Johannesburg taxi drivers this week threatened register their protest against escalating fuel prices.
For many immigrants, economic and political desperation is a more powerful motive than fear of xenophobia. Foreigners interviewed in strife-torn settlements this week either refused to flee the violence or have drifted back. In interviews, Zimbabwean nationals insisted they would neither move to camps nor return to their home country, where there was nothing for them.
Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s public appearance and statements deploring xenophobic violence at the weekend seem have boosted his popularity among inhabitants of migrant labour hostels in Johannesburg.
The anti-foreigner upsurge in Gauteng has subsided almost as quickly as it erupted — and everyone has a different theory about why. Gauteng spokesperson for the South African Police Service Govindsamy Mariemuthoo insisted police intervention was the major factor.
Wandile Langa (20) says he is a proud xenophobe whose greatest satisfaction would be to see all "Shangaans go back to where they came from". He means Mozambican Shangaans. "It’s war I tell you; it’s South Africa versus Maputo." Langa is sitting in the back seat of our car as we speed through the rubble and ash from burnt tyres in the Ramaphosa informal settlement.
One of the first things that Professor Peter Mbati will have to do when he officially takes office in two weeks as vice-chancellor of the University of Venda (Univen) is to deal with a damning internal audit about widespread financial and administrative irregularities at the institution.
South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer has come under renewed pressure to rethink her participation in the first International Writer’s Festival in Jerusalem later this month, which coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state. This week 100 South African university students wrote to Gordimer asking her to boycott the festival, which Palestinians will not attend.
South African learners need to be protected from the naked truth, it seems. The department of education disclosed this week that it has removed controversial ”naked artist” Steven Cohen from the visual arts curriculum’s prescribed list, saying his works are ”not suitable for school learners”.
Getting a foot on the property ladder has become increasingly difficult. As for government’s delivery of free houses to the country’s poorest, it’s a frustrating process, fraught with delays. But for those who have received Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses, it’s been a life-changing experience.
A serial dieter, a budding botanist or a gardening enthusiast? The disappearance of <i>Hoodia gordonii</i>, a rare indigenous succulent, from the garden of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Origins Centre has caused a stir. The plant’s claim to fame is its P57, an appetite-suppressing substance, which is widely used for weight loss.