SOPH-web-logoSOPH-web-logo3SOPH-web-logo3SOPH-web-logo
  • About Us
    • School Of Public Health
    • Staff
    • Bi-Annual Reports
    • Annual Jakes Gerwel Award in Public Health
    • Annual David Sanders Lecture in Public Health and Social Justice
    • Funders & Partners
  • Professional Development
  • Academic Programmes
    • Postgraduate Diploma in Public Health (NQF Level 8)
    • Master of Public Health (NQF Level 9)
    • PhD in Public Health (NQF Level 10)
    • iKamva portal for registered students
  • Research & Publications
    • SARChI Chair in Health Systems, Complexity and Social Change
    • SARChI Chair in Health Systems Governance
    • SAMRC Extra Mural Research Unit – Health Systems to Services
    • Projects
    • Publications
  • Resources
    • SOPH Programme Handbook 2023
    • Open Education Resources
    • Guides
    • FAQ
  • News & Events
  • Contact
✕
  • Home
  • Research and Publications Publications
  • Cape Town’s response to COVID-19 shows that another kind of society is possible

Cape Town’s response to COVID-19 shows that another kind of society is possible

Staff inolved: Manya van Ryneveld, Eleanor Whyle, Leanne Brady

Cape Town Together and the CANs were catalysed by an unprecedented, global pandemic. This was not an attempt to bring people together under an explicitly municipalist agenda – or under any one coherent political ideology – other than a belief that local knowledge and self-organisation is best placed to respond to certain contextualities of a crisis such as Covid-Guiding principles, such as horizontality, radical generosity and solidarity across class and race lines were arrived at through praxis, rather than a theoretical or ideological positioning.

Yet, under the banner of responding to Covid-19, the CANs demonstrated a different way of doing politics at the municipal level that potentially sets the stage for extended projects in radical democracy and local action to challenge the deep-seated socio-economic inequality and spatial injustice that abounds in the city.

It’s hard to imagine how this reconciles with the inherent hierarchies in our entrenched system of electoral politics but if there’s one thing we have learned it is that networks of ordinary people doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way can be a powerful tool to demonstrate the kind of society that is possible.

View Publication
Share

Recent publications

  • How gender is socially constructed in policy making processes: a case study of the Adolescent and Youth Health policy in South Africa
    21 September 2023
  • Support after stillbirth: Findings from the Parent Voices Initiative Global Registry Project
    28 August 2023
  • Stemming commercial milk formula marketing: now is the time for radical transformation to build resilience for breastfeeding
    28 August 2023
  • Aspirations and realities of intergovernmental collaboration in national-level interventions: insights from maternal, neonatal and child health policy processes in Nigeria, 2009-2019
    28 August 2023
  • What are health policy and systems research priorities for universal health coverage in South Africa
    28 August 2023
  • Jakes Gerwel Award in Public Health 2023: Dr Landry Tsague Dongmo
  • 2023 Annual David Sanders Lecture in Public Health and Social Justice
  • Tackling substandard and falsified health products in a post-COVID world: a multidisciplinary challenge grounded in health systems strengthening
✕

Contact Details

Email: soph-enquiries@uwc.ac.za
Tel: +27 21 959 2809
Fax: +27 21 959 2872

School of Public Health
University of the Western Cape
Robert Sobukwe Road
Bellville 7535
Republic of South Africa

​Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0.
© 2021 UWC | School Of Public Health. All Rights Reserved. Spotkolours Design