SECTION27 is a public interest law centre that seeks to achieve substantive equality and social justice in South Africa. Guided by the principles and values in the Constitution, SECTION27 uses law, advocacy, legal literacy, research and community mobilisation to achieve access to healthcare services and basic education. SECTION27 aims to achieve structural change and accountability to ensure the dignity and equality of everyone.

Legal literacy is an essential tool of rights-based struggles. Legal literacy seeks to empower people and communities without any formal legal training to know and understand the law and its impact, so that they can engage and apply the law in a manner that improves the quality of their lives. This is the purpose of the Basic Education Rights Handbook. It aims to empower communities, school governing bodies, principals, teachers and learners to understand education law and policy, and to know when learners’ rights have been violated and what steps are required to protect those rights.

This is our latest review of South Africa's health and basic education systems and the work we have been doing to improve access to these fundamental services. In this Review we reflect on two years of our work which took place in 2016 and 2017. 2017 was also the year in which we celebrated 7 years as SECTION27. Some have told us 7 is a good number, so in the spirit of good luck and all the good things linked to this number, we bring you two years of SECTION27 – but in easily digestable bits of 7.

If we, as the South African state, cannot include in our list of absolute priorities the provision of dignified and safe toilets to young children attending school, what kind of democracy can we really claim to be? Surely not one which genuinely values its most vulnerable services. This is the question that underpins this comprehensive report which has been compiled by SECTION27.

With only a year until 2020 – and the deadline to reach the 90-90-90 targets – South Africa is dangerously off track. Currently 7.1 million people are living with HIV in the country. New HIV infections remain high, according to the Thembisa model1 at 275 000 in 2017, higher than the 231 000 estimated in the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) survey.