Equality Collective

16/10/2026

WEBINAR
🗓 29 October
⏰15:30 SAST
💻 Online: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gOhwlJecSeutd6p4L0Bg3w #/registration

Childcare sits at the intersection of early childhood development, gender equality, decent work, social protection, and care. As a result, strengthening childcare systems requires partnership building and collaboration across sectors and movements. Advocacy strategies require these diverse voices to come together to ensure activities are coordinated, and policy design is reflective of the needs of children, parents, and caregivers alike.

As we mark the International Day of Care and Support and one year since the Childcare Advocacy Research and Engagement (CARE) initiative began, this webinar will explore lessons from building cross-movement coalitions to strengthen childcare systems. Drawing on experiences from the past year, the conversation will consider what makes collective advocacy work, how different movements can find common ground, and how coalitions can build and sustain momentum.

Speakers will share practical lessons from their context and explore how stronger connections across the gender equality, labour, and early years movements can help build a more effective movement for childcare and improve policy design and implementation.

Join us for a conversation on the lessons, opportunities, and challenges of building collective action for childcare and what it takes to move from working alongside one another to working together for change.

The Equality Collective is an activist and community lawyering organisation based in the Mbhashe Municipality in the rural Eastern Cape.

01/10/2026

✈️ This week, Tess Peacock and Tshepo Mantje are in Mombasa, Kenya for Co-Impact's Africa Community of Practice in-person convening—representing The Equality Collective, alongside our partners ILIFA Labantwana NPO , with whom we share this Co-Impact work. The duo is also there to share learning from Real Reform for ECD , which EC supports as secretariat.

The four-day convening brings together Co-Impact grantees, feminist funds, leaders and advocates from across the continent, built around three core goals:

🌍 Driving systems change: sharing practical experience and strategies for scaling long-term social change across Africa
👩🏾‍⚖️ Advancing women in leadership: tackling systemic barriers for women in law, economics and public policy
🤝 Building "the village": shifting philanthropic dynamics by connecting local changemakers and exploring collective approaches to funding and advocacy

Earlier in the week, Tess and Tshepo completed the two-day Leaders' Retreat (28–29 September) with fellow African systems-change leaders—focused on leadership under pressure, organisational culture change, engaging government wisely, and strengthening fundraising practice.

Today, Tshepo is giving a Real Reform for ECD spotlight in "Power in Partnership: Building Coalitions That Hold." He'll share how RR4ECD has organised more than 1,000 ECD practitioners across six provinces—combining grassroots mobilisation, legal advocacy, policy engagement and coalition-building. The session is explicitly asking for honest learning: the tensions and challenges of building a coalition, not only the successes.

23/09/2026

In their new blog post, Tatiana Kazim and Nurina Ally unpack a landmark court order, where South Africa has become one of the first countries in the world to recognise a constitutional right to early childhood development. In Friends of South Africa ECD Forum & Others v MEC for KZNDoE, a coalition of ECD organisations and three KwaZulu-Natal crèches challenged the provincial Department of Education over years of late and missing subsidy payments. The High Court ordered the money paid, placed the Department's funding obligations under supervision, and—importantly—declared that every child in South Africa has a constitutional right to ECD, grounded in the rights to life and dignity.

Read the full blog post here: https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/south-african-court-recognises-a-constitutional-right-to-early-childhood-development/

17/09/2026

Over the past eight weeks, nine women's bodies have been found in and around Kempton Park and the wider Ekurhuleni. These are not isolated tragedies. They are part of a pattern this country knows too well. One where women are not safe walking, running, or simply living their lives.

At The Equality Collective, we stand in solidarity with the families of these women, with the communities living in fear, and with every woman who has had to change how she moves through the world because of this crisis.

We call for a swift, thorough investigation and real accountability from our justice system. Justice for these women, and for every woman lost to gender-based violence in South Africa, cannot wait.

15/09/2026

32 reservoirs. 40 villages. One team making sure no water leak goes unnoticed.

In August, the Equality Collective's Amanzi Kumntu Wonke (AKW) project conducted 8 days of reservoir visits across the 40 villages served by the Mncwasa Water Scheme which supplies water to communities in the Amathole District Municipality, Eastern Cape. This exercise is part of a rapid water-loss diagnostic, directly inspecting the condition of infrastructure across the scheme.

The purpose was to get an accurate, on-the-ground picture of the scheme's health: to catch leaks and damage early and strengthen the evidence base we use to hold service delivery accountable.

Together with our Water Ambassadors, we visited all 32 reservoirs to monitor water infrastructure, identify and verify leaks and other incidents, check damaged infrastructure, and document challenges.

The walkabout also gave us the opportunity to verify incidents already reported through our community monitoring system, and to encourage community members to continue reporting problems affecting their water supply.

This work is about more than visiting reservoirs. It is about communities being informed, participating in monitoring, and having a voice in the water services they receive. It also creates opportunities for constructive engagement between communities, civil society and the municipality to strengthen accountability and improve water service delivery.

Water is a right. Sijongene namanzi! 💧

This work is made possible though the support of Water Witness (WWI).

08/09/2026

⚖️ Two hours there. Two hours back. Not even counting the time one spends waiting for public transport. All because of one missing document.

That's what accessing your UIF, pension or provident fund can look like for residents of Nqileni Village in Elliotdale, before the application has even started.

At The Equality Collective, we believe access to justice is not just about knowing your rights. It is about whether they are actually reachable, without losing a day's wages and a day's travel just to be told to come back.

So every Tuesday, our paralegal team brings the process to our offices instead:
📝 New UIF, pension and provident fund applications
📄 Preparing and printing documents
📞 Following up on applications and outstanding matters
🤝 Contacting employers for missing paperwork
📝 Navigating processes that can be hard to access alone

Because justice shouldn't come with a two-hour costly toll.

Umthetho Tuesdays. Law closer to the people.

26/08/2026

Equality Collective is at World Water Week for the first time this year.

Water is essential to life. Yet across South Africa, whether water will reliably come out of the tap is becoming a major challenge.

As we hear from people working across the world on the water crisis, one issue keeps coming up: finance. How do we fund the scale of investment needed to secure equitable, reliable water services?

In South Africa, this question is particularly urgent. Government is exploring a model with a far stronger role for private finance and private-sector participation in water delivery, while retaining state control of water resources. Given the scale of the infrastructure and governance crisis, it is understandable that people are looking for solutions.

But this is not a technical question alone.

Water is a public good and a constitutional right. Experience repeatedly shows that equitable access depends on strong democratic institutions, public accountability, transparency and meaningful community participation. Private-sector involvement cannot substitute for these things; at best, it can only work within robust public safeguards.

So the questions I am sitting with at the end of day two are these: what checks and balances would be needed to ensure that private involvement serves the public good? What would this mean for rural communities, where commercial returns are least viable, but the need is often greatest? And are we asking the right questions about the path ahead?

There is no doubt that action is needed, alongside real political leadership. But we must go forward with our eyes wide open, centred on the people for whom reliable water remains most out of reach.

26/08/2026

Starting today at 14:00, you can join online from anywhere.

Tess Peacock is speaking at World Water Week 2026: "Strengthening Voices for Water in a Changing World."

📅 Today, 26 August, 14:00 (CEST & SAST)
💻 Online or in person (Room A4, Level 6, Stockholm Waterfront)
🎟️ Session ID: 12458

You don't need to be in Stockholm. The session streams live, so wherever you are in the world, you can be in the room.

Tess will be sharing The Equality Collective's report, Invited and Invented: Participation Strategies for Water Access in South Africa—a look at three community-led strategies for improving water access, finding that approaches blending community-led action with formal, government-facing engagement deliver better results over time.

Register at worldwaterweek.org/tickets

21/08/2026

Will you be at World Water Week 2026?

Catch our Founder & Director, Tess Nolizwe Peacock, live at "Strengthening Voices for Water in a Changing World"

📅 26 August, 14:00 CEST
📍 Room A4, Level 6, Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre
🎟️ Session ID: 12458

Tess will be sharing The Equality Collective's report, “Invited and Invented: Participation Strategies for Water Access in South Africa”—a look at three community-led strategies for improving water access, finding that approaches blending community-led action with formal, government-facing engagement deliver better results over time.

Sharing the stage are:
🎤 Nick Hepworth—CEO, Water Witness International
🎤 Reuben Akili—Director, Combined Harare Residents Association
🎤 Barina Montoya Montenegro—Independent Journalist
🎤 Lexi Parfitt—Director of Public & Political Engagement, Water Witness International

Together, they will be leading a conversation on strengthening community voices in water governance across a changing world.

For us, World Water Week is not about abstract policy conversations—it is a direct line to the water access work we do on the ground, and we are making sure that the realities of rural water access are not left out of the room.

Whether you're attending in person or virtually, register at worldwaterweek.org/tickets to see Tess in action.

19/08/2026

Our Founder & Director is heading to World Water Week 2026 in Stockholm.

Tess Nolizwe Peacock, Founder & Director at The Equality Collective, is joining world leaders on water at World Water Week 2026, to be held on 23–27 August at the Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre in Stockholm, Sweden and online as a hybrid event.

For us, this conference is not about abstract policy conversations—it's a direct line to the water access work we do on the ground. We're going to make sure the realities of rural water access are not left out of the room.

That's why this year's theme, "Water for People and Progress," feels especially fitting—and why we're proud to be sharing our report, Invited and Invented Participation Strategies in South Africa.

Here’s what we found: we looked at three community-led strategies to improve water service delivery: Harrismith Water Heroes, Asivikelane, and The Equality Collective’s Amanzi Kumntu Wonke. While each responded to different local challenges, the strongest long-term results came where community-led action was combined with constructive engagement with formal municipal processes.

Community-generated data stood out as a powerful tool that helped residents hold municipalities accountable while giving officials reliable information to identify problems, prioritise repairs and improve water services. The research also shows that there is no one size fits all solution. Successful community-led strategies depend on a diagnosis of the local conditions and the nature of the municipal challenges.

Catch Tess live: "Strengthening Voices for Water in a Changing World" on 26 August, 14:00 CEST, Room A4, Level 6. Session ID: 12458. Register at worldwaterweek.org/tickets

Scan the QR code below for the full report and keep an eye on our pages for updates from Stockholm.