At about 4pm on Tuesday afternoon a casual observer might have thought things were back to normal in Refenkgotso, a small township in Deneysville, just south of the Vaal river. The previous morning’s rioting by a mob numbering a few hundred people had left a local ANC councillor dead and a municipal building partially burnt and vandalised. But by the next day, children were playing pick-up soccer games or huddling around braziers as usual.
Those among us who are lazy and harbour racist attitudes could soon be unemployable if software being developed in the United Kingdom becomes popular with local recruiters. Titled Implicitly, the psychometric test uses implicit attitude theory, which suggests that people possess implicit attitudes about which they might not have conscious awareness.
The Judicial Officers’ Association of South Africa said this week that the concerns about salary increases raised by judges also apply to magistrates, whose judicial functions and responsibilities are ”virtually identical”, differing only with respect to jurisdiction. South Africa’s judges have declined a 17% pay rise, saying that as Chief Justice Pius Langa was due to receive a 65% increase the huge disparities in salaries were divisive.
A study commissioned by the International Labour Organisation and the department of environmental affairs and tourism’s child-labour programme of action has found that one of every four people who scavenge for recyclables on a landfill or dumpsite is a child under the age of 18.
"The majority of South Africans, I think, live a very mimicked lifestyle." Kwanele Sosibo speaks to artistic young people at a Jo’burg inner-city art gallery about the possibilities that being South African holds, and wonders whether the youth have arrived at a common identity 14 years after the advent of democracy.
The SABC has not officially confirmed whether or not it will screen Unauthorised: Thabo Mbeki, the documentary on the president that it had pulled off its schedule 13 months ago for being “incurably defamatory”. Ben Cashdan of Broad Daylight Films, the film’s producers, said the SABC had confirmed receipt of the master copy.
It is often easy to pack up and leave, without thinking about what happens afterwards. Pollution, water contamination and waste are unwelcome cousins many companies cannot get away from quickly enough. The community left behind has to deal with the fallout.
SADC countries are proposing the reopening of ivory trade to countries certified as trading partners by the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (Cites). But a conservation group warned this week that the region does not have its own house in order, as domestic sales of ivory continue to thrive.
South African-born author Christopher Hope, now resident in France, may find himself embroiled in a literary scandal over allegations that his novel My Mother’s Lovers contains characters and situations that are startlingly similar to those in Liz McGregor’s biography Khabzela: The Life and Times of a South African.
The Mail & Guardian continued to move onwards and upwards in the first three months of this year, notching up impressive circulation growth between January and March. The latest Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures, released on May 17, show that the M&G‘s circulation figure for the period was 47 133 — 5 018 copies, or 11,9%, per week more than in the same period last year