Siyanda

he/him

[delaney vandergrift @delaneypv15]

now we’re talking!!!

[Siyanda @_siyanda_b]

you're going to hell.

[MORAL Authority @lavidaNOTA]

Why would you feel safe enough to jog alone in Kempton Park? Anytime I see men jogging there I assume they have serious street cred & protection, even driving there at night is something I do cautiously… You have running club fomo & forget you’re not jogging in Fourways traffic!

[Thendo Muloiwa @MuloiwaThendo]

To qualify for an RDP you need to earn R3500pm or less. Everyone on the TL earns R100k per month and it's not even enough to survive on.

[vuyi qotoyi @justvuyi_]

I’ll pay her real money the day she actually has a smart take 🙂‍↔️.

[Verashni Pillay @verashni]

This photo was taken in 2008. I was a young reporter, notebook in hand, in Khayelitsha, trying to make sense of the first wave of xenophobic violence to rip through this country.

I was profoundly affected. I watched Somalian mothers in tents, cradling their babies in disbelief. Spoke to Ethiopian men, almost crying from the shock and pain of it all. I thought: We will never let this happen again.

Yet, here we are.

Eighteen years later and I'm watching the same fires, literal and figurative, and the same dangerous lies spreading faster than ever, turbocharged by social media and amplified by politicians who should know better.

But the numbers do not support the narrative.

Immigrants, documented and undocumented combined, make up roughly 4 million people. That is about 5% of our population. The idea that 5% of the country is responsible for our crime, our unemployment, our collapsing healthcare? It is not just wrong, it is mathematically absurd.

Look at who the Zondo and Madlanga Commissions have implicated. Look at rape statistics: 120 women a day, and a third of South African men have admitted to committing rape. Are we really blaming foreigners for that?

If every undocumented immigrant left tomorrow, your local public hospital would still be broken. Not because of the person standing ahead of you in the queue, but because of corruption, mismanagement and decades of underfunding that have nothing to do with them. 

March and March's June 30 deadline is not a peaceful protest. It is a dog whistle. And the media and political figures who treat it as legitimate activism are complicit in what it is actually designed to trigger.

I started https://t.co/z34ZpKPsT3 because I believe that access to accurate, contextual information is not a nice-to-have. It is the foundation of a functioning democracy. And a democracy that allows dangerous misinformation to go unchallenged, that allows real economic despair to be weaponised against the most vulnerable, is one that is putting itself at serious risk.

We have covered this crisis extensively at https://t.co/z34ZpKPsT3. We will keep doing so. Because owe it to each other to do better.

#SouthAfrica #Xenophobia #MediaLiteracy #Journalism #Democracy #Explain #FactsMatter #SouthAfricanMedia #BuildingInPublic #Immigration

[Zikhona Valela @valavoosh]

“If you dive into history” nary a hair strand was dipped into history.

This is ahistorical BS laced in semi-middle register English.

Quick 🧵 Movements were intellectually informed. In this very country, at the height of censorship, poor people kept libraries in their houses.

[Siyanda @_siyanda_b]

@JohannBiermann1 The social wage =/= social grants. The social wage includes all gov spending on health, education, public works etc. Social grants are only about 25% of the "social wage" or 15% of the consolidated budget.

[josh! @queersocialism]

you can ignore or delay it. you can baptize it in liberal humanist democracy. you can pretend it doesn’t exist. but there is no hope for a civilization such as this. from israel to euro-america and all of its colonies in between. inevitably doomed

[Amandla! @AmandlaMedia]

Last year, @IEJ_SA and the #PayTheGrants campaign filed a lawsuit against the government to challenge the administrative processes related to the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant. These processes have unfairly excluded millions of poor South Africans from receiving the grant. According to @_siyanda_b, the lawsuit addresses several important issues, including procedural barriers that limit access, the decline in the grant's value, the means test threshold, and the systematic non-payment of approved grants. Read more on the link below. ⤵️
#AmandlaMagazine
#PTG
https://t.co/5F8zblCldE

[Yuen Yuen Ang @yuenyuenang]

Please know this: "Chinese exceptionalism" is a myth created to distract you from seeing partial myths in stock narratives about Western development

AJR isn't just wrong about Chinese development, they don't account for fraught Western experiences either.

[Patricia @PatriciaNPino]

Fun fact. My journey into economics began when I realised not a single mainstream economist could give me a straight answer to the question “how much govt debt is too much govt debt?”

They just don’t have a clue, and headlines like these are meaningless.

[Yonas Alem @AlemResearch]

Using data from South Africa, this @restatjournal paper shows that the unprecedented nationwide alcohol sales ban in July 2020 led to a 14% reduction in mortality in men.
@restatjournal v:👇
https://t.co/zAmQjBu15r
Free WP v:👇
https://t.co/QxglfwpQRA
More on paper:👇

[Ayo Sogunro @ayosogunro]

I think the surprise many non-South Africans have about how far the entire country took this beauty pageant case is because we think of it as an aberration and a distraction - the kind of two day social media trend that goes away and gives space for more important issues to surface.

But, as someone who has lived in South Africa, I can assure viewers that this is not a distraction. Anti-black migrant discourse is a critical national issue in South Africa.

As surely as the sun rises daily, the average South African would find a way to tie any social problem to black migrants.

No electricity? Too many black migrants overloading the system.

Crime in cities? Black migrants did it.

Drugs in townships? Black migrants sell it.

Police corruption? Black migrants bought them.

Unemployment? Black migrants taking the jobs.

Failed at a business? Black migrants bullied the SA entrepreneur.

Unpopular govt policies? The ANC does this to protect black migrants.

SA national arrested for a crime? Must have been influenced by black migrants.

Rising house rents? Black migrants taking over property.

SA reputation declining abroad? Black migrants are out there pretending to be SAns.

The black migrant in South Africa is blamed for everything: from petty street crime to grand state capture.

Holding politicians accountable for social problems is second only to the culture of identity politics that frames every issue as one of nationalism.

I have had South African close acquaintances throw me under the bus or act distant rather than be perceived as being friendly to a foreigner. It is practically stigmatising to show care for non South Africans.

In short, the Miss SA issue is not an aberration; it is not a sudden distraction. It is the main national conversation. And it is rightfully weird, to anyone who is not South African, how deeply invested an entire country is in this.

And that’s why we say South Africa is xenophobic.

[Gordon 🇵🇸 / rent controls fan account @istreasatuatha]

jk rowling is one bottle of gin away from saying that only white people can be women

[Zikhona Valela @valavoosh]

Know your history: if you’re Black you’ve been ‘South African’ for thirty years 🤭

[zak @zakareeee]

these are the people we argue with on here

[David Broockman @dbroockman]

Today we released the first papers from OpenResearch's Unconditional income Study, which gave 1k ppl $1k/mo for 3 yrs & had a N=2k control group

This 🧵 is for RCT nerds: how did we measure the cash's fx? Learn about 96% response rates, blood draws, changing a state law & more..

[Eva Vivalt @evavivalt]

We are happy to release the first results of a RCT of a US program that provided $1,000/month unconditionally for 3 years to 1,000 individuals in the treatment group, with a group of 2,000 people receiving $50/month serving as the control.

These are sizable transfers. 1/ 🧵

[Alonso Gurmendi @Alonso_GD]

In short, Israel is:
an Apartheid state
occupying Gaza
illegally annexing the WB
violating self-determination

This is illegal, so it must:
end the occupation
fully repair/compensate Palestinians, including through right of return & dismantelling settlements

Incredible