Minister of Education Kader Asmal tells David Robbins why he believes tertiary education is going through a malaise, not a crisis ‘I’m going to shock you,” says Minister of Education Kader Asmal, “by saying that I don’t think there’s a crisis in South Africa’s third-level education sector. It’s certainly not in a state of terminal […]

Howard Barrell India was the country largely responsible for quashing Commonwealth plans at last weekend’s summit in Durban to step up monitoring of member states’ human rights records. Strongly supported by Malaysia, India led resistance at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) to recommendations that the 54-nation grouping increase its ability to act against […]

David Robbins All public universities and technikons are partially funded by the state via a formula which calculates individual institutional funding according to a set of established criteria. In a tertiary sector in considerable flux, a deal of dissatisfaction has been expressed about the formula currently in use. There’s also talk of using a modified […]

Peter Dickson The Eastern Cape government’s sorry saga of in-house corruption and “creative bookkeeping” amid a legacy of poverty and neglect has been the butt of post- apartheid political satire for much of the last five years. This week, for the first time since 1994 and amid growing public outrage and open scorn at Bisho’s […]

MORE than 2500 people employed by chiefs in the Northern Provicne have been on strike for 18 days, demanding to become public servants, but the provincial administration is not budging. The strikers are members of the Trade Union of South African Authorities(Tusaa), represented in 780 tribal authorities. They are demanding to be registered as public […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni A Mpumalanga local council does not have a telephone line despite applying for one two years ago. Patrick Aphane, a councillor at the Moutse Transitional Local Council, says he believes the delays are due to lack of commitment by Telkom staff. “At various summits, Telkom officials gave us the impression that […]

Connie Selebogo and Jubie Matlou WHO IS … JOE NDHLELA? Joe Ndhlela does not easily pick up a fight. However, the Premier Soccer League (PSL) CEO has lately found himself on a collision course with certain members of the powerful board of governors of the league. This showdown has a negative impact on South Africa’s […]

drain The Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council’s plan to rejuvenate the city is nothing more than a localised version of Gear in which privatisation is central, writes Ebrahim Harvey The most tragic thing about the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council’s (GJMC) iGoli 2002 plan is that it is not only the council’s 29 000 employees who will […]

Gavin Foster The fight by Christian Education South Africa (Cesa), a fundamentalist Christian schooling group, to reverse the ban on beating schoolchildren suffered a setback on Monday when a Durban school worker was convicted of common assault. After convicting Valerie Ryan (48), magistrate SJ Mayeza discharged her with a caution, saying Ryan believed her actions […]

Donna Block SHARE WORLD Will he or won’t he, will he or won’t he? This has been the refrain from economists, analysts and investors this week as they awaited news on whether United States central banker extraordinaire, Alan Greenspan, was going to join his peers and raise short-term interest rates, or not. In the past […]