Louise Flanagan
Guest Author
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/ 23 October 2006

Avoid commercialisation, initiation hearing is told

Initiation schools could avoid problems by avoiding commercialisation and keeping strict control, a public hearing on initiation schools heard on Monday. ”We don’t do it for gain. We do it for the pride that’s involved, the spirituality, the richness that’s involved,” said Titus Kgatoke, the secretary of an Ndebele initiation school based in Thembisa, north-east of Johannesburg.

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/ 13 October 2006

Report slams quality of SA education

Nearly 80% of South African high schools are failing their children, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) said on Friday. ”The bad news in South Africa is that nearly 80% of schools provide education of such poor quality that they constitute a very significant obstacle to social and economic development,” wrote Nick Taylor in the IJR’s 2006 transformation audit, titled Money and Morality.

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/ 10 October 2006

Rescuers call off search for missing miner

Rescuers lugged heavy equipment underground for kilometres, abseiled, waded through flooded tunnels and finally gave up searching on Tuesday for a man who fell in an abandoned mine near Barberton. ”We went through hell the last three or four days,” said Inspector Danie Theron, of the White River police search-and-rescue unit.

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/ 20 September 2006

Cosatu leadership battle more than political alignment

The battle for positions in the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is about more than the political alignment between supporters of African National Congress president Thabo Mbeki and his deputy Jacob Zuma, said Professor Devan Pillay on Wednesday. ”The key factor here is the question of the relationship between the president and the general secretary.”

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/ 19 September 2006

Cosatu: No leadership opposition identified

By the end of the second day of the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) congress in Midrand, there was still no clarity on whether there was any official opposition to the present leadership. The nominations for new national office bearers for Cosatu closed on Tuesday but no details on any possible new candidates were being released.

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/ 14 September 2006

Report says Cosatu needs to renew itself

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is not in an organisational crisis but will have to renew itself, says the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (Naledi). Naledi’s made the observation in its State of Cosatu report released this week, ahead of Cosatu’s national conference next week.

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/ 31 August 2006

SA dam levels close to overflowing

South Africa’s dams are 92% full, according to the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s records. The department reports on its website that the dams were only 65% full this time last year. This week, dam levels in the provinces ranged from overflowing in the Northern Cape to 72% full in Limpopo.