Animal activists have slammed the government’s latest elephant management plan, which is designed to relieve the pressure the growing elephant population is putting on the environment. The plan, called the Draft Norms and Standards for the Management of Elephants in South Africa, was released by Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk recently.
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/ 27 February 2007
The Mail & Guardian‘s Greening the Future Awards provide a platform for showcasing corporate environmental best practice. Our panel of judges comprises some of the most esteemed and forward-thinking minds involved in shaping environmental sustainability in South Africa.
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/ 25 February 2007
Afrikaners better start packing and head out to the Heilbron Spar. Because old president Nelson Mandela is dead and the night of the long knives is coming. That is if you believe an internet posting from Racheltjie de Beer, a member of the Suidlanders, an Afrikaner extremist group.
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/ 22 February 2007
This year could be the most difficult for farmers in all of South Africa’s history, a grim AgriSA president, Lourie Bosman, said this week. The burden was getting too heavy for many farmers and they "want out", he said. Bosman’s comments come in the context of a strained relationship between white farmers and the minister of agriculture.
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/ 19 February 2007
Advanced plans for a R600-million luxury wildlife estate on the border of the Kruger Park have sparked a war of words between the developer and the Limpopo government, and have split the local African community. It appears the land is subject to a restitution claim, and SA National Parks has raised environmental objections. An environmental impact assessment is still awaited.
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/ 16 February 2007
When the Johannesburg airport’s name was changed to OR Tambo, an airport sign was vandalised by someone who thought De la Rey International was the way to go. The long-dead South African Anglo-Boer War hero, General Koos de la Rey, has become a new cult figure for many Afrikaners as the result of a song by musician Bok van Blerk.
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/ 5 February 2007
When President Thabo Mbeki attacked environmental processes for being too slow last year, many environmentalists were outraged. After a Cabinet lekgotla, Mbeki said environmental legislation was causing development delays and had contributed to “a quite considerable slowing down of economic activity”.
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/ 15 January 2007
Pelargonium, a plant used in cold and flu remedies, has become a new battleground in the campaign to protect South Africa’s indigenous flora and traditional knowledge from bio-pirates. Mariam Mayet, founder of the African Centre for Biosafety, complained recently that two species of the plant were being patented in the United States and Europe as a cold remedy.
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/ 12 January 2007
Land tensions are boiling over in parts of KwaZulu-Natal, a local land activist warned after a farm manager was beaten to death near Eshowe recently. Ken Eva was killed by an angry mob during a meeting with the eSibhonsweni community over land ownership and evictions on the New Venture farm in the Melmoth district. Eva’s car was also set alight.
Last year audiences gasped at Al Gore’s climate-change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. There was no blood and only a little Gore and for the most part just hard, scary facts. What can South Africans expect from a world whose climate is rapidly changing? The Mail & Guardian foresees stormy weather ahead.