“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” American political activist, academic, and author, Dr Angela Davis
12 – 14 March 2019
Researcher, Thuthukile Mbatha and Legal Researcher, Vuyisile Malinga will be visiting three schools in Vhembe and Capricorn districts, Limpopo from 12 to 14 March 2019. They will be conducting Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and sexual violence workshops with learners. The three schools are reported to have high teenage pregnancy rates.
Mpumalanga Community Mobiliser Sifiso Nkala will be facilitating a capacity building workshop at kaNyamazane in Nelspruit on SRHR, Sexual Violence and the National Health Act.
Attorney Ektaa Deochand will be leading a team of researchers and members of communications department to the Umkhanyakude District in KwaZulu-Natal to conduct consultations with parents and members of School Governing Bodies in relation to access for learners with disabilities in the district. The team will also launch the Learners with Disabilities Talking Book which SECTION27 has developed in order to assist parents to advocate for the rights of their children to access basic education.
Tuesday 12 March 2019
Field Researcher Solanga Milambo will be visiting Kanana Primary, George Moragula Secondary and Ranti Secondary School in the Capricorn District in Limpopo to monitor the state of school infrastructure, furniture, sanitation, stationery and textbooks delivery.
Senior Communications Officer Ngqabutho Mpofu will attend a press briefing for the Human Rights Festival at Constitution Hill. In its second year, the Human Rights Festival is one of the signature events at Constitution Hill to uphold our culture of human rights. This year’s Human Rights Festival coincides with South Africa celebrating 25 Years of Democracy as well as the 70th Year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. SECTION27 will host an exhibition of the 56 miners who represented the class in the historic Silicosis Class Action.
Wednesday 13 March 2019:
Executive Director Umunyana Rugege and Head of Fundraising Elinor Kern will be attending the first annual Discovery Partnerships Conference hosted at the Discovery offices in Johannesburg. The 2019 Partnerships Conference will focus on collaborative pathways to scale business engagement and sustainable development for shared value creation. The programme is designed to engage and benefit corporates, government officials and civil society organisations contributing to the social development space
Mark Heywood will be a panel host at Ethics Alive Symposium hosted by the Wits Students’ Bioethics Society (WSBS). The topic for this session is “The crisis within the SA healthcare system”. As a panellist Mark will lead a discussion that will entail expressing views and engaging on those respective views with other professionals in the field within a guided discussion (around the core events and themes under the topic Current Crisis in SA Health).
Field Researcher Patrick Mdletshe will be attending a KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) AIDS council meeting which will be attended by district civil society chairpersons and provincial sector leaders. This is the end of the term for the current leadership, after the elections KZN will have a new Premier who will be leading the KZN AIDS council. A Provincial AIDS council meeting will be held at the Royal Showgrounds in Pietermaritzburg in the afternoon.
Attorney Sheniece Linderboom will be attending the release of the Department of Basic Education’s Protocol on the Management and Reporting of Sexual Abuse and Harassment in Schools at the offices of the DBE in Pretoria.
Thursday 14 March 2019:
Mark Heywood has been invited by the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics in the Faculty of Health at the University of the Witwatersrand to the 2019 Ethics Alive Imbizo. Mark will a respondent on the topic of “Quality Healthcare in SA: Ethics and Responsibility”. The keynote speaker is Professor Laetitia Rispel, who is the Chair and Professor of Public Health, Centre of Health Policy, School of Public Health at Wits University. The panel includes Siyanda Giba: Chairperson, Wits Students’ Bioethics Society; Russell Rensburg: Director, Rural Health Advocacy Project; Dr Rajesh Patel: Head of Benefit and Risk, Board of Healthcare Funders.
Friday 15 March 2019
SECTION27 will be hosting the third session of its Activist Leadership School. This session will focus on Race, Racism and Social Justice and will be led by Neeshan Balton, Executive Director of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation.
Field Researcher, Patrick Mdletshe will be attending the Legal Resources Centre Access to Justice Roundtable discussion with faith based organisations (FBO’s).
The week that was in Spotlight
Two doctors who run a small-scale ambulance service in Louis Trichardt (Makhado) in Limpopo with no aeromedical experience, landed a lucrative air ambulance contract with the provincial health department which has already paid out close to R3-million in four months. By Anso Thom and Marcus Low
In the run-up to South Africa’s general elections in May 2019 Spotlight will be publishing a series of articles under the banner #Vote4Health.
https://www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2019/03/07/spotlights-vote4health/
With less than 2 000 residents, one small government clinic and the nearest hospital 40 kilometres away, Hamburg residents in the small Eastern Cape hamlet are under strain. By Kathryn Cleary.
OPINION: The first few days of March 2019 must have been a time of great uncertainty for migrants in South Africa in need of health care services. Circulars by the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal health departments said that all non-South Africans, other than refugees, would from now on have to pay in full for all health care services at public clinics and hospitals. By Sasha Stevenson
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