A bevy of girls emerges from a group of farmhouses, three of them giggling after they spot rare visitors to this part of the world: two Chinese nationals. The men are part of a group of journalists that has been invited to tour various farms to inspect South Africa’s land reform programme. The girls belong to nine black families that bought the property from a white commercial farmer, Toets Cahl, in February.
As South Africa’s new government braces itself for the task of extending clean water supplies to more people, environmentalists are warning there may soon be little water to distribute if conservation efforts are not stepped up. They believe the country will run out of water by 2030 unless current water resources are better maintained.
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Mention disputes over party funding, and the image that might first come to mind is that of Republicans and Democrats in the United States, trading allegations about reliance on special interest groups. However, the matter also sparked controversy in South Africa recently, as the country prepared for its third democratic election.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>Of all the achievements chalked up by the African National Congress over the past 10 years, none seems to match its gains in providing housing for the poor. When Nelson Mandela took office in 1994, official estimates of the housing backlog ranged from 1,4-million to three million units — while the number of people living in shacks was put between five million and 7,7-million.
As a group of academics discovered, it takes just a quick trip to Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg to be confronted with the problems that still plague South Africa. The group of about 200 had been invited to review the first decade of democracy under the auspices of a conference entitled <i>South Africa: Ten Years after Apartheid</i>.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>Academics and political analysts from around the world have gathered in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, for a conference on the achievements of the first decade of democracy in the country. "Post-apartheid South Africa has taught all of us that even those who are made into the worst enemies can overcome the trauma of such a tragedy," said Salim Ahmed Salim.
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As the date of South Africa’s general election grows closer, the gloves are coming off in campaigning amongst political parties — even though the outcome of the poll is expected to hold few surprises. Political commentator Chris Landsberg of the Johannesburg-based Centre for Policy Studies says he is worried by the level of hostility in the campaign.
”For many black South Africans very little has changed: the same people still own the big houses, they still hold down the best jobs, they still drive the fancy cars that speed — unseeing — past the black informal settlements that line our first-world highways,” says FW de Klerk, the country’s last apartheid-era president.
When the new Pan-African Parliament is inaugurated in Ethiopia next week, it will confront a host of challenging issues — not least the role of mercenaries in Africa. ”Mercenaries are now topical. They are in the news,” Frene Ginwala, the Speaker of South Africa’s National Assembly, told journalists in Johannesburg on March 12.
The plight of birdlife in Africa and other parts of the world is being highlighted at a meeting that is currently under way in the South African port city of Durban. A global report on bird populations has warned that a third of the world’s bird species is at risk of extinction. This amounts to about 400 types of birds.