Bongani Siqoko The road to Alexandra clinic is lined with filthy industrial buildings. But the large, brightly painted clinic looks cared for and cheerful. Many visitors mistake it for a creche. Inside, however, it looks like any other state-funded health institution. Very long queues, busy nurses, crying children and wheelchairs fill the waiting room. The […]
academics investigated The allegedly outlandish perks of the University of the Western Cape’s rector have sparked a probe into top academics’ salaries, reports Andy Duffy A staff memo that values University of the Western Cape (UWC) rector Cecil Abrahams’s pay and perks at close to R1-million a year has helped trigger a government probe into […]
Lizeka Mda The challenge to South Africa’s abortion legislation being heard next week in the Pretoria High Court pays little attention to the needs and desires of South Africa’s women. On Monday, three groupings – the Christian Lawyers Association of Southern Africa, Christians for Truth in South Africa and United Christian Action – challenge the […]
Duncan Mackay witnesses auspicious changes in the status of Qatar’s women The approach to the Khalifa Stadium on the edges of Doha, Qatar’s capital city, takes you down a long road past date palms, papyruses and cypresses. Creamy buildings, which seem to have been lifted from either Paris boulevards or Cairo squares, rise steeply from […]
With a clogged-up justice system, prisons are bursting at the seams with remand inmates. Angella Johnson braves ‘Sun City’ The first thing that hits you is the smell. It is the same in every prison: a rancid aroma of cleansing fluid, stale sweat, urine and more than a whiff of despair which clings to your […]
Ferial Haffajee In KwaZulu-Natal a community of women risk getting eaten by crocodiles and bitten by snakes. It’s the peril they face on their daily trek to collect water. Other women told the poverty hearings in other provinces that they are raped or harassed as they make their way to watering holes. Water provision is […]
David Pallister The British salesman sank with evident relief into his club-class seat as the plane prepared to take off from Murtala Muhammed airport. Doing business in humid, chaotic Lagos, even selling defence electronic equipment to the military junta, was never the easiest of jobs. In answer to the question, “So how much commission do […]
Because of its position on the equator, a space base on a converted oil rig could have the international edge, writes Tim Radford In October the first satellite launched from a pad in the open ocean is due to arrive in its orbit, 35 000km out in space. Sea Launch, a once-unimaginable business consortium from […]
Norman Reynolds: A SECOND LOOK Public anger about the violence involved in the taxi wars is intensifying. In township after township people have met and marched, but to no avail: citizens remain the victims of an unfair, dangerous and badly organised industry. The government has promised to reform the “taxi industry”. It is trying to […]
Alex Brummer In an eloquent gesture, designed to underpin development in Uganda – the first of the poorest countries to receive some debt forgiveness – the World Bank advanced the government of President Yoweri Museveni a grant of $75-million this month to support universal primary education across the country. The move demonstrates just how far […]