|
South Africa celebrates Human Rights Day tomorrow. The public holiday honours the 69 people who died during the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March 1960 when apartheid police opened fire on peaceful marchers protesting against the identity document, known as the dompas (dumb passbook), that black people were forced to carry. The events of the day reverberated around the world, exposing the brutality of the apartheid regime. The Sharpeville massacre was to become one of the key milestones in the struggle to end apartheid.
To mark the day we’re publishing a selection of some of the best read articles on human rights.
The first is a look at Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, who, as leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, led the march. He was jailed for organising the protests. A new book, Lie on your wounds, features 300 prison letters Sobukwe wrote from prison. Edited by Derek Hook, it honours the memory of an inspirational leader whose contribution to the liberation of South Africa has often been neglected.
Looking at how the country has fared over the past 25 years in delivering basic social and economic rights, Laetitia Rispel writes that access to healthcare is marred by huge disparities between urban and rural areas; between public and private health sectors and between primary health care and hospital care. She argues that the country’s universal health care plan falls short of fixing the ailing system. For his part, Magnus Killander looks at how children are being denied the right to both a proper education and decent healthcare.
On the economic front, Danny Bradlow takes a hard look at steps being taken by President Cyril Ramaphosa to fix the country’s ailing economy, asking if they will benefit poor people, or simply deepen inequality in the country while Sonwabile Mnwana examines what the victory of a community in a bitter mining dispute means.
Expanding the human rights lens beyond South Africa, James Hamill laments the country’s poor record of defending human rights globally, particularly in Africa, and ponders what role it should play during its third term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. For his part Henning Melber takes a broad look at how the defense of human rights has progressed over the past 70 years.
|
