Grantees’ Work

Over 100 grants have been made since 2006, totalling nearly R10 million. These have gone to individuals, both employed and freelance, groups of journalists, editors for a newsroom project and for a training project with students. We have contributed to books, stories, series of stories, photographic essays, podcasts, data stories on subjects as wide as crime, corruption, rhino-poaching, the environment, family history, the Marikana massacre and Duncan Village massacre of 1961.

Our grantees work has been published in the Sunday Times, The Guardian of London, Daily Maverick, News24, The Continent, Sowetan, GroundUp, The Citizen, Africa Report, The Standard in Zimbabwe, New York Times, Daily Dispatch, The Herald, Moz24, Guardian Sun in Botswana, Herald of Zimbabwe, Muslim Views, EWN/Primeda+, inter alia.

For the work coming out of our SA | AJP project, go here. | For Our City News see here.

Piles of sh*t — solutions to Africa’s nappy pollution crisis
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
30-07-2025
Indigenous stockmen in rural Matatiele were in a bind. Their herds were taking a beating because of a grim form of plastic pollution: soiled disposable nappies littering the communal veld and streams where their animals grazed … The local municipality doesn’t send its rubbish trucks this far out, though. Parents had few options for dealing with soiled nappies, other than to throw them in the veld and hope nature would take care of things.

Piles of sh*t (Part 2) — Corporates are at odds with our constitutional right to a healthy, safe environment
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
16-07-2025
The story of a cattle herding community tackling single-use nappy pollution in the Eastern Cape’s communal grasslands shows up the foundational flaw in the global use-and-discard economy. Consumers are expected to mop up the pollution coming out of its tailpipe, when powerful profit-taking corporations should be turning off the pollution at source.

Piles of sh*t (Part 1) — Communal farmers tackle nappy waste, and the climate crisis
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
15-07-2025
In rural Matiatiele, the stockmen are agitating for action over disposable nappies, which undermine their ability to be good stewards of shared grazing. It is a local issue with global implications, especially for the companies producing them.

Diesploot literacy projects gives unemployed young people a leg-up
BY ANNA COX AND CECILIA RUSSEL
23-06-2025
A project that uses jobless youth as reading tutors is producing results that speak for themselves. Second in a three-part series on child literacy.

The Link provides cost-effective literacy to inner city schools
BY ANNA COX AND CECILIA RUSSEL
27-06-2025
Our reporters visit a project that has shown credible results in meeting the challenge of shocking child literacy numbers. The final in a three-part series.

Pupils at Goxhill Primary School at work on their mobile desks. (Photo: Alaister Russell)

Lessons from champions — turning young rural KZN pupils into literacy superstars
BY CECILIA RUSSELL AND ANNA COX
16-06-2025
In the first of a three-part series on our reading crisis, Anna Cox and Cecilia Russell went in search of civil society organisations tackling the shocking child literacy figures with the ‘each one teach one’ tenet.

A wake up call for education
BY LAURA GRANT AND RO MANOIM
05-06-2025
In our series on child literacy problems, the data wranglers from The Outlier take a two-part deep dive into what lies behind this country’s children’s poor results in literacy tests.

Part 2: Children say they love to read despite dismal reading test results

Turning the Page – A deep dive into literacy in SA
BY ARENA JOURNALISTS
02-06-2025
Journalists at the Daily Dispatch, The Herald and The Sowetan worked together to produce this multi-story multi-media probe into the state of children’s reading. Part of our childhood literacy focus, supported by the Binding Constraints Lab / Allan Gray Orbis Foundation

SA government kills funding for best weapon against thirsty invasive trees
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
26-05-2025
Funding to deal with water-greedy alien trees has dried up. This is the latest in the writer’s series on her two-year journey around the country examining the impact of climate change. To follow her on this environmental adventure, and see all her remarkable stories and photo essays, go to Story Ark.

Sharing water with the dead
BY VICKY ABRAHAM AND NTOKOZO ABRAHAM
We expose the shocking neglect of a school for the disabled in Limpopo – and drew an immediate response from the authorities. They reported it in the Sunday Times, Rapport/ Netwerk24 and Diary Series of Deaf People. The authorities quick reaction (after eight years of inactivity) was reported in the Sunday Times.

Agent Orange — cross-boundary cooperation is key to reversing the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in grasslands
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
In the latest installment of Story Ark, Joubert’s two year trek around the country to assess the impact of environmental change, she looks at the state of our grasslands and what needs to be done to save this essential resource.

The election influence-for-hire industry
BY TABELO TIMSE, KYLE FINLAY AND ALDU CORNELLISSEN
An in-depth look at the “influence-for-hire” industry’s influence on elections. Part 1: Influence-for-hire trend is distorting public discourse. Part 2: The powerful hidden hand of anonymous paid influencers. Part 3: How naïve influencers boost political campaigns

Other grantees’ work:

Leonie Joubert has published a beautifully crafted three-part series on how mismanaged mining is leading to the desertification of parts of the Karoo: Karoo Dust Bowl (Part I) — here come the dunes, a death knell for plant species and farmers’ livelihoods (Daily Maverick, 28 January 2025); (Part II) — Farmers fight back against reckless mining practices (DM, 29 January); (Part III) — Drought-battered Richtersveld farmers fear destructive creep of mining (DM, January 30). Joubert is on a year-long round-the-country trip, so follow her as she picks up other stories about threats to our environment.

Estacio Valoi braved the insurgency-threatened north to investigate government complicity with the Chinese in illegal logging.

Bheki Mashile of the Umjindi-Elukwatini Guardian in Barberton has published his expose of the local construction mafia, showing how brazen their operation is.

Combined Artists produced for MNet’s Carte Blanche an eye-opening piece on kidnapping, including an interview with a perpetrator. Watch it on YouTube.

Greg Arde has published with Amabhungane his major investigations into the construction mafia: Taxi bosses, the construction industry and political murder and Business Against Crime calls for more government transparency in fight against criminal kingpins.

Paul McNally of Develop Audio’s podcast series on assassinations is being rolled out by the Mail & Guardian and is available on Spotify: The Last Afternoon in the Garden.

The Inhlase Centre for Investigative Reporting in Eswatini have published their series on the King’s control of this country’s land and its impact on the people:

So much land for the King yet none for commoners – Inhlase

EmaSwati’s own country but not own land – Inhlase

Royal Silulu’s land hoarding costing farmers – Inhlase

TimesLive’s Aron Hyman, Tankiso Makhetha and Graeme Hosken did a four part series On the h u nt: Exposing South Africa’s kidnapping kingpins

Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp and Mathew Skade did a two-part series in Daily Maverick, The confusion about kidnapping in SA: The numbers just don’t add up.

Dianne Hawker: How to Steal a Gold Mine: The Aurora Story (NB Publishers, 2023).

Nechama Brodie’s Farm Killings in South Africa (Kwela, 2023).

Bheki Mashile’s land scandal exposé – Umjindi’s modern-day force removals – was published in his online newspaper, Imjindi Guardian, in April 2023.

Jacques Pauw: Our Poisoned Land: Living in the Shadows of Zuma’s Keepers (NB Publishers)

Lucas Ledwaba has published his “A Desire to Return to the Ruins: A look at the contentious issues of land reform and restitution in post-apartheid South Africa”.

Karyn Maughan and Kirsten Pearson (Tafelberg): Nuclear – Inside South Africa’s Secret Deal

Alastair Otter (MediaHack/Outlier): Riot – Eight Days of Protests and Looting that Shook South Africa

Lulu Brenda Harris and Khanyile Mlotshwa (CITE): The day some immigrants joined in the looting in South Africa

In partnership with the Global Alliance Against Transnational Crime (GITOC)
Collins Mtika (Malawi): Malawi’s soaring illegal pangolin trade
Gideon Sarpong (Ghana): Chinese-owned vessels ‘threaten Ghana’s tourism industry’
Djatougbe Aziaka (Togo): Wildlife Trading – The case of Togo
Muhizi Olivier and Kelly Rwamapera (Rwanda): How Ivory is trafficked from Tanzania into Rwanda
Faith Sudi and Donald Magomere (Kenya): Booming Trade in undersized fish threatens Lake Turkana’s future
Ini Ekott (Nigeria): Inside Nigeria’s shocking wildlife crimes and how criminals escape justice

In partnership with the Gates Foundation and the African Investigative Journalism Conference (AIJC)
Thomas Bwire and Ruth Keah (Kenya): Covid Certificate Cartels
MAWA Foundation (Nigeria): How health workers collect bribes, issue Covid-19 certificates without vaccination
Risdel Kasasira (Uganda): Poor mothers bleed to death as unscrupulous health workers sell blood

Madala Thepa (Sunday Independent): Battles at the De Paarl farm experiment in restitution

Sabelo Skiti and Athandiwe Saba (Mail & Guardian): The collapse of the Masters of the Supreme Courts offices.

Daniel Knoetze (Viewfinder): Criminal Cops – an investigation into what lies behind police criminality and lack of accountability

Rehana Rossouw (Jacana): Predator Politics – Mabuza, Freddie Daniels and the Great Land Scandal

Tanya Pampalone, Eliot Moleba, etc (Sound Africa): One Night in Snake Park – An investigation into the killing 2015 killing of 14-year old Siphiwe Mahori in Snake Park, Soweto, which ignited a wave of xenophobic attacks as across South Africa.

Mignonne Breier (Tafelberg): Bloody Sunday – the nun, the defiance campaign and South Africa’s secret massacre

Pieter-Louis Myburgh (Penguin): Gangster State – Unravelling Ace Magashula’s Web of Capture