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/ 27 November 2009
Harriet Bolton, guardian of the rising union movement of the 1970s, died this week.
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/ 10 October 2008
What has the Expanded Public Works Programme achieved in the period since its launch in 2004?
In 2000/01 South Africa endured a cholera epidemic that spread throughout the eastern coastal region and to other provinces. It resulted in 265 deaths in five provinces and 117 147 people, mostly in KwaZulu-Natal, were infected. The epidemic was, according to the World Health Organisation, the biggest such outbreak in Africa for the reporting period.
The incoming government has announced that service delivery will be the watchword of all departments and has spelt out targets: providing a million jobs, halving the number of people living in poverty, delivering water for all by 2008 and sanitation by 2010. The question is whether they can be practically realised with existing financial commitments in annual budgets. The government will have to double budgets for water and electricity to halve the poverty rate by 2010.