Community Radio Stations
Sonke’s work in training radio personnel, creating guidelines and harnessing the medium’s broadcasting power to raise awareness of gender issues.
Telling Digital Stories
Supplying the most disenfranchised members of society with the tools and training to tell their stories from their own perspective.
The Price of Gold: Day 20
Welkom So this is the last day of the trip and I only had to find two more of the miners to complete my initial aim of photographing 56. Because the mines in Welkom were all near to the town it seems that many of the miners still live very central. Many of them in […]
The Price of Gold: Day 19
Virginia, Free State Back in South Africa and, again you notice the change immediately from Lesotho. In the Virginia and Welkom area there are many gold mines, most of them not functional anymore. The houses are not characterful but are bland and fit for purpose. Many of them were accommodation owned by the mines that […]
The Price of Gold: Day 18
Maseru The last day in Lesotho today. After managing to find Mr Letsie this morning and Mrs Selibo this afternoon we set off to find a village which we were assured was just an hour away. After an hour and a half of driving one of the most challenging, and beautiful, informal mountain roads that […]
The Price of Gold: Day 17
Butha Buthe We spent hours at the end of the day trying to find Mr Boxwell. We talked to his neighbours and they shouted across the valley for him. We hiked up and down the hills, which felt more like mountains and we asked everyone that we could find in his village. We had to […]
The Price of Gold: Day 16
Mafateng, Lesotho I am getting near to the end of the trip now and am realising that I have heard the same stories over and over again. I am really aware that this shouldn’t take away from the importance of the issue, in fact it should add to it because there are so many people […]
The Price of Gold: Day 15
Maseru Today was a huge day. We needed to make up for lost time and had planned it so that we could visit 6 people who were relatively close to each other. This morning I was worried that I am not going to hit my target of photographing 56 out of the 69 miners but […]
The Price of Gold: Day 14
Mohale’s Hoek to Maseru It is amazing to see how far away from amenities and service delivery people live. In many of the homes there is is no running water and no electricity. If you want to find someone in this country of hills and valleys it is very easy, you ask someone who lives […]
The Price of Gold: Day 13
Mohale’s Hoek, Lesotho As soon as you cross the border in to Lesotho it is completely different. Many of the houses are made of stone and horses are a common form of transport. The roads are windier and people seem to drive slower. The views are incredible but the distances are just as vast. The […]
The Price of Gold: Day 12
Matatiele Matatiele is one of the most beautiful parts of South Africa. It is where the Xhosa and Zulu cultures blend and it is positioned at the foothills of Lesotho. It is the last stop on the Eastern Cape leg of this trip. I came here a few months ago to meet Alloys Msuthu for […]
The Price of Gold: Day 11
Bizana No. 30 Thulenkho Kuswana was discharged from his job as a winch driver in 2009 when it was discovered that he had silicosis. He was sent back to his rural home in the Eastern Cape. He returned a year later to speak with the doctor about compensation and was told to go home and […]
The Price of Gold: Day 10
Bizana Bizana is a vast area with miles of countryside and dirt roads that seem to peter out to nothing before turning a corner into another small village. Many people live a long way from shops, clinics and schools and are used to the long journey by foot or by taxi. It’s easy to see […]
The Price of Gold: Day 9
Bizana Total Distance – 2211 km This morning read a comment below an old article on silicosis which really made me think about the lives of the people that I have met so far on this trip. The comment stated that miners were never forced to go to work on the mines. This, whilst being factually […]
The Price of Gold: Day 8
Lusikisiki to Port Edward Distance so far – 2062 km It turns out that the way you find people in the rural Eastern Cape is to use the clinics and schools as navigational aids. Every town has a school and sometimes a clinic and so we jump from town to town getting closer to our […]
The Price of Gold: Day 7
Mthatha to Port St Johns Total Distance – 1782 After 7 days I have started to notice the similarities in the stories that I hear. All of the miners that I have met so far went to work on the mines because it was the best way for a man without a formal education to […]
The Price of Gold: Day 6
Butterworth Total Distance – 1633 km One thing that I realised today is that it is really easy to overlook the fact that many of the miners were trained in very specific aspects of their work (see the training certificates below). They learnt on the job over a matter of years, and the skills were […]
The Price of Gold: Day 5
Queenstown to Cofimvaba Total Distance: 1444km I have already covered 1444km on this journey and I am am just a quarter of the way through. Finding and photographing 4 people in one day, at their rural homes has turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. Every morning I seem to convince myself […]
The Price of Gold: Day 4
Queenstown to Cala Total Distance: 1205km Today we learnt three valuable lessons about travelling in the rural Eastern Cape. The first is that the concepts of near and far are relative and can be interpreted in many wonderful ways. The second is not to trust just one person with directions and the third is that our […]
The Price of Gold: Day 3
Queenstown Total Distance: 858km Both of the miners that we met today were working in Queenstown as gardeners. Although they were both old enough to be retired, they have to keep working to support their families. We met them both in town and they directed us to their homes, in different townships outside Queenstown. It […]
The Price of Gold: Day 2
King Williams Town to Queenstown via Hofmeyer Total Distance: 757km This was always going to be one of the longest drives of the whole trip, it rained most of the way and the driving conditions were not great. We did listen to the news every half an hour for about seven hours though. We met […]
The Price of Gold: Day 1
East London to King Williams Town via Peddie Total distance: 267km The Eastern Cape countryside is like no other I have been to before. The hills roll into each other, spotted with colourful houses and the windy roads are teeming with school children, cows, goats, and donkeys. It’s one of the most beautiful sights in South […]
The Price of Gold
Before We Get Going This trip has taken a lot of quick organisation but I’m on the road now and the work starts tomorrow. I thought I would post a little bit about what I’m going to be doing over the next 20 days, what I’m taking with me and what I’m hoping to achieve. […]
African Union & Regional Economic Communities
Conducting engagements with the AU and various RECs for the strengthening of policies to address gender inequalities.
