representation to gain power in the Western Cape Province.
In response to De Lille’s removal, the DA political party has taken over the city’s water task force. While this article addresses the constitutional implications of a political party stepping in to govern in place of an elected official, this crisis also has severe implications for the DA.
In a class discussion with Nicole Graham, DA Councillor and Deputy Leader, she explained how this removal could affect the party’s future. The DA is drawing criticism for removing the popular De Lille, which could reduce votes for the party in the Western Cape — the only province they have been able to capture since the party’s formation in 2000. After collecting approximately 22% of the vote in the last national election, Graham said this crisis could contribute to a decline in votes for the DA, hurting their role as the nation’s main opposition party.
