The Khanya Community Health Project is designed to work in collaboration with local organisations, to raise awareness and empower the community, provide education
and training, and to build a movement where local organisations share, network and organise together for quality public healthcare.

Currently, the Project’s main focus has been running a pilot project on health, based at PUSH in Eldorado Park and Kliptown (in Gauteng). Khanya has worked with children and youth from PUSH for many years (PUSH is an orphan and vulnerable children’s centre). The pilot focuses on the health needs of the community, including children, youth and adults, and aims to understand the causes of their illnesses.

The project includes a recently conducted household health survey. The findings of the survey and the lessons and insights gained will be shared with the community organisations to strengthen their advocacy work. A popular booklet on the findings will
also be published and shared with the community.

Khanya College’s vision for quality public healthcare began in 1995 and our support for the SA Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) campaign to oppose the Gauteng government’s privatisation of the Emergency Medical Services (ambulance). At the time the SA government and civil society were discussing the importance of primary healthcare, to keep people well and prevent illness.

While this struggle was lost, our health work was renewed with the community healthcare workers (CHWs) since 2009. This continued the struggle for quality public healthcare and fair working conditions. At the time CHWs worked as volunteers earning a stipend (irregularly). As part of their struggle for permanence, with the support and assistance from Khanya College, the CHWs formed the Gauteng Community Health Care Forum in 2015, an organisation which emphasised the need to struggle for quality public healthcare alongside the struggle for the permanent recognition of CHWs nationally.

After a long, peaceful struggle, Gauteng CHWs (mostly women), became permanent employees of the Gauteng Health Department in 2020 and their salaries tripled to R8500 plus benefits. Since then, for various reasons, the Gauteng CHWs sadly lost their focus and commitment to continue to struggle for quality public healthcare, and to support the struggle for permanent employment of CHWs in the rest of the 8 provinces in South Africa.

However, Khanya continues to be part of a national network to fight to make all 60 000 CHWs in the country permanent, as part of a quality public healthcare.

Since 2022, the College has been broadening and rebuilding its healthcare work with communities, local organisations and activists as part of it’s commitment to building a progressive health movement.