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makana municipalitylatest news & developments
Equipped: A woman looks around in the Michaelis Art Library within the Johannesburg City
Library on 9 August 2025. Photo: OUR CITY NEWS/James Oatway

How funding apartheid fails young library users

Lack of funds prevent provinces from carrying out their mandate to manage public library services

Literacy: Some of the nearly 400 delegates who attended the 2024 Makhanda Education Summit. They adopted a vision for the city to become the
country’s leading educational hub by 2028. Photo: Rod Amner

How a broken city doubled South Africa’s literacy rate – without the government

Civil society cannot solve the country’s literacy crisis on its own, because the scale is too vast and the resources required too substantial

PUTTING TWO AND TWO TOGETHER: Children attending GADRA Education’s Whistle Stop School are
immersed in the program’s carefully designed literacy resources. Photo: Supplied

“R5 billion withheld: The EC school funding crisis

Since 2020, the Eastern Cape Department of Education has retained about R5 billion from the budgets of its poorest schools, ostensibly for “centralised procurement”. Some of that…

International law and the international law of war are shrugged off by those who justify their lawlessness by multiple ideological euphemisms for lawlessness. Photo: File

The risks of chaos when political rogues are on the loose

The global order of years of diplomacy and peacebuilding can be flipped over by the cynical or power-hungry

In the run-up to the 2021 local government elections, the Makana Citizens Front challenged corruption and dysfunction in  the municipality rather than try to collapse state institutions. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy/M&G

Makana is not ripe for anarchy

Instead of replacing state capacity with grassroots action, we need to strengthen state institutions to serve the poor

Fed up: The Makana Citizens Front, which grew out of the Grahamstown Residents’ Association and the Unemployed People’s Movement, is running in the local elections because of poor service delivery. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

New grouping promises the people of Makana shall govern

The Makana Citizens Front brings together diverse groups with a focus on accountability

A communist party would be a great boon to our democracy, but the South African Communist Party won’t become this party.
(Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

South Africa could use a communist party

The SACP is not building socialism, or even social democracy. Sadly, it has become just another party advancing the politics of patronage

A protest by members the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) outside the Makhanda high court last month, when the case asking for the Makana municipality to be dissolved was being heard. (Graham Pote)

Makana municipal mess up has lessons for local government

Citizen action, where diverse groups work together, offers hope that municipalities can be forced to do their job properly

Show goes on: Festival organisers have ensured alternative sources of water to the National Arts Festival in Makhanda. (Delwyn Verasamy)

Even if the wells run dry …

This year’s National Arts Festival is going ahead despite the drought that is plaguing Makhanda