The City Press made an astonishing error of judgement in deciding to publish Phumlani Mfeka's more or less fascist rant on Sunday. Presenting this extraordinarily crass form of ethnic chauvinism under-girded by a clear threat of violence as if it were a legitimate contribution to the national debate only compounded the newspaper's disgraceful editorial decision. But while Mfeka's anti-Indian diatribe is certainly the most extreme instance of an increasingly dubious set of responses to Guptagate it is not uniquely problematic.

Most of the 82 primary schoolchildren in the Western Cape and Gauteng have said that media freedom is one thing that should not be touched.

In a seminar hosted by the Faculty of Humanities yesterday (Tuesday 7 May) the Chair of the Media and Information Society at Rhodes University, Professor Jane Duncan, highlighted indicators that the regulation of protests under the President Jacob Zuma’s administration is becoming increasingly militarised.

Africa’s climb to near the top of the global economic growth tables has attracted much attention. Some commentators have suggested that Africa could become the next China or India as the driver of global growth. Global investors are looking for new ways to participate in Africa’s growth success.

South African newspapers endlessly lament the travails of the poor. But the burdens under which productive members of society labour merits few column inches. Take the present clamour for self-defeating tax increases.

The death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez unleashed a tidal wave of economic and political commentary.

Are we inching nearer to knowing where political parties get their money? If so, will we be expected to pay for the privilege? A resolution passed at the ANC's Mangaung conference suggests that laws that control money's impact on politics may be on the way.

Commentators who believed substantial structural changes in government spending and revenue would be needed for the 2013-14 budget to provide evidence of the government’s commitment to achieving the goals of the National Development Plan (NDP) will be disappointed.

LAUNCHING a political party is fairly easy — getting people to vote for it is the difficult bit. Particularly since a great deal more is needed than good ideas and the respect of the people who drive the national debate.

Not so long ago the middle classes in the world created by British colonialism used to cloak their claim to privilege in the stifling rituals of bourgeois respectability.

South Africa, 18 February 13: This year's State of the Nation address occurred amid a national outcry and introspection on gender-based violence (GBV).

Seventy-seven-year-old Cape Town doctor Cyril Karabus remains under house arrest in the United Arab Emirates, almost six months after being detained at the Dubai airport on charges of manslaughter relating to his treatment of a patient over a decade ago.

We need to resist idea this travesty comes from 'outside' AST December Jyoti Singh Pandey, a student on the cusp of her adult life, stepped on to a bus in Delhi. She was with a friend.

At the end of January, an all too familiar pattern of events played itself out in the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court in Durban. Four member of the shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, were arrested after a protest against problematic practices in a housing development in KwaNdengezi.

SABC1 opted to go ahead with Saturday’s airing of the first episode of reality show Tropika Island of Treasure, despite the tragic death of star Reeva Steenkamp just three days previously.

Research in South Africa over the past eight years has clustered universities into groups based on performance indicators.

When I first joined the Sunday Times in the early 1980s, I soon became known as the "young Old Dalian".

‘At some point, global interest rates will return to more normal levels, reducing the attraction of our higher rates’

Reeva Steenkamp, a lively, well-liked young woman with a promising career, was allegedly killed by Oscar Pistorius on Valentine’s Day. It is a horrible, surreal story. The discovery that a national hero and global poster-boy for inspiration may also be a murderer is devastating.

Colleges are vital in the attempt to unscramble the confusion at the doors of higher learning that leave thousands in limbo.

In “Higher Education must be transformed” (February 1), the director general of the department of higher education and training, Gwebs Qonde, makes a range of statements that are worth responding to.

The beginning of this year Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced last year's matric results. In her address to the nation she mentioned that "we're encouraged by notable improvements in the education of children and society.

A car guard in Cape Town who used to sing to himself as he helped motorists into parking bays has suddenly found himself a viral hit.

In December last year Jyoti Singh Pandey, a student on the cusp of her adult life, stepped into a bus in Delhi. She was with a friend.

Was born in Springs at the tail end of the mining boom. The problem with my story is that it is a worm’s eye view of that boom, and parts of it are based on titbits I got from my grandmother, who experienced it only as a maid.

It’s been a dark weekend in Bredasdorp, where the battered body of Anene Booysen was laid to rest on Saturday. As locals struggle to come to terms with the gruesome crime which thrust their quiet town into the global spotlight, difficult questions are being asked.

Kirti Menon, Registrar, Wits University, Johannesburg, and a great-granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, on Wednesday highlighted the problems of access to higher education in South Africa for a majority of population even 19 years after the end of apartheid.

Alex Mashilo says there'll be no turning back in advancing transformation in higher education.

The final day of Mining Indaba 2013 was devoted to the discussion of two of mining’s current buzzwords: “sustainable development”.

We can cherish our cultural identities, but we can't let politicians exploit small-scale cultural values, writes Chris Mann.

It was wise of Gwebs Qonde, director general of higher education and training, not to try in his “Right to Reply” last week to defend the appointment of University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) vice-chancellor MW Makgoba as head of the new higher education transformation oversight committee (“Higher education must be transformed”, Mail & Guardian, February 1).

On the 8 December 2012, the British Council hosted the Higher Education Roundtable meeting at the Townhouse Hotel, Cape Town. Professor Nazir Carrim, a Senior Lecturer in the Witwatersrand University School of Education, was commissioned by the British Council to complete a report on Higher Education in South Africa.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will eventually become the most sensitive radio telescope ever built, able to survey the heavens more than 10 000 times faster than current technologies.

AS THE academic year begins at universities around the country, it is opportune to question what type of role academics can play in public life. The first and most obvious task is that academics have a huge responsibility to the "public" body of students (and their supporting families).

Recent controversial suggestions by two Rhodes University researchers that ranching with springbok is economically and ecologically more sustainable than wool farming in the Karoo not only had farmers quickly listing several reasons why

With reports that Mamphela Ramphele is to start a political party, she can expect a high level of interest in her public pronouncements from now on.

If we want to defend freedom, we should be able to tell the difference between the real threats which face it and those which some of us invent.

An iPad app with 600 textbooks in six South African languages has been launched and the classes featuring it have proved to be a hit with pupils.

If we want to defend freedom, we should be able to tell the difference between the real threats which face it and those which some of us invent.

IN AND around Colesberg, a small historical town on the Ni midway between Cape Town and Johannesburg, I met a group of sheep shearers living in abject poverty, surviving in tiny tin shacks on the verges of public roads. Only in the last 15 years, have they become a settled, sedentary people.

It’s Mining Indaba time: the week where the mining industry – the well-heeled parts, at least – gather in Cape Town’s swanky convention centre to see and be seen.

In November 2012, the South African public sphere was awash with tales of the upgrade to President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla residence.

Watchdog organisation Freedom House last month released its 2012 report Freedom on the Net and its report is more alarming for its dearth of data on African countries than for its actual rankings.

Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant’s announcement on Monday that she had accepted the Employment Conditions Commission’s recommendation of a new sectoral minimum wage for farmworkers has been greeted with mixed responses.

The DA says that The New Age is “openly favourable to the government”. The newspaper denies this claim, though it is certainly a widely-held perception of the Gupta-owned national broadsheet.

FEW issues are more divisive when debating economic policy options in SA than the relationship between wage levels and job creation. There is no disagreement about the imperative for job creation. But what kind of jobs can be created when businesses, to survive, must compete with low labour costs in countries such as China and India?

Matthew Krouse Tweet Fed up with people not knowing how incredible the City of Gold is, a keen resident decided to show them.

Hoerskool Fochville and the education department clash over pupils who can't be taught in Afrikaans.

There was no birthday cake and no champagne as Corruption Watch briefed media on its first birthday on Thursday.

It’s been a helluva week in South African news. More evidence on Nkandla, Helen Zille going nuclear on The New Age, the SABC’s failure to secure live broadcast rights to the Proteas’ Test series against Pakistan – it’s enough to bring you down.

Nomusa Mthethwa’s incredulous questioning of her experiences at a South African university (“How could I have failed varsity?”, Mail & Guardian, January 11-17) calls into question the commonplace assumption that the quality of schooling is all-important in predicting success in higher education.

The thought that maximising profit is the ultimate aim of business, popularised most famously by Milton Friedman in the 1970s, is not merely perverse, but it is also founded on triumphalist simple-mindedness informed by a deeply naive psychology of greed.

Where will the spat between Helen Zille and The New Age go next?

THE World Economic Forum (WEF) says the global economy will need to create about 600-million new jobs in the next decade to preserve social cohesion and ensure sustainable growth. This poses a big challenge and was a key topic at the WEF’s meeting in Davos last week.

ARE ALL South African universities in systemic crisis? One would imagine so, given the recent legislative and policy actions of Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande.

Here we are, almost twenty years after apartheid and from the prisons, to the shack settlements and the farms, the riotous underbelly of our society is on television most nights.

South Africa appears to be facing a tsunami of corruption. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are crusaders taking out the bad guys at the knees.

This week the world’s eyes have been fixed on ‘Dr Shock’ – Aubrey Levin, the Apartheid psychiatrist on trial for sexual assault in Canada. But back home, ‘Dr Death’ – Wouter Basson, the former head of the Apartheid chemical and biological warfare programme – seems to have found a new calling.

Whatever happened to admitting you were wrong, asks Verashni Pillay, as she tracks the double standards of Moeletsi Mbeki, FNB, the ANC and more.

I feel honoured to be speaking on the 18th anniversary of Joe Slovo’s death and at this first public event of the Chris Hani Institute since Eddie Webster was appointed as director. As I understand it, Eddie’s vision is to build the institute as “an independent think-tank of the left”, and I have been thinking about what “left” means.

Earlier this month, Alex Crawford of Sky News ran a report claiming that Eastern Cape women were deliberately drinking alcohol during pregnancy in order to subsequently claim a disability grant for the child.

The SA Education and Environment Project's bridging year programme has given a few matrics the chance to succeed in their first year of varsity.

Searching for Sugarman, Malik Bendjelloul's film about the reception of Sixto Rodriguez in South Africa, continues to accumulate awards, critical acclaim and commercial success as its momentum gathers in the lead up to the Academy Awards at the end of next month.

Attempting to prosecute for behaviour that bothers us is not going to work ALMOST 20 years into democracy, many of us still believe we can use the law to control behaviour we don't like.

IN THE past few years, the media, especially the press, have attracted high praise for taking investigative journalism so seriously. Recognising the fact that this form of journalism provides them with the distinctive content needed to hold onto audiences, given the explosion of media options, the major press groups have re-established investigative journalism capacity.

Cosatu says the Western Cape farmworkers’ strike is over. The consistently more militant union Bawusa appears to agree – albeit seemingly more reluctantly. Cosatu trumpets that the protest action has changed SA farming forever. But has anyone really won?

If negotiation was about people agreeing with each other, there would be no need for it. And so, the more negotiators say things most of their listeners would prefer not to hear, the more the bargaining is real.

THE national and provincial education departments are in a double bind. If the matric pass rate declines, it is seen as evidence of the crisis in the sector. On the other hand, if the pass rate improves, there is universal scepticism.

FNB has been celebrated for their latest ad campaign but, as Verashni Pillay points out, they have their own sins to deal with.

The recent announcement that Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) is to close and mothball shafts seems to have caught some role-players unawares. But it has been obvious for some time that the platinum industry is in serious financial trouble.

The draft norms and standards for school infrastructure that Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga recently gazetted could well be illegal.

Storm clouds loom over basic education's 'inadequate' standards and unmet deadlines, writes Victoria John.

Journalists are increasing falling prey to hacking attacks and there is little to protect them. As media watchdog organisations flag a growing trend towards state internet censorship and surveillance, journalists around the globe are urged to heighten their information security.

Our expensive testing and research still do not tell us enough about how children learn the subject.

On Thursday reports indicated that most Western Cape farmworkers were back at work for the time being, with the exception of De Doorns, where thousands of people took to the streets in the afternoon.

White people themselves have to debunk the myth of their supremacy. It can't come from blacks, writes Malaika wa Azania.

Uncomfortably hot temperatures in the Hex River Valley on Wednesday seemed to match a generally fractious mood. Cosatu’s claim on Tuesday that they had reached a deal in Clanwilliam that could be rolled out to other farming communities now seems shaky without the buy-in of Agri SA – or indeed all Clanwilliam farmers.

The Durban strikes of 1973 empowered workers and helped destroy apartheid.

The formal invitation extended to South Africa by China late in 2010 to join the BRIC formation of emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is a confirmation of the growing economic ties between China and South Africa.

There was a glimmer of progress in the Western Cape farmworkers’ labour dispute on Tuesday, in the form of a reported breakthrough in negotiations between farmers and unions in Clanwilliam which may set the model for the rest of the province.

Kenneth Good on how the temerity of the organised poor was met with a ferocious counter-attack from the state.

Did you miss the nitty-gritties of the ANC's Mangaung conference while you were on holiday? Verashni Pillay tells you what's worth celebrating.

Monday saw the Western Cape High Court dismiss an attempt by Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa to stop a proposed commission of inquiry into Khayelitsha policing.

Eighteen years after the end of white rule, South Africa is more polarised than ever before. Emboldened in the aftermath of Mangaung, the ANC’s new theme is unity, but this isn’t about addressing social cohesion - it is all about healing schisms that would undermine the ruling party’s power base.

It is just possible that this year will be a year of talking, not yelling.

In the past few years, the media, especially the press, have attracted high praise for taking investigative journalism so seriously. Recognising the fact that this form of journalism provides them with the distinctive content needed to hold onto audiences given the explosion of media options, the major press groups have re-established investigative journalism capacity.

Either fees must go up, or the National Student Financial Aid Scheme allocations will have to.

SA needs to start branding its science and research. While SA’s development budget is very small, with little money to spare, it is becoming increasingly important to advertise what higher education and research councils are doing.

Long-awaited draft school infrastructure standards are a shocking disappointment, educationists say.

If state, labour and business ever meet, they must learn to compromise.

In April last year I attended a graduation ceremony at Rhodes University to ululate for a very close friend of mine.

In 2001, Dumisa Ntsebeza and Terry Bell complained in Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth, that "like so much of South Africa's recent brutal history we shall probably never know exactly how many people were banished and what happened to all of them".

Big data is without a doubt the latest industry buzzword, and like all buzzwords it is the subject of much debate, misunderstanding and hype.

Had it not been for the passion of a self-trained South African naturalist, the discovery of a living specimen of the rare coelacanth around this time in 1938 may never have happened.

Veteran journalist Stephen Mulholland was kind enough to publish a helpful piece in the Sunday Times last weekend interpreting the mysterious world of the homosexual for outsiders, while noting that same-sex parenting was “neither the norm nor ultimately desirable”.

The brutal gang rape and murder of a New Delhi 23-year-old has sparked global condemnation and top-level political talks in India about urgently amending rape laws.

The ANC may need not a change of attitude, but a change of voting system.

The more comfortable the ANC’s leaders feel about the outcome of its Mangaung conference, the more difficult is life likely to become for them and for the governing party.

I have a confession to make: I love good administrators. It's true – I love modest, orderly and efficient fellow human beings who sit at desks in front of computers and telephones doing their job properly from eight to five until they retire.

PhD thesis shows state’s university profiles are not detailed enough to help poorer students.

Education research doesn’t inform policy enough, but a new umbrella body has plans to change that

‘I really enjoy giving a little of my time to try and encourage a youngster to succeed,” says electrical engineer Yvonne Motsoko.

In the autumn of 2004 a young woman came to my office, clearly very distraught. I recognised Gloria* from a session with struggling students earlier that week. The session focused on preparing students for their mid-year exams.

If the state really believes education is an ‘apex priority’ it needs to act, not just talk about it.

A whopping chunk of the government’s expenditure for 2013/14 will go on social services. But ahead of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech on Wednesday, civil society groups indicated that they would be watching closely to see if political outrage expressed about violence against women in particular would find reflection in this year’s financial provisions.

There are certain pros and cons on the issue of understanding where the money comes from ARE we inching nearer to knowing where political parties get their money?

COMMENTATORS who believed substantial structural changes in government spending and revenue would be needed for the 2013-14 budget to provide evidence of the government's commitment to achieving the goals of the National Development Plan (NDP) will be disappointed.

For the optimistic, there are signs that South Africa may be at a watershed moment when it comes to responses against violence against women.

South Africa is fast losing its status as one of the world leaders in sustainable fisheries management, with considerable consequences for an industry that, according to Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries figures, has an annual turnover of about R80bn and contributes 0.5% to the gross domestic product.

Competition is inevitable and forbidding it does not make it go away FOR the next five years, ANC members will, no doubt, continue to compete with each other for posts. Whether the ANC will admit that this is happening is unclear.

As the media scrutinise every detail of the Oscar Pistorius trial, his publicity team has tried to salvage a portion of the online conversation.

While the media (including the Daily Maverick) fed the public appetite for Pistorius-related news over the past two weeks, life continued as normal for many.

Media outlets, part of the flow of capital between africa and china, helping to present a new picture

Not so long ago the middle classes in the world created by British colonialism used to cloak their claim to privilege in the stifling rituals of bourgeois respectability.

New Wits University vice-chancellor Adam Habib emphasises the need for balance in running SA’S universities, writes Sarah Wild.

Tensions are simmering at the North-West University since the dismissal two weeks ago of its executive adviser on transformation, Ingrid Tufvesson — coincidentally just after Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande announced an already controversial permanent committee to oversee transformation at all 23 universities.

It was a sight that demanded interpretation. Athi-Patra Ruga, wearing stilettos and stockings, his upper body and head hidden under a cloud of balloons, was stuck outside a revolving door.

If you had been in a deep sleep for the last week, and had awoken to immediately dip into the action of Courtroom C at the Pretoria Magistrates Court on Wednesday, it’s likely that you would have assumed that what was going on was a full-scale criminal trial.

THE STATE of the Nation address occurred amid a national outcry and introspection on gender-based violence (GBV). Public debate around the murder of Anene Booysen had not yet abated, when South Africa awoke to news of the killing of another woman, Reeva Steenkamp, allegedly shot dead by her sports celebrity boyfriend Oscar Pistorius.

Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was estimated to receive endorsements totaling more than $2 million a year.

Should a movement which has been in government for almost 20 years react to business in the same way as one fighting for freedom?

An important new exhibition at Cape Town’s Holocaust Centre reminds us of the sometimes under-acknowledged persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany.

How do you turn a broad, longterm vision into a government programme? A few bits at a time.

‘The ANC has decided the NDP is a useful vehicle for addressing the twin pressures on it and the government’

Academics are worth more than profits and can't be lumped into corporate 'staff development' groups.

It is rare for students to speak out about sexual harassment at South African universities and so the problem often goes unrecognised. But investigation into a sex scandal that has rocked the University of the Witwatersrand has brought the subject under the spotlight.

This week, both President Jacob Zuma and African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Gwede Mantashe appeared to rebuke Planning Minister Trevor Manuel in public for his comments that the government "should no longer say it’s apartheid’s fault" when addressing service delivery problems.

Hugh Lewin and Adrian Leftwich, the 1960s student leader who died recently of lung cancer, were close friends. That friendship was shattered by Leftwich turning state witness in the African Resistance Movement trials of 1964.

South Africa’s prolific evidence of the origins of life on earth has shed significant new light on how life on our planet has evolved over millions of years.

Schools need managing to survive, but with principles and passion they thrive.

Writing in 1922 on the burial of the dead, TS Elliot, in The Waste Land, eruditely remarked that “April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain”.

The number of graduates in the workforce has more than doubled since 1995, and black graduate numbers have grown impressively, according to a study by the Centre for Development Enterprise which was published on Thursday.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has won this year’s Templeton Prize, awarded annually to “a living person who has made exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.

Cutting through the fog of political posturing is tough, but it’s what we have to do to report fairly and accurately. I also do it because when I’m not reporting, I am an ordinary citizen trying his best to make informed decisions. In the youth wage subsidy dispute, I might have found a way to understand the DA better.

Nearly three years ago, STEPHEN GROOTES wrote this analysis, breaking down Judge Nigel Willis’ views on property rights in South Africa. At the time, saying the words nobody wanted to hear seemed like career suicide. Now, Willis has been appointed to the Supreme Court of Appeal – even as opinions of him still come in a mixed bag.

The ANC’s bid to capture the hearts and minds of the Western Cape is off with a bang. On the 20th anniversary of Chris Hani’s death, the ANC’s Western Cape leader Marius Fransman unveiled the Chris Hani 5,000 Volunteer Detachment.

‘We make it harder to solve problems because we ignore the politics that decides whether solutions will work’

A new research project kicked off this week which aims to establish, over the course of nine months of interviews and study, exactly why and how the Western Cape farm strikes happened.

In his speech at the memorial service for the soldiers who were killed in the Central African Republic Jacob Zuma presented us, and not for the first time, with the idea that we should receive another accumulation of bodies – of black bodies – as a tragedy, as a cruel consequence of the random movement of the wheel of fortune.

Verashni Pillay thinks telling a woman she’s good-looking should not be called sexist, and here’s why.

SOUTH Africans always find ways to divide themselves along racial lines. Take a simple case of white-on-white violence.

Many were shocked by the judgement in the case of Andries Tatane , who was killed by police rubber bullets in a service delivery protest in Ficksburg, and are even more shocked that the National Prosecuting Authority has decided against appealing the judgement.

The state prefers the intelligence of its people to remain at the level of children in a kindergarten," wrote Yan Lianke in an article headlined, On China's StateSponsored Amnesia, published in last Monday's International Herald Tribune. "It hopes people will follow instructions, just as children follow their teacher's instructions - they eat when they are told to eat, they sleep when they are told to sleep. When they are asked to perform, these innocent children enthusiastically recite the script prepared by adults.

South African paediatric oncologist Cyril Karabus has been held in the United Arab Emirates for 234 days. Acquitted of manslaughter a fortnight ago, he was subsequently informed that the prosecution will appeal.

Following an expose about a professorial sex pest published in Wits’ Vuvuzela last year, and Sunday Times’ front page lead at the beginning of March 2013 about alleged abuse at the drama school, the institution has reeled.

Because Pope Francis is new in the role, this is the time at which his every gesture and statement comes under scrutiny for what it might tell us about the direction in which the Catholic Church may travel under his leadership.

Activists cite dreadlock case as the latest example of government’s lack of clear direction to schools.

In a wholly unsatisfactory Thursday meeting of the parliamentary joint standing committee on defence, Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula was adamant that the only “assets” South African troops were in the CAR to protect were some military equipment.

Scholars should not plead ‘academic freedom’ to avoid critiquing their discipline’s apartheid legacies.

This week, the SA Institute of Race Relations distributed a press release detailing the results of Statistics SA figures on national income, which had been analysed by the institute.

Before he got married to Graça Machel on his 80th birthday on 18 July 1998, former president Nelson Mandela proposed to a fellow struggle stalwart and an old friend, Amina Cachalia — but she turned him down.

THE Workers and Socialist Party (Wasp), launched last week, is expected to register with the Independent Electoral Commission. The party is planning to contest next year’s elections, but building an organisation from scratch is always difficult.

MY journey with Christianity has been a robust one. I was born and raised in a fairly ordinary Christian home. By this I mean that we went to a little parish church within walking distance of our house.

Kenneth Good examines the TRC's hearings and findings on the Mandela United Football Club's reign of terror.

Respected political think-tank Idasa, the Institute for Democracy in Africa, has become the latest casualty of the funding problems hitting South African civil society.

THE DEATH of Chinua Achebe has closed one of the most interesting chapters in the literary world and African politics. His meteoric rise as an African intellectual was not a coincidence, but a deliberate result necessitated and dictated by the dynamics of the times.

“DO not despise your own place and hour,” wrote naturalist John Burroughs. “Every place is under the stars, every place is the centre of the world.”

Social entrepreneurship should be the new engagement for individuals and the public and private sectors, with implications for university training – especially in Africa – according to Goos Minderman, public governance professor at Vrije Universiteit in The Netherlands.

White people still accrue benefits from their whiteness, even if they claim victimhood.

Although most of the focus at the Brics summit naturally fell on whatever the leaders of China, Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa had been saying about that Brics bank of the future, there were other opportunities to learn interesting things that were not part of those group photo opps and the leaders’ anodyne joint statements.

The DA cannily chose a slow news day on which to announce its intention to compel President Jacob Zuma to withdraw South African troops from the Central African Republic.

It has been my privilege to spend time with many national and international leaders from many walks of life and a range of sectors of business and civil society. Each has shared something that has assisted us, through this column, to improve and grow as leaders.

TEN years ago on Human Rights Day, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) handed its report to then-president Thabo Mbeki. Much has been written about the shortcomings and achievements of the TRC, which tried to fill the gap between Nuremberg-style hearings and blanket amnesty.

If we want a sense of why we need negotiation across our divisions, the shape of our cities provides it. An ideal example of the issues about which our interest groups need to bargain, if we are to make a serious effort to tackle poverty, is city land and housing.

The faces of American Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito dominated newsstands around the world between 2007 and 2011, as they were convicted and then sensationally acquitted of the murder of UK student Meredith Kercher.

All societies are managed with a mixture of force and consent. But in South Africa like, say, India or Mexico, violence, or the threat of violence, is woven so tightly into the banalities and intimacies of day to day life that it is part of the deep structure of things.

THERE is little doubt that South Africa, as host country of the Brics summit in Durban today and tomorrow, will grasp the opportunity to project itself as an emerging economy and take pride in its association with this prestigious club.

Cape Town has been my home for nine years. A few weeks ago, when I took the dog to the vet, the stand-in doctor kept asking where I was from. Cape Town, I said.

THERE is little doubt that South Africa, as host country of the Brics summit in Durban today and tomorrow, will grasp the opportunity to project itself as an emerging economy and take pride in its association with this prestigious club.

Chinua Achebe’s death at 82 is an enormous loss to African literature. REBECCA DAVIS explores the significant debt we owe him for his work challenging offensive Western portrayals of Africa and helping generations of African writers find their voice.

Once again, another SABC board has been dissolved, the second in five years. What explains the broadcaster’s ongoing instability?

A revolution is urgently needed to transform higher education in a rapidly changing world.

Human Rights Day seems an apt moment to reflect on the life of Imam Abdullah Haron, murdered by Apartheid police in 1969.

It was a diverse group of luminaries in African scholarship who congregated in Unisa’s ZK Matthews Hall on 14 March for an open session of the Thabo Mbeki@70 Colloquium, engaging in crucial discourse on 50 years of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and key concepts for Africa’s future.

Almost 40% (36.8%) of the total municipal water supplied in South Africa is lost before it reaches municipal customers, from industry to households, according to research released by the Water Research Commission (WRC) on Wednesday.

As South Africa marks National Water Week, news stories and studies show that our country’s water affairs is in a deep crisis... and things won't be getting better any time soon.

The 2013 UN Commission on the Status of Women ended last Friday, with a declaration on the matter of gender-based violence finally being agreed upon after two weeks of tense wrangling between liberal democracies and conservative governments.

Standard Bank's new management structure works for the tightly knit management team — but investors are wondering whether it will work for anyone else.

In an utterly farcical day’s proceedings, the board of the SABC was dissolved and the process to appoint an interim board begun.

On Friday night Thembinkosi Qumbelo was gunned down in a local bar where he was watching a football game on television.

When the world you inhabit is beset by economic ills, the last thing a sensible society should do is ignore a valuable resource.

‘All these causes ensure there are networks that gain from corruption and will fight hard to protect their turf’ IF WE really want to get serious about corruption, we will have to accept that it runs much deeper — and that taming it will take much longer — than many of us believe.

The winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Teaching Awards, Bilkes Vawda, tells the M&G what it takes to be a good leader.

Helen Zilles latest DA Today newsletter, released on Sunday, is devoted to Zilles analysis of the Western Cape farm strikes. And the provincial premier hasnt packed any punches, seemingly seeking to shift responsibility for the labour unrest from Western Cape farmers to unionists and the ruling party.

THE death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez unleashed a tidal wave of economic and political commentary. To his supporters, Chavez performed an economic miracle and championed the cause of the developing world in global forums.

There's good and bad in electing members of parliament in constituencies. Another View CHANGING the way we elect parliament won't magically change our politics. But it could create openings which will make democracy work better.

A number of Gauteng pupils have demanded that Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga rewrite her recently published draft norms and standards.

Academics from the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – this week established a policy think-tank ahead of the fifth BRICS summit to be held in Durban.

Under the leadership of President Jacob Zuma the patriarchs are, once again, on the rise. Over the weekend MEC for education in the Eastern Cape, Mandla Makupula, reportedly said that no children under the age of 21 who are still dependent on their parents for food and shelter have any rights.

The delivery of news has moved on since town criers rang their bells and cried “hear ye, hear ye” to the mostly illiterate masses. But never before in the shifting media landscape has there been so much choice in the way in which the masses receive their news.

I’m driving in the car, listening to Five FM. Yeah, to 2 Chainz and his boyz Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky rap that song F***in’ Problem, the lyrics in the background while I’m thinking things, what we gonna have for dinner, hope the kid isn’t late, that sort of thing.

Khadija peddles words on street corners, in polite company she's known as a journalist. Words are her only defence against impending doom, old age and iniquity - spurring her interest in what language tells us about where we are from, what we are doing and where we are headed. Don't mind the headscarf, she don't need no liberation.

The Eastern Cape minister of education has said that children who are dependent on their parents do not have any rights, a newspaper has reported.

It is understandable (if not ethically acceptable) that some (but not all) white South Africans (who all continue to benefit from the effects of past unfair racial discrimination) would try to protect their unearned privileges by fighting to retain the status quo.

The struggle against gender violence must not focus only on changing male attitudes. It must focus on the conditions that allow these attitudes to flourish MANY South Africans have decried the recent, terrible cases of rape.

I am watching two bulls in the same kraal. If these were animals, I would accuse the BBC of cruelty to animals, but the men I am observing are the literary equivalent of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. One is a prolific Israeli writer, AB Yehoshua, and the other a go-anywhere journalist, Tim Franks.

Overcrowding, too few teachers, not enough furniture or appalling toilets seem to have become the norm at some of the Eastern Cape's schools.

Best candidate is not one with many degrees, but one with insight, good judgement and courage FOUR of the country's universities will soon begin the arduous task of finding new vice-chancellors.

A great deal of media coverage has been given to ‘violent’ protests. But it’s a narrow view just to assume that the protestors are being violent; abuse is a two-way street – especially if bureaucracy is being used to quash dissent.

Many South Africans have decried the recent, terrible cases of rape. South Africa’s pervasive culture of hyper-masculinity has been blamed for the problem, as has the patriarchal nature of its society, where men remain the central figures around which society is organised in spite of the country’s constitutionally enshrined commitment to gender equality.

Cape Town — Residency fees are still unaffordable for many South African university students, hence a “wealth tax” mechanism has to be explored to increase disadvantaged students’ access to such facilities, Parliament was told yesterday.

There are welcome surprises to be found in schools in Katlehong. For the project Schools That Work, my brief is to visit institutions to document the academic success of schools serving disadvantaged communities.

Teacher absenteeism is a problem, and seems to be the latest target for both President Jacob Zuma and Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga.

Labour and social conflict forced its way into the public consciousness last year when scores of people, mainly miners, were killed and injured in Marikana.

In the tiny hamlet of Hamburg in the Eastern Cape on the Keiskamma River, a small community ravaged by poverty and HIV offers living proof that art is good medicine. Healthcare and hope became intertwined when doctor/artist Dr Carol Baker (Hofmeyr) moved from Johannesburg to the Eastern Cape in 2000.

THERE is a simplistic logic to race-based affirmative action that remains attractive to many South Africans 20 years after the official scrapping of race-based discrimination.

Universities are owed millions of rand by students, with some of the debt dating back to the early 1980s. Even though some institutions feel the pinch more than others, the debt mountain takes a heavy toll because tuition fees form a significant part of the income of universities.

NO ECONOMIC statistic attracts as much interest as the monthly consumer price index (CPI). This is partly because many other important economic measures are understandable only to economists.

Achieving a truer sense of the past requires us to heed all that is obscured by the silence imposed by the powerful, writes IN HER novel Middlemarch , published in 1874, George Elliot wrote: "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."

As citizens of a free country, South Africans should rightly demand much from fellow citizens, from powerful private institutions, from big business and from government. It appears deceptively modest, but citizens have a right to demand (and deserve to demand) the supreme and most difficult thing: to have their inherent human dignity respected by all and protected and promoted by those chosen to do so. Judging by what I saw on a recent visit to rural schools in the Eastern Cape, this seemingly modest demand is not always being met.

Africa’s climb to near the top of the global economic growth tables has attracted much attention. Some commentators have suggested that Africa could become the next China or India as the driver of global growth. Global investors are looking for new ways to participate in Africa’s growth success.

A truly shocking story is currently unfolding in the Vereeniging District Court. The owner of a game-ranger training camp with links to far-right groups stands trial for the torture and murder of a 15-year-old boy in his care in 2011.

South Africa needs to escalate its expenditure on research and development and increase its international competitiveness in science and innovation, according to Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom. Disappointingly, the lofty goal of raising R&D spending to 1% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2010 has not been achieved.

Communications Minister Dina Pule’s position in the Cabinet appears to be growing more precarious, after consistent claims of corruption have been made against her.

Teachers struggle to educate their pupils about sexual matters that they can’t even negotiate in their own lives - like using condoms.

On 25 April 2013, the day that civil society, religious groups and opposition parties had feared for three years came to pass. The controversial Protection of State Information Bill dubbed the Secrecy Bill by opponents passed easily after a vote in Parliaments National Assembly.

On the surface, it looks as though things have improved for women in South Africa, particularly those skirting around university campuses and more privileged circles. But there’s still a huge problem if sexual violence interventions are only aimed at women, not men, who – after all – are the ones who most need to hear the message.

Without the government's will to curb gender violence, our rape statistics will continue to be the worst in the world.

The proposed policy of the University of Stellenbosch regarding the admission of students to university residences raises questions not only about the future of Afrikaans at Stellenbosch but also about the future of South Africa as a multilingual and multicultural society.

At the weekend the City Press newspaper reported that Magistrate Stanley Gumede and Adv Guido Penzhorn are going to be appointed by President Jacob Zuma to the posts of national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) and head of the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) respectively.

On Wednesday, Sadtu members across the country took to the streets to call for the resignation of Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and director general Bobby Soobrayan.

Sometimes, communists are driven out of trade unions by conservatives. Here, the communists are the conservatives and it is they who want the left out of the labour movement.

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” - George Elliot, Middlemarch, 1874

“Afrikaans and English no longer ‘white languages’,” read a press release from the SA Institute of Race Relations this week. The analysis of data from the 2011 census indicates that only 40% of South Africans who speak Afrikaans at home are white, while less than 34% of those who speak English at home are white. While isiZulu remains the most commonly-spoken language by quite a wide margin, it is English which is leading the way as the most preferred teaching language.

Being a Mandela must come with a host of complications. But it can also bring money, fame and status — more so if you have mastered the concept of brand value. Two of Nelson Mandela’s grandchildren appear to comprehend the value of harnessing star power. Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway and Swati Dlamini feature in their own "reality" TV show, Being Mandela. The two told Destiny magazine that Mandela had advised them: "The Mandela name is your name too and if you do things with integrity and respect, I will be happy."

On Monday, a multi-party parliamentary discussion was held to hear submissions on gender-based violence from civil society and decide on a “decisive” way forward. It was a reassuring sign that gender-based violence is being taking seriously by Parliament, but there were still a few concerning aspects to the discussion – not least Women’s Minister Lulu Xingwana fingering Satanism as a root cause, and the repeated mention of “family values” without clarifying exactly what’s meant by that term.

It has taken the trade unions several years to define a new enemy, but now they have one. Incredibly, they have chosen the National Development Plan (NDP), caricaturing it as a "right-wing" assault on workers. The objections aired so far are of the vague, populist type. Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi was reported as saying that the NDP, which he described as replacing the Freedom Charter, was "a serious assault on workers".

Adam Habib has ambitious plans to turn Wits university into the leading academic institution on the African continent, writes Nechama Brodie

Adrian Leftwich, who died earlier this month, ended his life as a respected politics professor at the University of York, in England. But as a young man in his native South Africa, Leftwich was an anti-Apartheid activist who sold out some of his closest friends and comrades in exchange for his own freedom. Even after almost 50 years, some would never forgive him. REBECCA DAVIS looks back on a haunting South African story.

The selection of judges is always a contentious issue around the world but, typically, South Africans will simplify the issue to be merit versus transformation. Merit means white and transformation means black or woman.

In spite of substantial government economic support for education reform, glaring gaps left by 40 years of apartheid education still riddle South Africa’s education system at every level.

Newly appointed Constitutional Court Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga has warned that groups who are not represented on the Bench may be “at the receiving end of injustice”.

It is breaktime and the playground is full at Baropodi Primary School in the rural Limpopo area of Jane Furse. About 20 young schoolgirls sift through paper thrown on a half-burnt pile of rubbish.

If college and university administrators feel like someone’s turning up the heat, they’re probably right.

In August last year, John Higgins interviewed public intellectual and academic Jakes Gerwel, who was also chief aide to the country’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela.

Monday, 15 April was Israeli Independence Day, commemorating the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. A concert held at Joburg’s Gold Reef City to mark the occasion turned ugly, however, when members of the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign (BDS) staged a protest at the event and clashed with private security forces.

The most crucial infrastructure for managing South Africa’s environment is water and wastewater infrastructure. The dire need to improve wastewater-treatment plants and water management skills in South Africa can also develop significant, sustainable employment, says Rhodes University Unilever Centre for Environmental Water Quality director Professor Tally Palmer.

Twenty years ago, we interred the mortal remains of Martin Thembisile Hani, known by his nom de guerre, Chris, after his assassination. Hani was a card-carrying communist all his adult life and actively engaged in its underground from 1962.

Eastern Cape remains short of thousands of teachers, arguing it does not have money to pay them, yet 9 000 teachers have not shown up for work in three years but have continued drawing salaries.

The pomp-laden, taxpayer-funded funeral of one of the most divisive political figures in modern history might well have been a day of high drama. In the end, though, the laying to rest of Margaret Thatcher was the most quintessentially British of affairs. The protesters were polite.

It’s no secret that the South African Communist Party is a supporter of the North Korean state. What you may not know, however, is that there’s a special South African organisation tasked with celebrating the good works of the Kim dynasty. In Mpumalanga, more than 1,600 people meet up regularly under the auspices of the South African Association of Friendship and Solidarity with Korean People.

‘Our past is a reason to work harder and to take public service seriously — not to keep it alive by doing neither’

When Wikileaks released its latest batch of diplomatic documents earlier this month, it brought its holdings up to a total of 2 million records. What Wikileaks calls the ‘Public Library of US Diplomacy’ now consists of the original 250,000 US diplomatic cables – known as ‘Cablegate’ – and the 1,7 million new ‘Kissinger Cables’.

Closing the chapter on a long and controversial race, President Jacob Zuma yesterday announced the appointment of Mbuyiseli Madlanga SC to the Constitutional Court.

AN advocacy group is threatening to take legal action against the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) for bringing South Africa’s judiciary into disrepute.

Stellenbosch University has finally been given the green light to accommodate more black students in its residences.

The common response among 82 primary school children in the Western Cape and Gauteng has been that more schools needed to be built in rural areas.

The Northern Cape Afrikaner enclave of Orania is a topic much beloved by documentary-makers and journalists. This is for one good reason: however much you might deplore the principle of cultural self-determination, Orania is fascinating.

There are two dominant spheres in contemporary South African youth politics. The first is a largely middle-class sphere whose points of political engagement are informed by the mainstream media and online platforms.

The positive changes brought in after liberation in1994 now seem to be overshadowed by the bad and ugly, writes Joy Nonzukiso Peter.

Worrying that the poor are about to rise up in anger is a product of not thinking straight — or not paying attention. Last week, an International Monetary Fund representative beat a now familiar drum when he warned that failure to achieve more inclusive growth here would threaten social stability.

Helen Zille’s latest DA Today newsletter puts the blame for SA’s parlous education system squarely at the feet of teachers, based on a report released just over a week ago. But education activists continue to insist that the conditions under which teachers work are equally important. The latest organization to try to lend a hand to setting educational standards in the country is the SA Human Rights Commission, whose Charter of Children’s Basic Education Rights aims to flesh out what we mean when we talk about someone having the “right” to education.

Claims of racism at the Gupta wedding has reminded us of our racial baggage, but we’re ahead in dealing with our division, writes Verashni Pillay.

Like her peers, she's giggly, fashionable, likes to date as much as possible, is on the lookout for that special someone and would like a family when she's older. But Mbali Ntuli from Durban is not your typical 25-year-old.

A new centre at the University of the Witwatersrand that focuses on South Africa's vast fossil wealth underlines our position as world champs in palaeoscience.

White South Africans should not speak out about the county's politics, because it was black people's turn to rule, controversial Rhodes University philosopher Samantha Vice said last night.

South Africa returns to the contemporary art exhibition, the Venice Biennale, with something of a reintroduction this year, with 17 artists, a long-term commitment from government and an actual curatorial vision, writes Theresa Smith

The NUM has lost thousands of its members, mining bosses are under the profit cosh and the mining minster is under the job loss whip. However, it is Joseph Mathunjwa, the leader of AMCU, a union that has had only one leadership conference in its 12 year existence, who is the focal point of this year’s wage negotiating season. And he is the guy who has to deliver – despite AMCU’s non-existent track record.

The Democratic Alliance’s “Know Your DA” campaign, launched a month ago, has attracted criticism from those who accuse the opposition of airbrushing its history and attempting to co-opt ownership of the struggle against Apartheid from the ANC. But the DA is unbowed. On Monday, the party launched a video to accompany the campaign which it intends to show to one million South Africans, and leaders insisted that the campaign is working exactly as they had hoped.

South Africa’s post-school education budget has been increased to R34.3 billion (US$3.8 billion) – growth of 8.6% over last year – Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande said last week. A priority is to provide opportunities for 3.5 million youths not absorbed into employment, education or training this year.

In September 2010 Brazil’s finance minister, Guido Mantega, accused developed countries of waging "a currency war" against developing countries. The backdrop to this claim was the strength of the Brazilian exchange rate which, Mantega alleged, was caused by aggressive monetary policy in the developed nations. In particular, the policy of "quantitative easing" in the US was causing large capital inflows into developing countries.

A point frequently returned to throughout the World Economic Forum on Africa has been the inescapability of the fact that Africa’s economy will be shaped by its reserves of natural resources for the foreseeable future. Introducing the 2013 Africa Progress Report on Friday, Kofi Annan and his colleagues said that Africa’s mineral wealth has the potential to transform the continent, but resource-rich countries are leaving their poor behind. He also hit out at “shady deals” between mining houses and countries.

Exactly why the World Economic Forum on Africa invited King Mswati III of Swaziland to sit on a panel is a slight mystery. Throughout the WEF, the values of transparency, accountability, good governance and anti-corruption have been highlighted over and over again as essential to Africa’s growth.

At a small discussion at Thursday’s World Economic Forum on Africa, the issue of gender equality in African politics took centre stage. While all panelists agreed on the need for more women in positions of leadership, Malawian President Joyce Banda was on hand to remind the audience that sometimes getting to the top is just the beginning of the struggle.

The Africa Competitiveness Report, released annually by the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the Denmark Foreign Affairs Ministry, reflects both good and bad news. For South Africa, things are looking relatively peachy: we’re one of only two African countries sitting in the top half of the Global Competitiveness Index.

Bloemfontein-born Anne Hirsch is one of a growing number of global comedians and entertainers who aren’t sitting around waiting for a TV broadcaster or record label to pull it together to offer them exposure.

Our problem is not that the government ignores business, but that it listens to some in business more than it should. Which is why there is a connection between wedding parties that land at air force bases and the Licensing of Businesses Bill.

It’s common knowledge that South Africa and Nigeria haven’t always had the smoothest relationship; sometimes seen to be jockeying for position as Africa’s top dog. But when Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan was welcomed to South Africa on Tuesday for his first state visit, there was only sweetness and light in evidence between the two powers. Oh, and a whole lot of memorandum signing – but we don’t know what’s in them yet.

Forget the Guptas - at the heart of the story that stoked the country’s outrage is a problematic relationship between government and big business.

‘Networks between private wealth and public office are fine for those inside them but not for those left out’

Two events in the past fortnight highlight how state intelligence agencies have critically shaped government in South Africa, now and in the past. The first was the death of Mervyn Rees, the Rand Daily Mail investigative reporter credited with revealing how state resources were misused to finance a secret propaganda campaign known as Muldergate.

In mainstream Bollywood cinema, the big wedding extravaganza usually signals the end of conflict and the attainment of resolution via the coming together of two families in a celebration of singing, dancing, spectacular outfits and, to borrow a phrase from Derek Zoolander, ridiculously good-looking people.

Unlike heterosexual Americans, gays in the USA have no right to bring a partner to live with them in the country. For gay Americans in relationships with foreigners, this can force an often agonising choice between one’s country and one’s partner. As a result, little colonies of ‘love exiles’ have set up all over the world in gay-friendly countries, and South Africa is no exception. REBECCA DAVIS spoke to some of the couples living in Cape Town and beyond who are affected by the USA’s marriage and immigration laws.

Over the past week, every crocodile in South Africa has wept. The Waterkloof fiasco has elicited solemn pronouncements from the Presidency, the Cabinet and much of the African National Congress (ANC) alliance. Shock! Horror! Security breaches must never happen again!

A young teacher’s school desperately needs him but he’s working without pay while an official sits on the paperwork for the job.

Late last week, it was announced that plans are finally properly underway to turn an old Long Island laboratory into a permanent memorial and museum to the late Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla. For Tesla’s supporters, it’s the culmination of a 70-year battle – since Tesla’s death – to see the appropriate commemoration of the man largely responsible for our modern electricity system, and a host of other scientific advancements for which he never received sufficient credit.

As South Africa commemorated another World Press Freedom Day - May 3 - minds were no doubt focused on Parliament's decision to pass the controversial Protection of State Information Bill, or the secrecy bill.

Universities in South Africa still support the ‘othering’ promoted by the West’s world-view.

The story of an apartheid-era statue suggests one way universities have used artworks to negotiate between troubled histories and uncertain futures.

Mouse-clicking on “decolonising the humanities” is not the same as “hitting the panic button of academic freedom” — this much we can grant Suren Pillay’s argument in last month’s Getting Ahead (“Decolonising the humanities”, April 5). These two pursuits have in fact become alarmingly divergent, with the former being “mainstreamed” in generalised “transformation”-speak and the latter rendered a toothless old white wolf cry.

The Andrew W Mellon Foundation recently granted the African Studies Centre at the University of Michigan in the United States and Wiser, the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, $1.5-million to support a programme of collaboration between the two. Our object in this project is to strengthen the international theoretical significance of academic writing on the humanities that is produced in Africa.

Academic debates can often be confusing for the general reader, and this is the case with some the arguments around academic freedom taken up in Suren Pillay’s recent Mail & Guardian article: “Decolonising the humanities” (Getting Ahead, April 5).

Community conquers all at the school in Namaqualand where no one gets left behind.

As South Africa commemorates another World Press Freedom Day, this day will no doubt focus minds on Parliament’s decision to pass the controversial Protection of State Information Bill, or the Secrecy Bill. It will now be forwarded to the President for signing.

At its peak in 2003, the UK’s aid programme to South Africa was worth £40 million. By 2013, this amount had dwindled to a relatively modest £19 million. Nonetheless, the UK government’s decision to cut direct aid to South Africa has been greeted with thinly-veiled outrage by the South African government.

The founder of the M&G Investing in the Future Awards, reports on how they have kept pace with the changes in corporate social responsibility.

THE real reason the Black Business Council (BBC) exists is because its members are “economic apartheid fighters”, says general secretary Sandile Zungu.

Children may constitute 39% of our population, but how often do we see or hear their voices in the news?

In the past week, we’ve seen two cases of gays turned away from businesses in South Africa on the basis of their sexual orientation. A private school couple in Mpumalanga told a married lesbian couple that they should either get divorced or remove their child from the school.

The deep roots of May Day lie in the ancient forests of Europe. Long before the idea of one God, one stern God, had made its way across the Mediterranean, spring was marked by planting trees, adorning people and homes with sprigs, blossoms and garlands, the erection of Maypoles, lighting bonfires on hilltops, dancing, drinking and revelry.

The deep roots of May Day lie in the ancient forests of Europe. Long before the idea of one God, one stern God, had made its way across the Mediterranean Spring was marked by planting trees, adorning people and homes with sprigs, blossoms and garlands, the erection of Maypoles, lighting bonfires on hilltops, dancing, drinking and general revelry.

Rapper Eminem famously mocked pop culture’s manufactured output sold to us as authentic art by tauntingly asking, “Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?” He was interested in that kind of dissing, of course, in part because a white boy didn’t fit the template for an American hip-hop star.

While children in former Model C schools enjoy the privilege of excellent facilities, there are places of learning in rural areas without access to water, where pupils share grossly overcrowded classrooms, and where conditions essentially violate basic human rights. During a recent tour of these schools in the Eastern Cape, rights activists, academics and authors were completely shocked by what they saw.

Mars One, a private Dutch spaceflight endeavour which aims to launch a colony on Mars by 2023, opened for applications from would-be colonists last week. The not-for-profit foundation is offering you a ticket to Mars in 10 years’ time, and the chance to star in what it says would be the most audacious reality TV show ever dreamed of. The catch? There’s no coming back from Mars. But this apparently is no deterrent to the more than 30,000 people who have applied over the past week – including six South Africans so far.

In 1652, the year that Jan van Riebeeck first stepped on to these shores, Gerrad Winstanley, an English radical, published a pamphlet called The Law of Freedom in a Platform.

Unless we invest in scientific research, we will continue to lag behind other developing economies.

Eusebius McKaiser was in fine form on his first day as a presenter at a new Gauteng radio station.

Researchers make significant strides in understanding the power of the mind.

Constitutional Court judgment clarifies the state’s obligations and role in providing subsidies.

A recent report ignores preschool and home environments that are crucial to language skills In South Africa, when a thoughtful report is published about how to improve child literacy it is generally welcomed as “a good thing”.

In politics you have moments when events happen, when processes climax, and the change comes.

The Draft Lotteries Amendment Bill, currently being aired for public comment, is presented as a way for the Department of Trade and Industry to ensure a more efficient disbursement of funds to South African charities.

Julius Malema’s announcement last week that he’s going to have “consultative discussions” around forming a new party has prompted the expected reaction from the ANC.

“Awakening on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African Native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth,” wrote Sol Plaatje.

No matter how logical an argument, it can fail to persuade because of who is presenting it. The ancient Greeks, who invented the art of rhetoric, knew this well.

If winning elections depended on impressing journalists and commentators, Julius Malema would be president next year. Since it requires gaining the support of voters, he will be lucky if he makes it into Parliament.

It has been increasingly common in recent years for South African civil society organisations to approach the courts to compel government departments to take action on social issues.

The Guardian released the world’s "Top 10 sexist moments in politics" on its website at the weekend. The list includes former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and right-wing US radio host Rush Limbaugh.

In 1652, the year that Jan van Riebeck first stepped on to these shores, Gerrad Winstanley, an English radical, published a pamphlet called The Law of Freedom in a Platform. Three years earlier he had led a land occupation on St. George's Hill in Surrey

Across the lake from the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth’s North End stands a factory that proves the conventional wisdom about South African manufacturing wrong.

This June, we will once again commemorate the student uprising of 1976. In our public discussions, we will try to extrapolate lessons to tell a new generation how to follow the students’ example in their fight for freedom.

Five years ago a group of students at Wits University launched an independent intellectual platform to develop critical thought.

Oh, the kids these days. They get a bad reputation and a lot of "eishes". Where are the leaders, people ask. Where are the politically conscious intellectual activists of the variety that was so common during the Struggle?

With personal histories spanning Cameroon, South Africa and a number of countries in between, they are well placed to expand the institution’s horizons.

The erosion of salaries and work conditions for junior academics undermines education quality.

Western Cape ANC leader Marius Fransman called on “all our people” to join a march to the DA-controlled provincial legislature on Thursday. Poor turnout and a refusal by any DA bigwigs to collect a memorandum of demands rendered the march a bit of a damp squib.

In the late 1990s, my digs mate at Rhodes University started an international business. Using a US credit card, obtained during a brief time living in Colorado, he opened an account on eBay.

The increase in cybercrime could mean the beginning of the end for internet freedom, says Jane Duncan.

He has the misfortune of being Xhosa, and carrying a name with a click in Cape Town. Xhanti enjoys jazz music, and displays anti revolutionary tendencies in drinking copious amounts of good red wine.

A plan has been developed to turn around the Eastern Cape’s biggest tertiary institution. Walter Sisulu University (WSU), with a student body of 21 800 across four campuses, has been plagued by student riots, staff strikes and creditors and even salaries going unpaid.

South Africans pay some of the most expensive rates in the world for cellphone and data charges.

Recent weeks have seen a new form of poster take to some of Joburg's walls. They look like advertising posters... They quack like advertising posters... But they sure ain't advertising posters.

As the nation awaits news of its Madiba, an inevitable debate has sprung up around the coverage of his stay in hospital. It's being claimed that it's ghoulish to sit outside an institution, waiting for someone to die.

I can think of a few good reasons for registering for a postgraduate degree — and quite a few reasons not to. Not least among them is because it's hard work, takes a long time and successful completion relies primarily on your own efforts.

That's the question everyone should be asking about China's ties with Africa.

“A new policy will come into effect in 2014 mandating the learning of an African language in all schools,” announced Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga just over three weeks ago, upon delivering her department’s budget speech. Since then, details of what this might look like have been scant.

What is not said on a policy issue can be more revealing than what is. The campaign against e-tolling is a remarkable example of how citizens can form alliances across barriers in support of a common cause.

Minister says for some institutions 'autonomy' more important than right of students and staff to be protected from unfair discrimination.

Shipping is one of the fastest growing sources of pollution in the world. But some research units and companies are waking up to the fact that the ships which plough the world’s oceans every day, carrying goods between continents, may also be ideally placed to carry out research into the planet’s changing climate.

On Friday, the DA announced it was giving a million rands to the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance, to ensure that it now has enough money to go ahead with its legal bid to stop the tolling of Gauteng's highways.

Thanks to our strong banking sector, South Africa’s financial system was largely unaffected by the 2008 global financial crisis.

Bay ratepayers and residents need leaders with a firm grasp of good governance stopped a filling station at Five Ways, Cape Road, sometime in March.

Perceptions about'fast-track' policies need to be changed, but new research needs to be more thorough,writes Kirk Helliker.

The Ministry of Health is often cited as one of the government departments where effective leadership in recent years has made a real, positive impact.

Thanks to our strong banking sector, South Africa’s financial system was largely unaffected by the 2008 global financial crisis. Yet the crisis severely battered our economic growth performance and employment levels.

The time has come to debate the assumption of academic freedom that universities hold dear.

The team charged with gleaning what afflicts the social sciences is all set to forge ahead on its newly charted course.

The retro arrangement of Stellenbosch’s Sasol Museum’s artifacts is a gem for cultural study.

As a political instrument, what my toddler commonly refers to as poo has a certain quality to it. It's easy to manipulate, readily available, slightly pongy, and really, really hard to throw back.

Just before midnight on the 5th of September 1877 an American soldier ran his bayonet into Thasunke Witko's back in Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

This year’s Encounters Documentary Film Festival, which kicks off today, has been whittled down from its previous 17 days to 10.

The National Development Plan is supposed to lead us all to the brighter, sunnier, somehow better scrubbed future, right? That's what we've all been told, by Number One, no less.

Is learning half a lesson enough to keep the African National Congress (ANC) together for the next few years?

Ivo Vegter argues in his latest column that comparisons between gang rape and the Businesses Licensing Bill are perfectly acceptable.

Vladimir Tretchikoff loved women, and he painted many. His biographer Boris Gorelik was able to track down the identity of two of the real-life

We track NGO Equal Education's two-year fight to get Angie Motshekga to hand over a schools norms and standards paper. A fight that still isn't over.

Vladimir Tretchikoff loved women, and he painted many. His biographer Boris Gorelik was able to track down the identity of two of the real-life muses for iconic Tretchikoff artworks, but one remained elusive: the beautiful woman depicted in the painting The Hindu Dancer.

Is learning half a lesson enough to keep the African National Congress (ANC) together for the next few years? The answer may tell us whether 2019’s election will be the first national poll whose result is in doubt.

SPARE a thought for the judges of the Constitutional Court. Sometimes I think we don’t pay them enough, especially when they are often expected to mediate over matters of common sense.

Dali Tambo's mistake is to insist upon a mythical neutrality that gives him permission to avoid the hard questions, writes Verashni Pillay.

Artist Sue Williamson celebrates the women who helped to usher in South Africa’s liberation.

CHEQUEBOOK journalism, the practice of securing exclusive rights to information from a news subject by paying them handsomely for it, is increasingly widely practised in some media quarters, despite ethical concerns about it.

It’s said that the health of the aviation industry serves as a barometer for wider economic conditions. If this is the case, the World Air Transport Summit – currently being held in Cape Town – suggests that things are tentatively on the rise.

Equal Education has been preparing papers to go back to court over norms and standards for school infrastructure, says the NGO.

All countries have their own conventions, their own ways of doing things, their own ways of treating the living and the dead. And we, of course, have plenty of our own, proudly South African ways of doings things.

The images of 22 year old Londoner Michael Abedowale, hands dripping with blood from his fatal attack on soldier Lee Rigby, created shock waves around the world, including in South Africa.

Steven Roberts, an assistant professor at the U. of Washington who studies how environmental change affects shellfish, tracks social-media metrics to see how his research is used online.

Scientists, funders and journal editors have thrown their weight behind the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment.

The National Prosecuting Authority has increasingly come under fire this year, primarily because of a slew of high-profile failures. There have been the usual accusations levelled against President Jacob Zuma, and the usual people have shouted the usual things back.

Some dramatically stormy Cape Town weather was not enough to deter a sizeable crowd from turning out to hear a newly beardless Cyril Karabus answer questions from the public on Sunday night.

I was delighted to be asked to write a review of a book entitled “In the Driving Seat Lessons in Leadership” authored by a business hero of mine ever since I was student at Rhodes University in the 1980s.

Graphic posters, apparently intended to expose Muslim homophobia, have provoked the anger of Rhodes University staff members, students and alumni.

Proponents say it's the only way to feed the world, but opponents claim genetically modified crops make people ill. Sarah Wild reports.

Wits University has launched a software outreach programme that will redefine the heart of the city.

City Press says it stands by its decision to publish a controversial column described by some as "dripping with anti-Indian hatred".

Graphic posters apparently intended to expose Muslim homophobia have provoked the anger of Rhodes University staff members, students and alumni, who say they are racist and xenophobic.

The Constitutional Court handed down its ruling on Thursday in an interesting case: considering the question of whether the first wife in a Tsonga customary marriage should have to consent to her husband’s subsequent marriages in order for them to be valid. It’s not the first time a customary law issue has been brought before this court to determine its adherence to the precepts of the Bill of Rights. Often, however, the problem is determining what exactly customary law dictates.

It was shocking to hear someone on Xolani Gwala’s SAfm early morning news programme this month referring to the use of African languages in the schooling system as

The National Prosecuting Authority has come in for a pasting lately, with a string of controversial outcomes to high-profile cases.

Don’t expect to turn down a Gupta-owned business and get away with it.

On Monday, in case you missed it, a disciplinary inquiry by the National Prosecuting Authority found prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach not guilty on all counts. On Tuesday, the NPA hit back with a statement of its own. Fasten your seatbelts, because this may hurt your senses.

When some people decide that their world is the world, reality is sure to suffer. Which is why claims that social media are the pulse of the nation should make us wary.

As the radioactive dust settles on the twisted toxic mess that is the Gupta Waterkloof Scandal, it's time to consider what we've learnt as a country over the few weeks of May 2013.

In a recent lecture at the University of Johannesburg, Jeremy Gauntlett argued that certain provisions of the Higher Education and Training Laws Amendment Act 23 of 2012 (the Act) are almost certainly unconstitutional. According to him, the Act is open to constitutional challenge as its provisions are impermissibly vague; it unjustifiably infringes the constitutional right to academic independence; and it violates the right to a fair procedure.

The budget vote speech for the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities seems to have escaped much media scrutiny – perhaps a sign of the low importance accorded to the department. But there are some rather extraordinary aspects to the department’s budgeting. For instance, it appears that one third of all staff in the department earn on average R1 million a year. This would represent a greater ratio of millionaire staff members than the departments of Health, Education and Treasury, to name a few.

Shuttleworth Fellow Arthur Attwell is on a mission to supply South Africa with cheaper, more convenient access to books – and he doesn’t believe that e-books are a solution for the time being. His social enterprise, Paperight, enables regular photocopy shops to print perfectly legal copies of books for customers, at a far lower price than they’d pay in a traditional bookshop. REBECCA DAVIS finds out how.

NEWS that the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy committee considered cutting interest rates at its latest meeting is confirmation of the growing weakness of the South African economy. The weakening outlook is highlighted by the downward revision of the Bank’s growth forecast for this year from 2.7% to 2.4%. This is barely sufficient to sustain present employment levels. It is nothing like the 6%-7% annual growth needed for longer than a decade to reduce poverty and unemployment meaningfully.

Most of the 82 primary schoolchildren in the Western Cape and Gauteng have said that media freedom is one thing that should not be touched.

We recently read about the Eastern Cape’s forgotten schools where teaching and learning is simply not happening.

South Africa has become a full member of the European ¬Synchrotron Radiation Facility, a -massive light source that can "see" into any material.

I hate being associated with people born after 1990. I was born in the late 1980s but people often think I am part of the “born-free” generation — the most misunderstood group of young people.

The release of the Guptagate report by the task team charged with investigating it clearly states that the Waterkloof Air Force Base, contrary to widespread public belief, is not a National Key Point.

Beleaguered micro-satellite manufacturer SunSpace may be absorbed into Denel Dynamics, part of defence and arms manufacturer Denel.

More transparent guidance will mean less conflict centred on the governance of public schools

For 10 years the Eastern Cape has failed to deal adequately with sick teachers and vacant posts.

It’s been a long time coming, but learning an African language will soon be compulsory in schools. Brent Meersman tries to keep ahead of the kids

While the HartRAO dish was undergoing repairs, radio atronomer Mike Gaylard started to search for redundant telescopes in Africa. (Mike Gaylard, M&G)

Guptas dropped name, now we’re dropping any mention of our anti-corruption laws?

The National Prosecuting Authority is in crisis. Crisis is, in fact, the wrong word. The right word may well be tatters. No capacity. No political will. No credibility. The failures can sear one's retina: J. Arthur Brown. Andries Tatane. Anene Booysen. A list of damning mistakes, disasters and possibly deliberate missteps.

On Wednesday, the government team tasked with investigating the circumstances under which the Gupta's were able to land an aircraft at the Waterkloof air force base released their report.

I'VE tackled this head-on before, but a recent debate on "whiteness" has reminded me again that of all the emotions people are forced to deal with on a daily basis, the most pointless and useless is shame.

I applaud the University of KwaZulu-Natal for introducing isiZulu as a course for first-year students. But I wonder why this otherwise progressive move was made compulsory.

Apartheid used our languages to divide and rule. Today we want to use them to increase social cohesion and economic participation.

The most glaring oddity of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson's proposed changes to SA's marine resources legislation is that it appears to make whale watching an offence - unless the watcher has her permission.

THE real problem with bargaining between employers and unions here is not the rules that govern it but the society in which it happens, which is why changing the bargaining rules will solve nothing.

Durban - The decision of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) to make Zulu compulsory for all undergraduate students enrolling at the university from next year, and to implement bilingual education, has sparked different reactions.

It struck me the other day that black South Africans use the term ukuzabalaza and the word Umzabalazo almost exclusively in relation to the fight against apartheid and colonialism.

Just when you thought the e-tolling argument was over, another new major player has entered the ring. It's big, it wears robes, and it's got God on its side.

On the face of it, a determination by the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal to compel its students to learn isiZulu in their first year is a perfectly reasonably goal.

This past weekend was the annual meeting for lovers of fiction, history, politics, poetry, humour, wine and food. The Franschhoek Literary Festival is growing as a meeting place to contemplate the history and future of the written word in South Africa. World-renowned historian and the author of Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin, Antony Beevor, provided a welcome antidote to the all-too-common South African tendency to navel-gaze. His account of the battle for Stalingrad during the Second World War makes the fight against apartheid seem like a walk in the park.

J Arthur Brown has been one of the most unpopular men in South Africa for a long time now. As the former CEO of Fidentia, he was at the wheel while R1,4 billion went missing from funds administered by the firm, including a fund meant to support widows and orphans of mine workers. It remains one of the biggest corporate scandals in South Africa’s history. Last week, to the shock and disgust of many, the Western Cape High Court ended six years of legal proceedings by handing Brown only a R150,000 fine and a suspended jail sentence. But Brown is receiving loyal support from an unexpected quarter: some of the very people whose money disappeared under his watch, and who most need it back.

This week the Executive Director of Corruption Watch, David Lewis, paid a visit to Grahamstown in an effort to reinforce the campaign against corruption.

The prejudice allegedly displayed at the wedding was more a reflection of India’s divisions than our own.

In the first in a series of features on sellers of rare books, Victoria John explores the treasure trove that is Thorold’s Bookshop.

Let me begin with an informative snippet before engaging, ever so warily, with a lady whose name could be a pole dancer's sobriquet but who is in fact one of the brighter luminaries in the Rhodes University firmament.

I'm not one to give credit easily. But sometimes one has to stop, and tip your cap to a good political operation. You know, Gwede Mantashe's taking hold of the Gupta story as it was breaking by releasing that statement when he did, or President Jacob Zuma's stop Malema Operation, or even, to an extent, Mangaung in general. But it's time to stop and tip the cap again. To the DA. Yes, really. The DA.

There is a global conflict playing out in the corridors of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). On the one hand, there are the advocates of the Palestinian struggle calling for the academic and cultural isolation of Israel. On the other, members of the Zionist lobby oppose any such attempt to isolate Israel. In between there are multiple shades of opinion, most of which are crowded out in the acrimonious public discourse over the issue.

When Cyril Karabus left South Africa in August 2012, he was a well-respected paediatric oncologist. By the time he returned in May 2013, Karabus had become a household name: a 78- year-old poster-boy for the risks medics face when working in the Emirates. His arrival at Cape Town International on Friday, 17 May after nine months of detention in Abu Dhabi marked a happy ending to a distressing case. REBECCA DAVIS reflects on some of the lessons learned.

South Africa is rapidly urbanising, and in many cases infrastructure and municipal services are struggling to keep up. In the Western Cape, a private group of urban designers and developers think they have a solution.

The amended education Act echoes what apartheid’s architects had in mind for universities.

Malnutrition is killing South Africa's children, yet half of the country's fresh produce is wasted.

A new stem cell technique could regrow organs that the body will not reject and is an important step towards a cure for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and injuries such as spinal cord trauma. (AFP)

Dismal course completion figures suggest that our universities have learned little in seven years

THE announcement earlier this week that Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is prepared to back a new city-campus plan for the regeneration of the East London inner city region is good news for the city and the province.

A chronicle of privilege and difference from a US centre of academic excellence, as seen through the lens of the well-appointed pool.

The mood in Parliament’s police committee on Wednesday was one of shock and disbelief, even for a group of MPs accustomed to hearing of the failures of the South African Police Service.

It’s rare in South Africa to come across a police chief who is held in high esteem. So when one of them leaves office, it’s time to reflect on what made him good, and to ask why that person is leaving.

What happens inside the African National Congress (ANC) is still more likely to change our politics than the efforts of its opponents.

This seems an auspicious moment to remember Helen of Troy. If Helen was the face that launched 1,000 ships, then August is the month that launched a thousand careers, held aloft by the winds of mind-numbingly empty phraseology.

It emerged over the weekend that the Higher Education Transformation Network (HETN) has now lodged a complaint against Advocate Paul Hoffman, over what it says is a series of "cowardly politically motivated attacks" on Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng.

Our city is born of conquest: divided, broken, brutally unjust - and beautiful in the eyes of some of its inhabitants. But most in our town are not in a position to see much beauty.

At the end of June, a magistrates’ court in Gauteng convicted a former Sowetan journalist of criminal defamation, with a sentence of R10,000 or 10 months in prison, suspended for four years.

The Arms Procurement Commission has a logo. It consists of a laurel wreath composed in part of crossed sabres and fighter jets.

Today we celebrate Women’s Day by commemorating the 20 000 women of August 9, 1956.

Little has changed for women since1994: worse, they face a backlash from their supposed equals.

Experts say scheme could benefit rich and poor, with positive broader outcomes ational Health Insurance (NHI) is seen by some as a gift from the middle class to the country's poorest.

On Wednesday morning, news that axed communications minister Dina Pule had been appointed to the parliamentary portfolio committee on transport seemed to be a sign that Pule would escape lightly from the parliament’s ethics watchdog investigation.

How is South Africa to develop political accountability? Pressure must be put on the political elites, writes Adam Habib.

Helen Zille’s defence of Angie Motshekga relies on straw targets and dodgy logic.

A school in the Eastern Cape shows that firm management produces excellent results.

Former president of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo has never seen a perfect election. At this rate, he’s not going to come close.

The world is snapping up cancer-detecting isotopes from laboratories in South Africa.

The Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that Sexual Offences Courts are to be reintroduced to South Africa, eight years after the idea was largely discarded.

The Zimbabwean people may be doubly victimised — let down by the opposition, which was meant to fight for them, and the neighbours meant to support them.

Most media don’t really give a hoot about young people. Coverage for youth is centred on two events per year: matric results and Youth Day. In between? Not much. And the feeling is mutual. But this is not good for the future of our country or the media.

South Africa's aquaculture industry, though still in its infancy, has been identified by government as a key priority sector because of its potential to supplement dwindling wild-caught fish stocks with cultured fish products.

As the results of Zimbabwe’s elections trickled and then rather suspiciously poured in, the frustration mounted. By now it has been replaced by the familiar shrugged shoulders of resignation, despair and hopelessness.

Economies grow over time when more people are employed or there is an increase in the number of machines, factories and supporting infrastructure used by workers.

With the presidency in the bag and parliament in their pocket, Zanu-PF can relax in the certainty that they will dictate Zimbabwe’s foreseeable future.

What, in five years’ time, will shareholders think of Absa? There are two major themes that guide the answer.

From bloated salaries to floods of statements once a year, Verashni Pillay despairs of the department of women, children and people with disabilities.

Australian journalist John Pilger argued that president Nelson Mandela’s greatness ??may be assured, but not his legacy. Pilger, who is a war reporter, is bitter that Mandela avoided a racial war and even made friends with Western capitalists.

DA leader Helen Zille this week devoted her newsletter, SA Today, to a further defence of Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga’s resistance to implementing norms and standards for school infrastructure, a campaign which NGO Equal Education (EE) has framed as imperative to the improvement of South Africa’s education system.

Late on Monday night it emerged, through "sources", as is tradition, that Cosatu's top leaders have decided to call a special meeting of its Central Executive Committee for the end of next week.

The winds of change are sweeping through Telkom, or at least that's what its leadership would like us to believe. But it might already be too late.

It’s been a little over three days since the SABC introduced its 24-hour news channel, creatively named “SABC News”.

It’s been a little over three days since the SABC introduced its 24-hour news channel, creatively named “SABC News”.

On Tuesday June 4th, Britain’s House of Lords—a bunch of reactionary old codgers, for the most part—passed a bill that would legalise same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom.

The Mail & Guardian caught up with Luminance owner Khanyi Dhlomo at her store, which has caused a media storm.

The opening of Khanyi Dhlomo’s luxury boutique has created a media storm

Illegal connections are sucking a special-needs school dry and endangering staff and pupils.

Postgraduate study is as much about changing the system from below as about learning new skills.

Illegal connections are sucking a special-needs institution dry and endangering staff and pupils.

South Africa’s Academy of Science is helping to usher in the new by joining global open access.

Recent revelations by former National Security Agency (NSA) computer analyst Edwin Snowden that the NSA was undertaking unwarranted mass surveillance of Americans has thrown the communications surveillance activities of governments into sharp relief.

Copy-and-paste plagiarism substitutes for real understanding in school projects, study finds.

Varsities are rethinking how to produce clued-up professionals ready for the classroom.

Many, many years ago, back when Coke Light was still Diet Coke, a news editor asked me to please take what we call the “SABC beat”.

The rape allegation that Zwelinzima Vavi has faced throws into sharp relief SA's muddled conceptions of rape and morality, writes Verashni Pillay.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) seems determined to obtain a tougher punishment for former Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown.

Many people are depressed about the state of South African politics. We are living through an inevitable shattering of illusions, which is a positive development, although it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.

The City of Cape Town, not for the first time, wants to re-draw the “urban edge” – a hypothetical designation of where urban development must stop, in order to protect the agricultural land beyond it.

Now that you can finally watch the most talked-about film in South Africa without breaking the law, the previously-banned ‘Of Good Report’ was screened to media in Johannesburg and Cape Town on Tuesday.

There is a subculture for whom Scrabble is a great deal more than a family board-game you pull down at Christmas when everyone’s tired of conversation.

Justice Personified | Pius Langa’s grace and wisdom made him a founding father of our rights-based constitutional democracy, writes Albie Sachs.

Putsch in Potch. Annette Combrink wrote her doctorate on comedy in English literature. Now she is playing the lead role in a dark political comedy, writes Ray Hartley.

“I cannot worship a homophobic God.” These were the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Cape Town on Friday, declaring his support for the launch of an unprecedented UN campaign to protect gay rights.

From the Northcliff water tower, you have a 360-degree view of Johannesburg. On a clear day, you can see all the way out to the Magaliesberg mountains.

A gorgeous young woman’s life ended by a bullet. A wealthy, handsome young man who says he is innocent of murder.

Last week Inigo Gilmore's documentary, South Africa's Dirty Cops", was screened on British television.

As an academic or an ordinary person, you cannot read the best research in the world without paying for it.

Reflections of a United States mathematics educator in South Africa for the first time.

Public service & administration minister Lindiwe Sisulu has published a draft law that aims to make it illegal for civil servants to be involved in companies that benefit from state tenders.

Pius Nkonzo Langa died on Wednesday in a Johannesburg hospital after a long illness. He was 74. Langa was South Africa’s fourth post-apartheid chief justice (after Michael Corbett, Ismail Mahomed and Arthur Chaskalson).

Former Chief Justice Pius Langa passed away earlier this week at the age of 74.

The death of Pius Langa has taken away perhaps one of the greatest South Africans, ever.

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela will appear before Parliament’s justice portfolio committee next Friday to give her account of a number of complaints against her.

COSAS – the Congress of SA Students – was where a 21-year old Julius Malema first cut his political teeth.

When the leader of the opposition feels the need to defend a beleaguered African National Congress (ANC) minister from journalistic attack, you know the national debate has lost the plot.

The past week has been a ¬watershed in two related perceptions of corruption in South Africa.

The wait for Kate ended on Monday, July 22 2013, when the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

It's hard to properly judge whether throwing shit at someone is a legitimate form of political protest. It is certainly extreme. And smelly, and disgusting.

The US Energy Information Administration says South Africa has the eighth-largest technically recoverable shale-gas resources in the world.

THE critics have spoken and the African National Congress ( ANC) is on a slide, rudderless, drifting away from the people, and riven by factionalism.

Science is becoming the front-runner in discovering how far the human body can be pushed.

The Western Cape has become a battleground over open toilets.

A three-day conference focused on the themes expressed through the work of Neville Alexander.

The new matric syllabus first examined in 2008 provides an even worse preparation for first-year university physics than the old curriculum did, a new study has found.

The Eastern Cape education department might have to forfeit assets if it does not pay them soon.

Nelson Mandela was anti-establishment from a young age, writes Ray Hartley.

What do Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush’s grandfather have in common? They were allegedly both in a cappella groups in their youth.

Today, the entire caring South Africa is looking for an opportunity to help, to be meaningful, to reach out to the ones in real difficulty.

Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan has shown that it is possible to hold those in public office to the highest standards of accountability and protect the integrity of public office and institutions.

Trying to keep politics out of government makes little sense — particularly in a democracy.

On Tuesday, Stats SA released a report on the health of the nation, based on data from 2011’s General Household Survey.

The Advertising Standards Authority is in the news again, this time for its ruling that an ad for the City of Johannesburg must be withdrawn for making misleading claims about the city’s financial and environmental health.

Fifty-eight houses built by government in Nyanga, Cape Town, to be given to those who needed them. It should have been a happy ending – but it hasn’t turned out that way at all.

Female ministers who left government following Mbeki’s resignation in 2008 seem to be doing pretty nicely elsewhere.

What an opportunity. Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy president of the ANC, was holding a dialogue with the youth of Polokwane.

Press junkets are no holiday. Sarah Wild shares the dirty truth.

An estimated 1.5-million pupils in South Africa are not at school — and it is not difficult to see why.

That is the motto of a successful Eastern Cape school with mainly township learners.

The story of Lunga Goodman Nono, the blind busker whose guitar was smashed by police during an assault on Monday, was greeted with shock and outrage around the country.

More people continue to be killed and mutilated in initiation schools in South Africa each year than died in the Sharpeville massacre.

In the last days of June, Nkululeko Gwala was assassinated in Cato Crest - a shack settlement in Durban that is in the process of being upgraded with formal housing.

With more than 30 years of performing at the National Arts Festival, South African theatre legend Andrew Buckland has developed a signature style of performance.

The wonderful thing about reshuffles is that reshuffles are wonderful things. They involve choices, decisions and actions. They reveal, just for a moment, the deck, which way it is stacked, and who is hot and who is not.

Another National Arts Festival has breezed in and out of Grahamstown for an 11-day shindig in frontier country, leaving some enriched — either by way of monetary or creative fulfilment — and others disappointed.

Queen Nompumelelo MaMchiza seems under the impression that polygamy is the only way, because no man can stay with one woman. STEPHEN GROOTES couldn’t resist.

Green advocates have joined forces with the National Arts Festival to take recycling to the next level by repurposing food waste much of it as nosh for worms.

While preparations for a death continue to take media centre stage, preparations for a birth may yet upstage them.

South Africans are numbed to headlines about the crisis in education. At the recent African Education Week, Dr Mamphela Ramphele repeated oft-voiced concerns that the government is mismanaging the education

It is mainly liberal and elite groups that oppose state intervention in universities.

Postgraduate study can be daunting, so choose carefully to avoid making serious errors.

Schools keep pass rates up by limiting subject choices – sacrificing our poorest pupils’ futures.

The imminence of Zimbabwe’s general elections, recently seasoned by SADC’s recommendation in its June 15 Communique that called for the Zimbabwean government to approach the Constitutional Court

To be in the presence of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is to literally sit with history. With someone who goes back through the worst years of our history, who knows both the good and the bad that our people are capable of.

The past few days have reminded us vividly that there are two South Africa’s, one much more democratic than the other.

As the nation awaits news of its Madiba, an inevitable debate has sprung up around the coverage of his stay in hospital.

A new study in the United States that links hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to high concentrations of methane in drinking wells has reignited the South African debate about the controversial technique for extracting natural gas.

German luxury car-maker thanks local initiative, spontaneity and intelligence for its R2.5bn investment in plant and local workers paying off in terms of productivity and high quality output, writes Ray Hartley.

One of the most striking images of public loss was taken just a few minutes after the public announcement of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It shows a musician reacting to the news, tears streaming down his face, torn with grief.

Eloquent words can never speak as loud as actions, writes Verashni Pillay after watching Barack Obama speak in SA in Nelson Mandela’s shadow.

It is children and young people in South Africa who are encouraged to learn about science.

Different countries with different political cultures and systems tend to throw up different types of scandals.

Who will protect us from those who claim to be our protectors? Leaks claiming that British intelligence spied on delegations, including ours, at an international meeting have been met largely with a yawn.

A new study released on Monday has shown that "fracking", can pollute drinking water, although it is uncertain the impact this has on human health.

As the nation, and the world, await news of Nelson Mandela’s condition, and what could be the final outcome of his stay in hospital, it is slightly inevitable, being the divided country that we are, that our political and chattering classes would have a fight about the communication around Madiba.

The notion that SA will dissolve into race riots at the news of Nelson Mandela’s death is so unlikely as to be ridiculous, writes Verashni Pillay.

GLOBAL commodity prices have fallen more than 30% over the past year.

Have you ever paused to think about how miraculous a stock exchange is?

In politics, we're told reputation is everything.

Global commodity prices have fallen more than 30% over the past year. The extent of the decline has taken most producers, governments and investors by surprise. Profits have fallen sharply.

Uncharitable wags are suggesting that behind his epistemological conversion lies the lure of lucre.

The People’s Democratic Party is no stranger to dissent and factionalism. In fact, its tight grip on power in Nigeria is all the more remarkable given the number of divisive voices it keeps under one tent.

Alistair Fairweather thinks the US government needs to condemn the NSA's attack on one of the world's most important resources - the internet.

On Tuesday a judge in the South Gauteng High Court will face various factions that for the moment make up Cosatu, and be asked to make a decision about whether Zwelinzima Vavi was suspended legally or not. Lucky judge.

Wits takes first steps in framing a much-needed conversation between the sciences and the arts.

A consortium of tertiary associations is needed if the humanities are to be strengthened.

Changing South Africa’s universities entails more than racial and gender equity.

New York Times correspondent Ron Nixon has written a remarkable account of how the Apartheid government repeatedly attempted to win the hearts and minds of African Americans.

As the war drums beat around Syria and the rumble of missile tests drifts across the Mediterranean, there’s a global argument raging.

Our elites may disagree on much. But they seem united on one issue — a belief that the poor must be told what to do.

This week, Water Affairs Minister Edna Molewa confirmed that a notice of intention to declare hydraulic fracturing – fracking – a controlled activity, had been gazetted for public comment.

The appointments by President Jacob Zuma of Mxolisi Nxasana to head the National Prosecuting Authority, and Vas Soni to run the Special Investigating Unit, come at a time when it seems the nation has started to grow weary of presidential appointments.

SABC executives reportedly want to see 70% positive news stories in every bulletin. ANN7 also wants to give the public “sunshine journalism”, and both feel the media should have a role to play in nation building.

Walter Sisulu University’s nine-months-and-counting salary dispute, and six-week strike, culminated in the closure of the university last week.

Dramatic pictures of our professors in full academic regalia protesting about recent water outages propelled Grahamstown into the national news for the wrong reasons.

It’s literally a case of the blind leading the blind at the crumbling Setotolwane special-needs school.

So-called ‘struggling’ schools that nevertheless succeed convey lessons we need to understand.

THE mergers and incorporations of higher education institutions was fundamentally projected to herald transformation so these institutions could better serve society.

Jon Qwelane is going to challenge the Equality Act. Well, if anyone was going to, it would probably be Jon, our honourable ambassador to Uganda.

Cities have emerged as a key site of popular struggle in post-apartheid South Africa. But with the ANC responding to independent organisation in an increasingly violent and repressive manner the future of these struggles is deeply uncertain.

(T)he paranoid construction is … an attempt to heal ourselves, to pull ourselves out of the real "illness", the "end of the world", the breakdown of the symbolic universe. ? Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, 1991.

On Monday it was confirmed that the inter-ministerial committee examining changing laws around alcohol had sent a proposed bill through to Cabinet proper.

On Thursday, UK parliamentarians will vote on the question of military intervention in Syria.

Any sensible person who has seen the film ‘Of Good Report’ will be scoffing at the Film and Publications Board's effective banning of the film on the grounds of child pornography.

THERE must be a way to discover the truth and give victims a voice that does not channel large sums of money to lawyers.

Rhoda Kadalie says poor schooling is not solely to blame for poor performance of black students in higher education.

THIS year, 22% of the national budget, or R232.5bn, will go to education. That’s an awful lot of money, the lion’s share in fact.

News item: President Jacob Zuma receives honorary doctorate of leadership from Limkokwing University during an official visit to Malaysia.

The representation at the Farlam Commission of more than 200 miners who were arrested and charged with the murder of their colleagues after the Marikana massacre still hangs in the balance.

The rural women who Khanyi Dhlomo says are part owners of her luxury store are reportedly in the dark about the deal, writes Verashni Pillay.

The chairmanship of the US Federal Reserve has been described as the most powerful financial position in the world, so it is not surprising that whenever the position is to be filled, considerable attention is paid to possible candidates and their likely approaches to monetary policy in the world’s largest economy.

Life is not easy for South African universities. They are struggling to deal with starving students and overcrowded residences, not to mention the fact that only a minority of students complete their courses within the allotted number of years.

Ever calm and thoughtful, Pansy Tlakula was a palate cleanser in South Africa’s often foul tasting political banquet. The possibility of her suspension from the Electoral Commission over a failure to disclose conflict of interest in a lease agreement would have enormous repercussions on the political landscape: the loss of a steadfast hand on the tiller of next year’s elections.

The minister of trade and industry has injected some urgency into the process to permit shale gas exploration. In response, the activists ranged against this industry have threatened legal obstructionism to delay the process.

When internationally celebrated artist Zwelethu Mthethwa appeared in court on Monday, charged with the murder of 23-year-old Nokuphila Kumalo, there were no jostling reporters or ANC Women’s League delegations.

Imagine a bank could tell, at the time of lending you money, exactly what the chances were of your paying it back. It is the banking equivalent of insurers trying to determine the chances of your making a claim.

Every moment you breathe is a special occasion.

What do you get when you combine Gupta money, supposedly cutting-edge technology, and a bunch of beautiful young models acting as news anchors? What you get is the omnishambles that is ANN7.

THE ANC, as an actually existing organisation, collapsed into serious crisis in exile. Since Jacob Zuma’s ascent to the Presidency, its crisis in government has been spiralling into ever tighter circles.

In 2008, the going got tough and we defaulted to our fractious tribes, writes Ray Hartley.

The fact that there is a crisis in South African education is not new. An objective outsider would agree that the weight of available evidence favours the judgment that our education system is in dire straits.

After more than 10 years, a quest to sue multi-national corporations for their role in supporting Apartheid seems to have met with failure.

Universities must become places where people can address their differences.

Noting the structural problems inherent in the South African economy and high levels of graduate unemployment, SACSIS’ Fazila Farouk interviews the Vice Chancellor of WITS University, Prof. Adam Habib about higher education’s contribution to South Africa’s racial and economic transformation.

A revered journalist to some and an Israeli apologist to others, Benjamin Pogrund is here from Israel to receive a human rights award from the South African Jewish Board of Deputies for his efforts in exposing injustices under apartheid.

Writing after the French Revolution Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, noted that “while the drama of great political changes is taking place” people “openly express universal yet disinterested sympathy for one set of protagonists against their adversaries”.

“African cities don’t work”, writes AbdouMaliq Simone at the beginning of his book For the City Yet to Come.

Fear plays a big part in South African politics. Don’t vote for him, he’s corrupt and will steal your money. Don’t vote for her, she’ll bring back Apartheid.

Wednesday was no ordinary day in the country’s legislative powerhouse; it was Women’s Parliament. These days, women don’t just get their very own government department, but almost an entire parliamentary day named for them.

During the Rape Crisis Teach-in held by the Rhodes University Politics Department in Grahamstown this July, South African historian and researcher Dr Catherine Burns, brought up a little known event that happened in Soweto in February 1990.

It’s taken just two years for the revolution to come full circle. Elections failed and democracy was a bust, so Egypt is reverting to the only government it really knows: repressive military-backed authoritarianism, fuelled this time round by an influx of Saudi petrodollars.

It’s been a good few weeks for SADC, at least as far as the region’s leaders are concerned.

The city will be unrecognisable in 20 years, writes Ray Hartley.

They’re funny things, titles. When you work in an academic environment, you get used to navigating the sensitivities around "Dr" and "Prof" (although the most accomplished scholars are usually the ones who care least about how you address them).

THE African National Congress (ANC) is far better off with a Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) which gives it a hard time than one which doesn’t.

And so it came to pass that on 20 August 2013 a former minister stood up in front of a room filled with her peers and received a sound dressing down for wrongdoing.

Before the Great Recession, there was a brouhaha in SA about bank charges. In 2008, the Jali Commission, appointed by the competition regulators, said that the oligopoly banking market was bad for consumers.

In just nine days time, President Jacob Zuma will have to either make good on his promise in a signed legal affidavit to the Constitutional Court to appoint a new National Director of Public Prosecutions, or find a really good excuse why he cannot do so.

Oscar Pistorius's shooting of Reeva Steenkamp and Cezanne Visser's parole turns us into denialists, writes Verashni Pillay.

When Vanessa Lynch’s father was brutally murdered in Johannesburg in 2004, she made it her mission to help educate South Africa about the vital role that DNA evidence can play in helping to convict criminals.

If a new project is rolled out as widely as planned, Tshwane residents may find themselves able to get online while strolling down public roads.

Rhodes University complained last week that it was "on the brink of having to close" after a water pump broke, leaving 11 residences and about 1,000 people without water for 10 days.

Listening to its hot shot young candidate, Mmusi Maimane, you’d be forgiven for forgetting the party has little chance of wresting Gauteng from the ANC.

Mapping South Africa’s capacity for farming is getting easier thanks to Earth observation.

Internet penetration in South Africa remains sluggish due to the high cost of connectivity.

South Africa is training the continent’s budding skywatchers to work on the SKA telescope project.

Schools are using the ambiguity of current directives to cast out their pregnant pupils.

The Winter Olympics will go ahead in Russia despite growing protests against the country’s increasingly homophobic policies, and individual athletes are finding novel ways of using their moment on the world’s stage to express their opposition to Putin’s laws.

An argument about whether the University of Cape Town should scrap its race-based admissions policy has been raging for the last few years.

How and when languages should be used is hot news in South Africa again. This is primarily because the Basic Education Department is looking at introducing compulsory African languages at schools, but it's also because we haven't settled on how to teach our children.

Africa’s share of the global creative economy is less than one percent. This means that Africans were consigned largely to being consumers of creative products – films, television, music – from more dominant economies, said Mike van Graan, executive director of the African Arts Institute.

The government’s National Youth Development Agency is only four years old, but became synonymous with wasteful expenditure after its 2010 splurge of R106 million on the World Festival of Youth and Students.

Not for the first time, a vast gulf has opened up between the country in which we live and the one in many people’s heads.

Forget the opinion pieces, the name-calling and the twitter-storms.

Last June, the African Union moved its summit to Ethiopia. Malawi, the planned host, had refused entry to Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

According to a new Amnesty International report, nearly a thousand prisoners died this year in just two prisons administered by Nigeria’s notoriously brutal armed forces.

On 10 October 2013, a certain segment of white South Africans left their children with the “girl” for a couple of hours as they marched through the streets demanding acknowledgement of the “genocide” (sic) being perpetrated against them as an “oppressed” (sic) minority.

We haven’t heard anything about the controversial Traditional Courts Bill for almost a year. Yet suddenly, there it was again: scheduled to be discussed clause by clause by the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Tuesday.

The seeds of South Africa’s next power crisis are now being sown. We are facing a "coal cliff" in 2018 when many of the large coal mines will exhaust their resources.

Excellence is a rare commodity in South Africa, both as an ideal and practical outcome. Mediocrity, its counterpoint, rules the roost. So much so, there is a strong case to be made South Africa is, in fact, a "mediocracy" not a meritocracy.

On Sunday Julius Malema had what must now be the third or fourth launch of his Economic Freedom Fighters.

On Monday, the North Gauteng High Court ruled that the approximately 300 mineworkers who were injured and arrested at Marikana last year should have their legal costs covered by Legal Aid SA.

South Africans often ask how Zimbabwe was able to adopt the dollar as its official currency and, conversely, how it could re-establish its own currency. The answers begin with an understanding of what money actually is.

Noluthando was allegedly possessed by izizwe (spirits). Her boyfriend from Katlegong, it seems, put them inside her.

It was over two years ago that President Jacob Zuma nominated Mogoeng Mogoeng as Chief Justice. It was one of those historic moments that only Zuma can create.

Union, BMW are at odds, but they share a common interest — a successful operation, writes Ray Hartley.

Opponents of e-tolls don’t seem to accept that the government has the right to pass stupid laws, says Eusebius McKaiser.

A task team set up by South Africa’s print and digital owners has rejected calls for a transformation charter – which has been opposed by newspaper editors as a back door to regulate the press inappropriately – and instead demanded more rigorous implementation of existing Black Economic Empowerment codes.

Though the party is upping its technology game, the marketing behind it remains weak, experts say.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation is set to announce the winner of its annual prize for exceptional African leadership on Monday.

Girls as young as 13, kidnapped and forced into marriages with older men. Boys as young as 14, dead as a result of botched circumcisions.

Artists are dressing up - or undressing - to make a point about who they really are. But is the spectacle more than just cheap drag?

When Rhodes University staff and students took to the streets to protest about being without water for more than nine days, President Jacob Zuma responded and promised to take action.

As news spread of the latest legal ruling concerning Gauteng’s e-tolls, discussion about paying for roads became, in just one jump, a discussion about civil disobedience.

When will they learn? It wasn’t quite Black Hawk Down, but America’s latest military intervention in Somalia was another unmitigated failure.

April 1994 saw an enormous continental contradiction: as one nation was being born, another was killing about 10% of its population. "Rwanda is our nightmare, SA is our dream," wrote Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka.

One of Cape Town’s most beloved fast-foods is also one of its least healthy. The Gatsby: traditionally a French loaf halved and filled with slap chips, meat and variables ranging from egg to fried calamari.

IF POLITICAL parties wonder why many young people don’t bother about party politics, they should look at the way they treat those who do.

Professor Jonathan Jansen is rector of the University of the Free State. On 18 September 2013 he delivered the English Academy of South Africa’s Percy Baneshik Memorial Lecture.

President Jacob Zuma's reading of the Bible misses an important point: we are allowed to criticise his decisions whether he likes it or not.

On Sunday NUMSA general secretary, Irvin Jim, decided to ratchet things up a bit in his little spat with BMW.

The DA took the e-tolls battle to the streets of Gauteng last week, erecting mysterious anonymous billboards criticizing the ANC for e-tolling.

The very legitimacy of the judiciary is at stake if we do not get an evidence-based assessment of the complaint against Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe, says the writer.

A bone marrow transplant can be the only way of saving the life of an adult or child with a terminal bone marrow disorder like leukemia.

The Rivonia Primary Case, which saw the Constitutional Court rule that government, through the Basic Education Department, has the final say in determining class sizes in government schools, is a story of nuance.

A small farm near Uitenhage is a shining example of how partnerships can work.

If our children are to stand tall, they must master the language used to exclude them.

Opposing parties put the elections first, uniting to try to stabilise a floundering electoral commission.

As older academics retire, there seems to be little deliberate action to bring new blood on board.

The government has a duty to ensure that universities are publicly accountable.

The Council on Higher Education’s damning report provides ample evidence of the need for urgently reforming the undergraduate curriculum — but are its proposals workable?

Too few stories have been translated into African languages: let’s do something about it.

The guns are silent as the community of Manenberg comes together to celebrate 12 years of learning.

But students are concerned that technical words don’t translate well.

After a brief respite after the launch of ANN7, the Guptas are back into the news.

If you look out into the veld at the intersection of the N2 highway and Baden Powell Drive, which takes you to Stellenbosch, you will notice something out of place.

Last week’s high court judgment rejecting the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) decision to drop charges against former crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli (he was at one point investigated for fraud, murder and other things) is something investors should pay attention to.

As always with matters Hlophe, it's important to provide some context.

Next year’s election will be about more than the result — it will also test one of the achievements of the past two decades, our ability to hold trouble-free elections.

On Tuesday the International Monetary Fund, that old capitalist Bretton Woods, US-dominated, structural adjustment programme imposer, told South Africa that our unions are too strong, demand too much, and stand in the way of economic growth.

Jacob Zuma's good-news philosophy is costing us lives, writes Verashni Pillay, in the wake of the Kenya attack and the release of the crime stats.

Inequality is among our greatest problems. More than 52% of South Africans live below the poverty line of R577 a month and about 13% live in inordinate poverty.

A small farm near Uitenhage is a shining example of how partnerships can work.

A sluggish economy is not a disaster for China, but it is a worry. Never ones to act in haste, China’s leadership is setting up a special free trade zone in Shanghai designed to test out various solutions to the looming economic malaise (all of them distinctly un-Communist, it should be noted).

A recent study in Vietnam, sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), reveals that demand for rhino horn may be much larger than previously thought. It shows that, in addition to consumers of rhino horn, there is a large group of "intenders" — people who intend to buy rhino horn when they can afford it.

Mining is supposed to be South Africa’s mainstay, a part of the economy that underpins everything else. Even though its importance has diminished over the years, it still matters enormously when something goes wrong.

As Kenya weeps, the ANC drags its feet on creating a policy on extremism, writes Ray Hartley The only people smiling are the members of al-Shabab wandering around the malls of South Africa with impunity.

The following is a transcription of a keynote speech made by Memeburn publisher and Creative Spark founder Matthew Buckland at the Youth Entrepreneurs Connect Conference at the Cape Town ICC on 28 September.

President Zuma singing at a Cosatu event in Midrand. In his column, McKaiser takes a look at the attacks on the presidents intellectual abilities and questions whether these stand or fall by the books he might or might not have read.

Saturday, September 28, was the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion. South Africa has one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world - on paper.

South Africa, and South Africans, value freedom. Some might be skeptical of this claim and believe that the water in this particular pot is heating up without us noticing. But scratch deeper, and you are bound to discover that things don’t happen in this country if citizens get angry enough.

When South Africa’s statistician-general pulled the plug on a keynote speaker at a recent conference,

DA Parliamentary Leader Lindiwe Mazibuko delivered a powerful message to students at Mangosuthu University of Technology in Umlazi

Factional battles and Jacob Zuma’s fight for survival within the ANC were responsible in part for the ANC not thinking ahead to the 2014 elections.

Nkosinathi Mngomezulu was shot in the stomach on Saturday morning. He was shot at the Marikana land occupation at Stop 1, Cato Crest in Durban during an eviction.

Creative Spirit THIS week's attack during a siege of a shopping mall in Kenya by the al Shabaab militant group was not only a fight for ideology but it will also be remembered

The siege may be over and the terrorists in custody, but the Westgate is still a smouldering ruin and there are bodies trapped in the wreckage.

In a week where one high-profile South African criminal – Rashied Staggie – was released from prison, two others have returned to prison.

It breaks Eusebius McKaiser’s heart that a six-year-old black girl wishes to be a white woman when she grows up.

When Kenya sent thousands of soldiers across the border to hunt down Al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Islamist militant group warned they would get their revenge.

The mid-90s in Cape Town should have been a time to rejoice in the transition to a hard-fought democracy, but for many Cape Flats residents it was a period of fear and turmoil.

Crime may be down, but Hillbrow’s illegal economy is too lucrative to eliminate corruption.

Poor detective work and weak police intelligence are behind worrying crime trends.

Less than 10% of Wikipedia entries are created by people outside Europe and North America. What this means is the available information on countries like South Africa is often incomplete, inadequate or inaccurate, but a new initiative aims to change that.

Elections are about credibility. Without it, they are nothing: a useless waste of time, speech, and money. With it, they determine a nation's future, how we're feeling about things, whether we have hope, and if we have a future.

Once upon a time, there was a railway line linking Addis Ababa with Djibouti. Haphazard and unmaintained, the route fell out of service and land-locked Ethiopia lost one of its most important lifelines to the sea. But it’s nothing a little bit of Chinese money can’t fix.

The Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities is currently inviting the public to bid for a tender to “conduct a market research on the DWCPD Brand”. Yes, really.

NEWS practitioners should take serious note of Herman Wasserman’s comment that "trust and credibility" underline the relationship between the media and society (Call for media to maintain public trust, September 9).

Donors, diplomats and supplicating Somali politicians met in Brussels on Monday to raise money for Somalia, which needs it desperately.

Tuesday morning saw the Department of Social Development present its White Paper on Families, and Tuesday afternoon saw the DA present its Green Paper on Social Protection.

You have opinions and prejudices that you want everyone to take seriously? Put a number on them. That way, you too can get loads of publicity while you mislead people on politics and labour.

The opposition's fervent support of the Marikana miners has been read as political opportunism, but civilians behind the campaign seem okay with it.

That there is something wrong with the way we currently run Black Economic Empowerment isn't a novel statement. We all know that somehow it's immoral and very hard to justify.

Over the past few weeks it's become evident that we are in the middle of one of those perennial discussions about whether our media is bad, mad or just plain evil. It started this time when Hlaudi Motsoeneng said he wanted “70% good news” in SABC bulletins.

THE tremendous growth in unsecured lending is partly a result of a shift in lending from home loans into personal loans by the big four banks.

Opponents of gay rights in Africa often suggest that homosexuality is “un-African”. But over the past few years, scholars and activists have warned with growing urgency that it is the increasing pitch of homophobia on the continent that is really un-African, because it is literally being imported in some cases.

On 28 August a protest on Wits campus saw among the worst instances of public anti-Semitism in the post-Apartheid era. The incident has attracted little substantive analysis in the South African media, despite what it reveals about the architecture of local anti-Semitism.

The union comes from a worker-centred tradition that puts it on a collision course with the ANC.

Black players at a Lowveld school answer racist taunts on the field with points on the board.

A principled principal has enjoyed tremendous success by instilling self-confidence in his pupils.

Some good-ish news for a Friday: the South African Institute of Race Relations says that despite all the naysayers, transformation has not failed in South Africa.

As a nation, we’ve grown accustomed to a staple of political scandal, claims of corruption, howls of outrage and innocence as well as the usual “innocent until proven guilty” side-dish.

The Democratic Alliance is taking flak for struggling to reconcile its non-racial philosophy with its newly trumpeted commitment to BEE.

Mobile phone ownership across the continent is rocketing, but can it expand higher education’s reach and quality?

Last year we said that Cape Town’s Open Book Festival, though only in its second year of existence, was establishing itself as South Africa’s pre-eminent literary festival. This year’s incarnation of the festival has supported that assertion.

Already a censor’s paradise, new regulations are making the Internet in China even more fraught for users who risk being slapped with a three-year prison term if they say the wrong thing online. SIMON ALLISON ducks behind the Great Firewall to explain the changes.

In a political playing field as contested and filled with as many agendas and subtexts as our own, there is very little we agree on. So, the things we do agree on need to be protected.

I was going to write about war and rank hypocrisy. US President Barack Obama told the world last week that he has decided to launch military attacks on Syria because "we are the United States of America, and we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to what happened in Damascus.

Financial website Moneyweb announced late last week that they are taking the Media24-owned website Fin24 to court for what they term “systematic plagiarism on an industrial scale”, for Fin24’s habit of repurposing stories first published on Moneyweb.

The Cabinet’s efforts to push through the proposed credit information amnesty has no possible explanation other than being a cheap attempt to attract votes in a core African National Congress (ANC) constituency in the run-up to next year’s elections.

A farmworker’s teenage son, beaten by the farmer and his manager so badly that he developed epilepsy and subsequently fell into a fire, ending up blind and without any hands.

Pablo Neruda, the great Chilean poet, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 for “a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams".

South African soldiers are again coming under fire in a messy conflict in central Africa. This time, the setting is the Democratic Republic of Congo. What are we doing there, and why are we on the attack?

Already reeling like a boxer on the ropes, Somalia’s so-called recovery is about to be derailed by a brutal one-two punch as Médecins Sans Frontières withdraws its medical services and Barclays cuts off the main remittance pipeline. It’s a devastating double blow for a country that still needs all the help it can get.

Five years ago, in September 2008, then president Thabo Mbeki was removed from office by the African National Congress (ANC). The event shook the foundations of the new South African order, raising questions about the constitution and altering the country’s destiny.

Don’t feed the trolls. That’s the general advice when confronted with these online pests.

In the wake of the release of this year’s Reconciliation Barometer, an annual survey of South African attitudes now in its tenth year, you’re likely to see a number of headlines proclaiming that class, rather than race, is now the most divisive social issue in South Africa. But don’t misunderstand: the Barometer’s findings clearly state that race and class are still intimately interlinked. The other headline finding of the survey is a significant drop over the past year in confidence in government institutions and politicians. But guess who’s top of the pops in the public opinion? Why, it’s Thuli Madonsela. By REBECCA DAVIS.

Expelled ANC councillor Andile Lili was at the helm of the October protests in Cape Town

The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) has raised concerns over what they call “an attempt to harass and intimidate”

Mmusi Maimane has found himself in a party in which, as one Democratic Alliance insider put it

“Will South Africans ever be shocked by rape?” a BBC op-ed asked in January this year, shortly before the rape and murder of Anene Booysen. In certain circumstances: yes. This week saw an outpouring of indignation over a question in the Matric Dramatic Art theory exam, which required pupils to describe how they would direct actors in the simulation of a rape using props to “maximise the horror”. The Department of Basic Education remains unapologetic. REBECCA DAVIS took a look at the furore.

The DA’s position on race-based affirmative action has been painted as inconsistent and confused this month, after the party changed its mind on supporting the Employment Equity Amendment Bill.

Despite nearly 2 000 EFF supporters turning out for Julius Malema's night vigil, many of these youthful backers have not registered to vote.

While our political commentariat has been focused on what now looks like the slow

Doubters of social grants, hear ye, hear ye: an extensive three-year study by academics from Oxford

As we live through a phony war ahead of real election time next year, Julius Malema is getting more and more attention. Sometimes it's claimed he's the Chosen One who will actually give the ANC the shock it needs.

South Africa needs an active citizenry. The first step is information. This is because there is a clear link between information and power and, as highlighted by the R2K campaign,....

On Monday evening, the President of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), Cedric Gina, confirmed that he had "given his resignation to the structures and members of the union". He also hinted that his fate now rests in the hands of Numsa members. This is a clear sign that Gina is more than unhappy at the direction Numsa is taking, as it prepares to leave the Alliance, and probably Cosatu itself. But it's also an indication of the very real tensions within Numsa, over what is probably the biggest, and most risky, decision it will ever make.

SOUTH Africa last week experienced electricity load shedding.

OUR reality is that too many who occupy positions of power, and are entrusted with the leadership are sorely wanting in the core values

The DA’s position on race-based affirmative action has been painted as inconsistent and confused this month, after the party changed its mind on supporting the Employment Equity Amendment Bill. They’ve also been presented as a party riven by internal conflict. On Sunday, after a weekend of policy conferencing, DA leaders were presenting a united front as they told journalists that their position on the matter is now clarified - and consistent with everything they’ve previously said. Internal tensions? What internal tensions? By REBECCA DAVIS.

The government has pointed out the need for greater labour market flexibility to create work but it has never enacted any amendments or laws to introduce it, writes Ray Hartley.The first and most obvious cause of joblessness has been the Labour Relations Act The proposed ban on liquor advertising would also cost tens of thousands of jobs.

Moves to ensure fair university admissions create several dilemmas, writes Max Price.To gain admission, some students wilfully misclassify themselves in relation to the old categories — particularly whites and Indians claiming to be coloured.

The wind picks up, blowing whorls of dust down the street. The men sitting on the side of the road avert their eyes and retreat further into the shade of the colonial-style building they are leaning against.

The Democratic Alliance's rising star, Mmusi Maimane is irked by his comparison with US President Barack Obama, which he tries to shrug off.

MOST people have been shocked by the land invasion, Zimbabwe style, by protesters in Uitenhage. Some are even outraged.

On Wednesday the Transport Minister Dipuo Peters confirmed that those massive structures

This week it emerged that Botswana has granted concessions to drill for natural gas over large tracts of land

Mxit 7 on iOS is gorgeous. Its reimagined J2ME client is perhaps even more impressive.

A delayed court bid effectively means Julius Malema's EFF may well find its way into a very interesting Parliament next year, writes Verashni Pillay.

A FREQUENT theme as we prepare for the election is the "born free" factor: it is the first in which the generation born after 1994 is eligible to register and some of us insist that this will change how people vote. Registration figures are watched closely to see how many newly eligible voters sign up because it is assumed the African National Congress (ANC) may battle to attract their support.

There are still untapped opportunities for software to completely revolutionise virtually every industry on the planet.

It was exactly 20 years ago on Monday that negotiators signed off on South Africa’s "interim" constitution, a document that would guide the transition from apartheid to democracy.

We have all the resources we need to create entrepreneurs. Believe in your idea, but most importantly believe in yourself.

You may well find canned lion hunting morally repugnant. But responses to US hunter Melissa Bachman

African universities need to rethink how they understand success factors, according to Professor Cheryl de la Ray, vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Pretoria and former chief executive of South Africa’s Council on Higher Education.

The brutal gang rapes and murders of a 23-year-old Indian student and South Africa’s Anene Booysen

Your approach to the 2012/2013 audit outcomes of government departments and public entities

In the court of public opinion, legal papers and affidavits with their Latin and their length are often, thankfully neglected.

WHY does no one seem to have a problem with being forced to apply for a democratic citizen’s most basic right?

TAKING the untrodden road and challenging the dance creative status quo has paid off richly for a former Rhodes University student.

THE equity index (EI) study conducted by University of KwaZulu-Natal researchers is rightfully

Tuesday morning brought the news that another 29 people had died in a road accident on Monday night,

The ANC looks bad whichever way Cyril Ramaphosa meant his nonsensical statement about the boers coming back if we don’t vote, writes Verashni Pillay.

It’s a week when secrecy – broadly construed – is in the news.

No single event can prove or disprove climate change – and anyways, we don’t have enough

In a remote corner of Patagonia, a community exists to whom Sarie Marais is a familiar ditty and melktert is sold in the local café.

The DA faces interesting pressures as it grows in size. From some, there is pressure on the party to be more inclusive in its identity. It has to be attractive to people whose fundamental principles, values and lifestyles are not liberal.

LAST month, forensic auditor Lawrence Moepi was killed in a suspected hit, as he arrived at his Johannesburg office.

This is a collaborative piece between learners from Ntsika Secondary School and Pedro Tabensky. The learners have been having conversations with him for a few months and wish through this article to reflect their thoughts and feelings about growing up in Grahamstown East.The result is a reconstruction of these conversations.

ALMOST exactly 20 years ago, in November 1993, the results of a survey of South African attitudes to democracy was released.

What do footballer Lucas Radebe, activist Rhoda Kadalie, ‘Paleo diet’-advocate Tim Noakes and Business Day editor Peter Bruce – to name a few – have to teach the South African public about ethics?

Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters have invoked the legacy of former Burkina Faso president Thomas Sankara as a model of governance they apparently wish to emulate.

RECENT revelations about the extent of US government spying have put secrecy and privacy at the centre of that country’s national debate. South Africa should be having a similar conversation. Only the credulous would believe this government isn’t spying on many of its citizens. After all, sections of the state have turned spying on government officials into an art form

In the same way that a businessman who once ruled the JSE with pomp and flair is finally brought down to earth with a sequestration hearing in a shabby courtroom, so the political boom that was the ANC Youth League during the Malema years has come to a staggering bust in the South Gauteng High Court.

A debate between the DA and ANC hosted on SABC on Sunday night didn’t offer much more than the opportunity to see Western Cape Public Works MEC, Robin Carlisle, and ANC Western Cape chair, Marius Fransman, yelling over each other in front of a baying audience.

On Sunday, in what could have been a carefully placed exclusive, Advocate Dali Mpofu confirmed to the City Press

TWO weeks before he died in March, the economist Tony Twine made public the results of his research into “economic considerations surrounding potential shale gas resources in the southern Karoo of South Africa”.

There is a very disturbing document making its way into universities in South Africa.

The post-1994 government’s moves to redress the apartheid inequalities teachers and black people had suffered amounted to “overcompensation”, AgangSA leader Mamphela Ramphele told an overseas conference this week.

Official rationales for increasing education enrolment are highly questionable.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is now 77 years old, and a record kept by her while in detention in 1969 has recently been published.

Chinese media has gone suspiciously silent about what exactly happened in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Monday.

On Tuesday night STEPHEN GROOTES, who likes to think he can put people in a tight spot, found himself on the wrong side of the conversation.

The medium-term budget policy statement released last week makes for sombre reading. Its key message is that five consecutive years of subpar economic growth have left fiscal policy with no room for manoeuvre.

People making fewer phone calls is fast becoming a worldwide trend. And there's not much network operators can do about it, says Alistair Fairweather.

In Cape Town, marches to Parliament or the provincial legislature are so common that sometimes they barely make the news.

PMG minutes of UKZN VC and Professor's presentation to portfolio committee on higher education (Oct 23)

With digital television imminent, broadcast media are anxious for the opportunities inherent in multichannel. In Digital Terrestrial Transmission (DTT), the use of digital signals allows a large amount of spectrum to be released for other purposes.

Anene Booysen would have been 18 years old today. Instead of celebrating her birthday, Booysen’s family and friends will hear what sentence the man ruled responsible for her gruesome rape and murder will receive.

Sometimes, diplomacy is all about timing. This week, a fortunate Jacob Zuma got his timing exactly right, turning up in Kinshasa just as South African troops helped the Congolese army to a major victory over rebels in the east.

Real moral courage means putting your career at risk for the greater good, writes Eusebius McKaiser.

If we think that flashy and wasteful spending is the invention and sole property of the government, we have not been paying attention.

When Bruce Springsteen steps on to the stage in Cape Town on the 28th of January next year it will be his first performance in South Africa, but it won’t be his first connection to South Africa.

Award-winning South African hip-hop star Khuli Chana was recovering at home yesterday after having been shot by police in an apparent case of mistaken identity during the hunt for a kidnapper.

It's been a tough couple of months for those of us who believe that our communications should be private.

This week marks the one year anniversary of the strikes by Western Cape farmworkers which left three workers dead, saw R160 million claimed for in insurance, and resulted in a 52% increase in the minimum wage for the sector.

Fourteen Caribbean nations are to sue European governments for reparations for slavery. The Caribbean Community (Caricom) is bringing lawsuits to the International Court of Justice in the Hague against Britain, France and the Netherlands for their roles in the Atlantic slave trade.

Research reveals that poor language and maths education in SA is failing hundreds of thousands.

Poor performance in public schools is likely to accelerate the growth of private education.

The art of politics is essentially the art of allocating resources in a fashion that keeps everyone happy while still voting for the ruling party. The art of politics is essentially the art of allocating resources in a fashion that keeps everyone happy while still voting for the ruling party.

If South African politics has an original sin (apart from, you know, Apartheid, four hundreds years of racial violence etc) it is probably the Arms Deal.

The racial origin of the Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s) leader is much less important than the message it sends to voters.

Back during South Africa’s “ancien régime”, included in their diplomatic staff, the bigger foreign embassies in this country almost always had political observers and analysts who specialized in either white politics, or black politics.

Last week’s ruling in the Cape Town Labour Court that the Department of Correctional Services should make appointments in line with regional as well as national racial demographics amounts to a victory for the Western Cape’s coloured community.

Although the Hewitt’s experience Mamelodi for a Month has been written and talked about (and hit the front pages of newspapers around the world),

What language should South African children be taught in?

Why do we crave love? Why do we choose one ¬person over another? What do cocaine and love have in common?

IN the rush to build relationships with rising industrial powers China and India, South Africa

If you think Africa’s only about coups, civil wars and crazy dictators…well, we do have a few of those.

It was a horrifying start to 2013. Two deaths, less than two months apart, which drew attention

If there was one thing that could not have been predicted before Nelson Mandela Memorial

As most of the country and the world have stopped business as usual to remember Nelson Mandela

On Tuesday, at what the ANC called an “urgent press conference”, it spat fire at the Public Protectors, claiming Thuli Madonsela had admitted her office was responsible for the leak of her provisional Nkandla report, and saying that she was “playing political games” with the document.

As Numsa head towards their special congress in Boksburg next week the tensions within Cosatu

EITHER trade union history is about to repeat itself or the African National Congress (ANC)

The British TV series Up, which selected a group of children and filmed an update on their lives

To a political alien from another system, President Jacob Zuma must look like a boxer on the ropes.

In case you haven't heard, those white ornaments above the Gauteng highways go live today.

In the Students’ Union Foyer, at the base of the University of Cape Town’s Jagger Library, hang a series of paintings by the South African artist Richard Baholo.

The EFF leader’s muted appearance in court was a prelude to an unusual rally outside

Addressing his supporters outside court in Polokwane on Monday last week, Julius Malema warned EFF members to keep their zips closed so that the party is not dragged into a rape case.

EVERY now and then, we are reminded that South African liberalism, like its counterparts elsewhere,