John Reader’s Africa: ABiography of the Continent is one of the titles shortlisted for The Sunday Times’s Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction, the winner of which will be announced on Friday June 5. The other shortlisted titles are From Protest to Challenge, Vol V, by Thomas Karis and Gail Gerhart, Mokoko: The Makgoba Affair by […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga The African National Congress in the Northern Province this week met one of its allies, the Congress of South African Students (Cosas), in a bid to iron out differences between Cosas and MEC of Education Joe Phaahla. Relations between Phaahla and Cosas hit an all-time low last week when the provincial chair […]

row Cotton is the only cash income for peasants in Maringu. A farmer who grew the average of 300kg per hectare earned about R450 last year. With this, families need to buy whatever they do not grow or make themselves. As the cotton is being harvested, expectation hangs in the air. Families picking the crop […]

The prospect of state schools closing their doors to the nation’s children next week is undoubtedly the biggest crisis this country has faced in four years of democratic government. The signs are everywhere that education has come off the rails; should there be a strike now, this schooling year might just as well be written […]

Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon Say what you like, the African National Congress is proving itself a paragon of what many modern democratic governments should strive to become. No more so is this ranking emphasised than in the ANC’s great resilience and, with that, fortitude, vision, determination, tenacity, sheer nerve and, when all else fails, that […]

Nedlac has come to the negotiation table with a proposal which could keep teachers in their classrooms, reports Sechaba ka’Nkosi A last-minute proposal tabled by the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) to the government and the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) could prevent the country’s biggest teacher strike next week. The strike […]

theNet Mukoni T Ratshitanga A Singapore-based agency which sells customers “camouflaged” bank accounts, driver’s licences and college degrees is also selling “Southern African passports and identity documents” on the Internet. The agency, Expat World Special Services, offers in the June edition of its monthly newsletter “an official Southern African Government Immigration Program” which gives permanent […]

Ann Eveleth The highest bidder for resort parastatal Aventura instructed attorneys this week to force Minister of Public Enterprises Stella Sigcau to back down from her decision to choose the buyer before a parliamentary debate on the sale. Parliament’s public enterprises portfolio committee this week also accused Sigcau of “pre-empting the activities of Parliament” and […]

Smoking cigarettes can prevent breast cancer in women carrying rare genes that predispose them to the disease, suggests a highly controversial new study. An international team, co-ordinated by Steven Narod of the Women’s College hospital in Toronto, looked at the relationship between lifestyle and breast cancer in more than 300 women with inherited mutations in […]

Ferial Haffajee The bid to challenge the country’s first private television licence hung by a thread this week. The powerful Free to Air consortium has lost the support of Primedia for its court battle, and the industry is speculating that two other shareholders will withdraw their support. Rival bidders for the lucrative licence earlier indicated […]