[Image :Young Urban Women. Taken by ActionAidSA Media Team]Lurnay Tshabalala-Mavuso | Senior Reporter | 21 February 2026
On Friday, February 20. Young Urban Women from the East Rand of Johannesburg, Johannesburg Inner City, Mamelodi and Mokopane,Limpopo, were gathered together at the ActionAid South Africa Headquarters in Rosebank, Johannesburg for a Round Table. The Round Table was centered around conversations on Climate Justice and Care Economy. Views were exchanged and solutions were proposed on the table.
Joined by audience on the virtual platform, Nontsikelelo Khunju,Young Urban Women Movement Coordinator led the round table discussion, sparking insightful thoughts and steering empowering conversations among the participants who were present at the table. Among many other things that were discussed, the key goals that were shared as part of the solutions to the issues of Climate Justice and Care Economy were to strive to, document lived experiences, deepen feminist analysis, identify systematic gaps and to define collective priorities.
On Climate Justice : The issue that was raised was littering and waste in rural and urban areas. Young Urban Women Mokopane shared their experiences on how things are in their rural settlements where women aren't given a chance to speak at council meetings and also form part of the decision making process and how funds from the municipality are given to chief families as many of the rural settlements are headed and led by Chiefs.
The issue of contaminated water in river streams where the water is linked to dams that provide water for people was also discussed. This matter is a sensitive one because already we are faced with the Food and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak which has affected some parts of KwaZulu-Natal and is now moving to other parts of South Africa.
As we are approaching the month of March. The Young Urban Women Movement is putting heads together to launch a documented report that seeks to discuss and raise concerns on the issues of Climate Justice and Care Economy. The Young Urban Women are also heading to a Global Convening Conference that will help deal with the challenges that women in urban and rural areas are facing in not just South Africa but in a Africa at large.
Women are faced with a lot of challenges and on top of everything that they are faced with they still cannot form part of economic role players because of being undervalued and because of being in the care system which in most instances makes them to be unpaid for the work that they do and they do it because of the traditional gender roles that are imposed on them.
Young Urban Women Movement aims at dismantling the systems of patriarchy and the oppression of women and other gender minorities in a way that seeks to inform, educate and also empower young women in African communities.
Tsakane Informer