Holding power to account
Contributor 
By Mary-Anne Gontsana/GroundUp
The trial in the Mowbray torture case involving three police officers will only be heard in April next year.
The case has been postponed eight times between 25 July 2024 and 19 September 2025 “at the behest of the defence”, according to the state.… Read more
By Liezl Human/GroundUp
“Alien plants are relentless, but we are relentless as well,” says Raymond Chinembiri, team leader at the Sugarbird Project, an organisation dedicated to removing invasive plants in the Table Mountain National Park (TMNP).… Read more
SANParks CEO Hapiloe Sello says resources are being allocated to fight crime on Table Mountain, but she acknowledged that it may not be enough.
Sello was briefing Parliament’s portfolio committee on Environment, Forestry and Fisheries on Tuesday.… Read more
By Tania Broughton and Mary-Anne Gontsana
The City of Cape Town has paused its plans to significantly cut back on its Dial-a-Ride service for disabled people.
The municipality reached a settlement agreement with the Western Cape Network on Disability on Friday, which was made an order of court by Acting Judge Wallis Roux.… Read more
Music
The Two Oceans Aquarium and Texx and the City continue with After Dark 2025, a stripped-down series of performances throughout winter. The second iteration, on 30 July, includes the band Visitor’s Centre, and singer-songwriter Carla Franco, winner of the 2024 Texx and the City Band or Bust competition.… Read more
Set mostly in the Klein Karoo, beautifully written, atmospheric and irresistibly intriguing, The Fourth Boy explores notions of belonging and a myriad of other longings which I found profoundly moving. It tells the story of a young man’s search for his father against the backdrop of the 80s in apartheid South Africa and the fate of five hundred Polish WWII refugee children who arrived in Oudtshoorn in 1943 – a piece of local history I have been fascinated by for as long as I have lived in South Africa.… Read more
By Rod Amner
“When we allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defences and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre party.… Read more