News

More than 150 people face eviction from three abandoned buildings in Hope Street

By Matthew Hirsch/GroundUp

Caroline Abrahams just turned 56 but says she has nothing to celebrate. She is one of over 150 people whose lives are in limbo as they face being evicted from three abandoned buildings in Cape Town’s Hope Street.… Read more

SANParks ordered by forestry department to clear all remaining pines

By John Yeld/GroundUp

A new push to promote ecological restoration in the Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) and reduce fire risk could see the removal of all remaining pine trees and other invasives from former plantation areas at Tokai and Cecilia.… Read more

The “people’s train” doesn’t include people with disabilities

By Mary-Anne Gontsana

In 2016, the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) promised to make all its stations accessible to wheelchair users. Ten years later, this is an empty promise, as we found when we accompanied wheelchair user Khanyo Mantshi on a journey in Cape Town.… Read more

Two massive water-hungry and energy-hungry data centres are proposed next to the airport

An application that paves the way for two new data centres totalling more than 120,000 square metres in Cape Town’s airport industrial area has been approved by the Municipal Planning Tribunal.… Read more

Tenants and objectors are concerned about how required heritage report was ignored in adjacent massive River Club development

The provincial government plans to allow five-storey buildings and more than 1,300 housing units to be built within the Oude Molen Eco-Village alongside the Black River, but their required Heritage Impact Assessment has been turned down.… Read more

Smallholder farmers from rural towns as far afield as Calitzdorp, Suurbraak, and Genadendal rely on the monthly market

By Liezl Human

The Mowbray Market has been operating on the first Saturday of every month for the past four years, but the a lease on the property has expired and the City is now considering auctioning the lease to the highest bidder.… Read more

World Refugee Day events show “African solidarity”

Calls of “Phantsi, Afrophobia, phantsi!” (Down with Afrophobia) echoed through Cape Town’s Central Methodist Mission Church on Saturday 20 June as musicians from different African countries performed in a free solidarity concert.… Read more

They want the Zimbabwean government to help them get home safely

Hundreds of Zimbabwean nationals are sleeping outside the Zimbabwean consulate in Cape Town pleading for the government to help them get back home.

On Thursday 18 June, piles of large suitcases and bags wrapped in plastic were strewn on the pavements around the office.… Read more

The Sober Space project caters for the intoxicated in need of a bed

By Matthew Hirsch

Bonelwa Xaka lived on the streets of Cape Town for more than five years. Now she is a peer support specialist in a “Sober Space” pilot project in Cape Town, set up to offer a place to homeless people who would be turned away from other shelters because they are drunk.… Read more

Community leaders say immigration laws should be enforced by the state, not vigilantes

By Peter Luhanga

Community leaders in Dunoon have moved to shut down plans by anti-immigrant groups to march through the township, warning that the campaign against foreign nationals risks inflaming tensions and destabilising a fragile local economy.… Read more