When Health-e News first shared the story of 110-year-old Koko Violet Ramadimetsa, her birthday wish was not cake or presents. It was a simple wish to walk safely and live with dignity. Koko Violet, who lives in Hammanskraal, Tshwane, had…
Five-year-old hands grip a small yellow hammer, crushing aluminium cans outside a small house in Embo, west of Durban. By the end of the day, Nokulunga Nkabinde hopes the bulging clear bag filled with cans will earn enough money to…
The grandparents of an 8-year-old Lenasia South girl in Gauteng claim they’ve had to navigate the medical, psychosocial and criminal justice systems alone in the days following the girl’s alleged rape by a security guard at her school. The family…
Geraldine Norton’s grandchildren do not always bathe before going to school. Instead, they wipe themselves with a cloth and wait for water to return. “The children cannot always bathe before going to school,” says the Limpopo grandmother, who has been…
On a chilly weekday morning, gogo Thozama Toti sits next to a stove, watching her granddaughter prepare a meal of noodles. Another grandchild waits patiently on a bed inside the dilapidated three-roomed mud house in Emaxelegwini informal settlement near Ngcobo…
Every weekend up to a 100 children, teenagers and women gather at Refentse Primary School in Stinkwater, north of Pretoria, for free aerobics classes. The weekly events were started by local resident, Khaohelo Tshabalala, known as ‘Miss Tee’ in her…
In the second part of our Hungry For Change series, Health-e News shares the story of a Limpopo widower who has to feed himself, his three adult children and his two young grandchildren with R50 a day. When food runs out, he advices…
In the first part of our Hungry For Change series, Health-e News shares the story of a Johannesburg mother who turned to sex work to feed her three young children. Her youngest was hospitalised with malnutrition earlier this year. A…
South Africa is facing a hunger crisis. This is according to recent submissions by advocacy groups to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC)’s Inquiry into the country’s food system. The first phase of the inquiry was held in March…
A Limpopo mother from Maleboho says she regrets taking her eight-year-old son for circumcision at a make-shift surgery that left him with septic wounds and hospitalised for a week. Doris Mosena, from Slaaphoek village in the Maleboho area, says she…
When parents in KwaNyuswa, Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal are unable to take their children to the clinic because of work or other commitments, they turn to 27-year-old Zama Nkwanyana for help. Zama, a mother of two children, aged 7 and 4,…
One year after Health-e News reported on Stinkwater’s sanitation crisis, residents say conditions have worsened. For thousands of residents in Stinkwater, near Hammanskraal north of Pretoria, pit toilets remain the only form of sanitation nearly 60 years after the settlement…
For residents of Mafarafara village outside Burgersfort, reaching the nearest clinic means crossing the Tubatse River on a makeshift bridge and then walking another 1.5km up a steep, bushy gravel road. The village has no clinic of its own. Residents…
A young Limpopo mother says caring full-time for her nine-year old daughter with cerebral palsy has left her depressed, isolated and unable to build a future of her own. Mapula Setati (25) from Extension 44 outside Polokwane was only 16…
A young Limpopo mother says doctors removed her womb during childbirth surgery without her knowledge or consent, leaving her in pain and struggling to come to terms with what happened. Dimakatso Madimabe* (20) says she was eight months pregnant when…
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