I hope I’m wrong. I really hope I’m wrong — because my evidence is anecdotal. But it seems to me that despite all of the gender equality measures we have in place, when it comes to education, sexism is alive and well. When I was at primary school in (circa the early Dark Ages) I…
Author: Mandy Collins
Mandy Collins is a freelance writer and editor who isn't quite sure how she ended up writing about health when she had a career in television production all mapped out. She's a mother, an ardent baker, a garrulous tweeter and a procrastininja, among other things.
Take a guess at what the most common cancer in South Africa is — breast cancer, maybe? Nope, sorry. Breast cancer gets a lot of publicity (especially round about now) but actually it’s skin cancer. I came across some statistics published by the Cancer Association of South Africa in 2010 (I can’t find more recent…
I bristled again the other day at a phrase I think we need to expunge from our vocabularies. I was talking to an elderly relative about a mutual friend who’s recently been divorced and has three small children. “Ah,” said my relative, shaking her head disapprovingly. “Another broken home.” It’s a phrase that goes with…
I am so incredibly fed up with seeing people who have chosen to be parents, and who have a perfectly comfortable life and perfectly normal children, whining on and on about how haaaaaard parenting is. Frankly, suck it up, cupcake. This is not a magazine shoot. It’s not Top Billing. It’s real life. And in…
I’ve lost count of the number of times one of my friends has boasted that her husband or boyfriend is “so wonderful because he’s always helping with the kids”. Or heard a father bragging in the school car park about how much he “helps” with the kids. And it irks me, every single time. It…
I’ll probably make myself hugely unpopular with a whole lot of teachers and parents for saying this, but as the matrics start writing their final exams I’d like to say this to them: “Work hard and study and do your very best, but remember, it’s just matric.” Yes, I know. I felt your collective gasp….
I can’t find the piece I wrote about it, but 20 years ago, as a TV reporter for a local newspaper, I stood on the set of the first series of Soul City. If I recall correctly, it was somewhere out in Midrand, and I remember it clearly because the set was so convincingly built,…
My children go to a good school, and the kids who attend it are, for the most part, privileged. They live in big houses, and their parents drive posh cars. The kids own iPads and laptops and smartphones, and for them, that is normality. And on the top layer of privilege at the school are…
A few years ago — and no names, no pack drill, because I said nothing at the time — I had to go into hospital for a small procedure. It was a private hospital, part of one of the large chains. I would be in and out on the same day. My medical aid was…
I think it’s time schools stopped making a big deal out of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as part of their programmes. Because here’s the thing — it only works for kids who have both a mom and a dad in their lives, and those kids aren’t the only ones in the classroom. The way…
It’s a sobering thing watching people who possess very little having even that taken away from them. Between Marikana and the scenes we’ve witnessed at Lwandle, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Nats were in charge again. We’re still forcibly evicting the poor from their homes in this day and age? But what’s even more…
On Friday morning I was fortunate enough to hear Cheryl Carolus talking at a women’s leadership conference. I’ve long admired her no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip approach to everything, so I confess I hung on to every word. And Carolus doesn’t mince her words. She tackled several issues, from the dearth of women premiers appointed after the election,…