Ilse Ferreira looks at the challenges facing the profession and how universities are helping to improve the quality of engineers.

Architects work in a challenging environment. We have fewer than 4 000 registered architects in the country, compared with Egypt’s 14 000.

Democracy has always, in its broadest definition, been based on the rule of law. Currently, this premise reels under the pressure of recent events in the South African judiciary. A judiciary immune to political interference is crucial to a democracy, writes Ilse Ferreira.

The Corporate Laws Amendment Act, which became law at the end of last year, has introduced a number of changes to company legislation. The Act has introduced the concept of a "widely held" company and described certain compliance requirements which must be met.

Sedibeng, the district municipality comprising the municipalities of Midvaal, Lesedi and Emfuleni, is a district with a long-term plan that shows it is far from being reticent. The area is one of the poorest in southern Gauteng. Historically, the it was predominantly white and middle class.

“It is not enough for large legal firms to quote the number of black lawyers in their firm when vying for contracts,” says Mohamed Husain of Knowles Husain Lindsay, who has been intimately involved in the drafting of the Legal Services Charter. “Many lawyers of colour have been and are still being marginalised and kept from corporate and commercial legal work. This is one of the problems the charter seeks to rectify.”

A lawyer’s duty must reach beyond the letter of the law, says Professor Christof Heyns, dean of the faculty of law at the University of Pretoria. But he believes students are not prepared for this because the education system is teaching law without context. “Pursuing and protecting the rule of law is the business of lawyers," says Heyns.

The Law Society of South Africa has placed transformation at the top of its agenda. Its close involvement with the Legal Services Charter process is evidence of this. The charter was launched under the auspices of the minister of justice in August last year and has since undergone extensive redrafting. The Law Society has noted that the third draft, released in mid-October, is simpler, more focused and reflects a social compact between the providers of legal services and the public.

Rural areas — in any country — have always presented a challenge to both the inhabitants and local government in terms of infrastructure and services. This makes economic viability of these areas difficult to achieve. But in South Africa no one is ­sitting still when it comes to ­finding alternatives to conventional ­infrastructural delivery — whether in the area of telephony, internet access or power ­generation.