Beyond Crisis: The State of Access to Information and the Internet for Rural Dwellers in South Africa
Posted: 1 July, 2024 Filed under: Ompha Tshamano | Tags: Access to Information, access to socio-economic rights, apartheid, ATI, digital communication, digital divide, digital technology, fundamental human rights, ICT, internet, post-apartheid, real-time information, right to access information, right to information, rural communities, social media, socio-economic underdevelopment, South Africa 7 Comments
Author: Ompha Tshamano
Project Associate, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
1 Overview
South Africa has a long history of socio-economic underdevelopment, largely resulting from the sustained effects of apartheid. Despite the end of apartheid, the position of rural communities in South Africa remains precarious, with limited access to resources and infrastructure. The creation of Bantustans during apartheid further exacerbated economic disparities amongst different racial groups, leading to poverty, inequality, and unemployment. Slow technological adoption and development in South African rural areas also contribute to limited access to information and restricted opportunities. This situation has resulted in the maintenance of the status quo, with socio-economic underdevelopment and inequality continuing to be major challenges in post-apartheid South Africa. In this context, this article seeks to critically examine the state of access to information for rural dwellers in South Africa and the initiatives being taken to improve this situation.
Apartheid, gender and property relations in South Africa: Some reflections from Rahube v Rahube & Others
Posted: 20 August, 2018 Filed under: Kennedy Kariseb, Nimrod Muhumuza | Tags: apartheid-era laws, black women, customary law, Group Areas Act, Land reform, ownership, post-apartheid, property ownership, Rahube judgment, Rahube v Rahube & Others, South Africa Leave a commentAuthors: Kennedy Kariseb & Nimrod Muhumuza
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| Kennedy Kariseb | Nimrod Muhumuza |
Land reform is a litmus test for how far post-apartheid democratic South Africa is willing to go to redress its abhorrent racist and sexist history. There have been several attempts to reconcile colonial and apartheid-era laws with their concomitant rights and obligations in the new democratic dispensation, epitomised by the transformative 1996 Constitution. The latest proposal is to expropriate land without compensation which is currently undergoing public consultation. However, scant attention has been paid to the gendered land relations that have excluded women from owning land in their own name.
The recent judgment of Kollapen J in Rahube v Rahube & Others,[1] is one such case that indicates the difficulty of reconciling the impact of a skewed racial, gendered history in a new democratic dispensation premised in a supposedly transformative constitutional regime.[2] The Rahube judgment is another (rather unfortunate) reminder of the subordinate position that women occupy in South Africa, as in most parts of Africa, reminding us that inasmuch as land and property relations in South Africa were racially anchored, they were, (and still are) thoroughly gendered. This is because for the most part, colonial and apartheid laws and practices limited, and at worst excluded women from accessing and controlling resources such as property, including land.[3]
AfricLaw 