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/ 27 October 2006
"When we want to work for a better future for our children, we must work together." These were the words of former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano on Thursday evening at the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> and Southern Africa Trust’s 2006 Investing in the Future Awards.
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/ 27 October 2006
South Africa has again shown itself to be a unique archive on the dawn of animal life of our planet. Recently, its fossil treasury delivered yet another precious find: a 360-million-year-old fish. The 4cm-long lamprey, discovered near Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, is the oldest fish of its kind yet discovered.
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/ 22 October 2006
A leading land expert this week warned that expropriation should not be seen as the sole saviour of land reform in South Africa. Edward Lahiff says that, given the active condition of the land market in South Africa, there is no reason why the majority of land reform needs cannot be met through negotiated purchases.
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/ 19 October 2006
A South African astronomer has made a startling discovery about one of the world’s most closely studied galaxies. A team of scientists led by David Block from the University of the Witwatersrand has found new evidence that the Andromeda galaxy was involved in a violent head-on collision with its neighbouring dwarf galaxy more than 200-million years ago.
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/ 13 October 2006
Little Foot, the first complete fossil Australopithecus skeleton, found at Sterkfontein nine years ago, has raised questions about whether the cave complex near Krugersdorp really is the ”Cradle of Humankind”. Ron Clarke, celebrated palaeo-anthropologist and Little Foot’s ”caretaker”, insisted that Africa, not South Africa, had to be seen as the cradle.
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/ 13 October 2006
The ”blue Scorpions” have opened 500 cases of water crime in a countrywide crackdown since it began operating in June. Some of these cases involve politicians and other powerful individuals, but the head of the water affairs department’s policing unit, Nigel Adams, refused to divulge the names of those who have violated the Water Act.
The construction of the controversial R5-billion De Hoop Dam in Mpumalanga will go ahead — but with restrictions. Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk approved the project last week, although he hinted that his final record of decision, to be released on October 13, would embody some conditions.
Denny Mushrooms landed in hot fat this week when two employees were nabbed for allegedly defrauding the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market. A vendor who buys from the market was also buttoned. The market is deeply worried about the mushrooming losses from suppliers dodging the payment of commission.
The Qatar-based television news station Al-Jazeera has said that it will cover Zimbabwe ”without pre-conceptualised ideas” when it launches its new 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel next month. One of the station’s major successes has been getting a licence to open a bureau in Zimbabwe, where it is illegal to work as a journalist without one.
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/ 29 September 2006
The proposed construction of a high-speed train link between Durban and Johannesburg was labelled recently as another prestige project that would only benefit the few while South Africa’s general transport system was going to the dogs. Kwazi Mbanjwa, the head of KwaZulu-Natal’s transport department, unveiled the plans for the high-speed train earlier this month at the South African Road Federation Conference in Durban.