This week — climate change and migration discussion, annual David Sanders Lecture, and a documentary on the Cape Town housing crisis

On Monday, 16 September at 1pm, the Helen Suzman Foundation will host a webinar on climate change and migration. The speakers include Nohayi Ngowenani of the International Water Management Institute, Dhesigen Naidoo of the Presidential Climate Commission and Professor Chris Nshimbi of the University of Pretoria, with facilitator Wayne Ncube from Lawyers for Human Rights. 

On Tuesday, 17 September at 10am, Beyond State Capture will host the 5th State Capture and Beyond launch event. 

​​Civil society needs to look out for the following risks, say the organisers:

”Lack of transparency: Confidentiality, overly complex language and a lack of clarity all hinder transition-affected communities’ ability to participate in and monitor every stage of the just transition process.

“Elite capture: The potential for resources to be diverted away from genuine climate solutions to less-effective projects, or for private gain.” 

Venue: Anew Hotel, 167 Jellicoe Street, Witbank, Emalahleni. 

For interviews and more information contact campaign manager Pashkar Moodliar on 083 726 7649 or [email protected], or see the website.

Also on Tuesday, at 5.30pm, the Stellenbosch University Museum and the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation will host a screening of the documentary film, Letters to Zohra, as part of Heritage Month. 

“Letters to Zohra tells Ahmed Kathrada’s exceptional life story, partly based on extracts from some of the more than 900 letters he wrote while incarcerated at Robben Island and Pollsmoor prisons. Kathrada's niece, Zohra Kathrada, is a soft-spoken woman, leading a perfectly unremarkable, middle-class life in Johannesburg. Yet she is far from being an ordinary South African. For many years Zohra acted as the eyes and ears of Ahmed Kathrada while he was serving a life sentence at Robben Island and Pollsmoor prisons,” according to the event details.

Venue: Stellenbosch University Museum, 52 Ryneveld Street, Stellenbosch. 

On Wednesday, 18 September at 1pm, the Southern Africa Labour and  Development Research Unit and the Social Policy Initiative will host a hybrid screening of A Decent Path, a documentary on the transformation of the lives of R350 grant beneficiaries.

It will be followed by a panel discussion with Murray Leibbrandt, the UCT research chair in poverty and inequality research, Isobel Frye, the executive director of SPI, Neil Coleman, the co-founder and senior policy specialist at the Institute for Economic Justice, and Rachel Bukasa, director of the Black Sash.

Watch the trailer. 

RSVP by 16 September here. Join via Teams here

Also on Wednesday, at 5.30pm, the 2024 Annual David Sanders Lecture in Public Health and Social Justice will take place at the School of Public Health, University of Western Cape, and will be streamed online. 

The keynote address will be delivered by Fatima Hassan, founder and director of the Health Justice Initiative.

A human rights lawyer and social justice activist, Hassan is the recipient of the 2022 Calgary Peace Prize and is a 2023 Echoing Green Fellow, the organisers say. “She has dedicated her professional life to defending and promoting human rights in South Africa, especially in the health field. She holds a BA and LL.B from the University of the Witwatersrand and an LL.M from Duke University. She clerked at the Constitutional Court, served as ministerial adviser in two portfolios and headed the Open Society Foundations in South Africa for six years. She has previously served on several NGO and other boards, and currently serves on the Advisory Group for Resolve to Save Lives and the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health Partner Advisory Board. She is an honorary research associate at the UCT School of Public Health and Family Medicine.” 

Register here.

Livestream via YouTube.

Also on Wednesday, at 7pm, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation will host a screening of Mother City, a documentary on the housing crisis in Cape Town which “depicts the difficulties associated with being poor and Black in the ‘Mother City’ and how racial and economic inequalities are still rife in Cape Town, decades after the end of apartheid”.

Venue: Killarney CineCentre, Killarney Mall, 60 Riviera Road, Johannesburg.

RSVP here. DM