Black Sash Gauteng Regional Manager Thandiwe Zulu was present at a City Press interview with Mrs M. whose “battle to receive foster-care grants for taking care of her grandchildren ended with victory in the South Gauteng High Court. The ruling means that in Gauteng, grandparents, aunts, uncles and older siblings who take care of orphaned relatives now qualify for R800 per child per month rather than the much lower childcare grant of R290.”

Thandiwe says, “Witnessing the interview with Ms M at her home was heartwarming and humbling. She was very hopeful in terms of future for her orphaned grandchildren, especially their schooling. She is planning to take them back to the school where they were attending up until this year when she could hardly cope with the fees. She had registered them at a local school which hardly has clean toilets and the twins often complained about this. I was also privileged to see their reports. The overall average performance for both the twins is between 80 - 100%. It is clearly vitally important to invest in our children as early as possible as that is likely to give us the best results in future. Nurturing and supporting them now is bound to give us as a country, the best result as they grow to be adults.

Jerome Bele, Black Sash paralegal and fieldworker, pays tribute to Mr Qina Chamane as a vocal and dedicated voluntary worker, who works tirelessly, in spite of his physical challenges. He has donated a room in his home to serve as an office for his organisation.

Jerome says: “I worked with him, together with his team, in making things possible for a community stakeholder’s dialogue at Appelsboch community hall held on Friday 12 April 2013. He played a leading role in terms of organising and inviting people for the event. People attended in large numbers. We had approximately 200 people at the workshop including representatives from the Public Protectors office, the Gender Commission, local municipality, Umvoti Aids Centre, Cogta chiefs, Department of Economic Development, and the Department of Social Development. The reason why I’m sharing this with you is because people like him contribute fully to their programmes, knowing that in the end they won’t get an incentive. I truly admire his work”.

10 April 2013

The establishment of a CSO Forum in Peddie in the Eastern Cape was an outcome of a local government workshop that the Black Sash conducted in Peddie on 27^th February 2013. At the last workshop, a coordinating committee was formed to discuss the CSO forum. Mr. Gayi (trained paralegal and CMAP Monitor) from the Peddie Women Support Centre was tasked to approach the Black Sash with a request to help strengthen the CSO forum. On 10 April, Jonathan Walton travelled to Peddie (68km from Grahamstown) to facilitate at the meeting which was attended by 16 participants.

The Gauteng Black Sash Regional Office has conducted a two-day rights education workshop on 2 and 3 April 2013 with 127 students on the topic of social grants. The students, from City Year, are doing a one- year post matric bridging course on community service  The workshop was held in Johannesburg, at the Anglo-Gold Auditorium and they learnt various aspects of socila grants  such as  the legislative background, qualification for, lapses, cancellation, reviews, reconsideration and appeals.