Despite the high priority government policy places on gender equity, tertiary education remains an overwhelmingly male-dominated terrain. Ten of the 21 universities responded to the Teacher’s request for data showing how many female academics are employed at each level. The universities of the Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch, Cape Town, Pretoria, North West, Zululand, Potchefstroom, Natal, Durban-Westville and […]
The bride is thrilled; the groom is grim. But Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) will not leave Technikon Witwatersrand (TWR) standing at the altar when their union is solemnised on January 1 next year. ‘It is just a question of trying to make the best of a bad situation,” says Peter Alexander, a member of RAU’s […]
Despite achieving the best matric results in the country for three years in a row, the Northern Cape is not benefiting from the knowledge of school-leavers in the province. ‘We are suffering from a massive brain drain,” a worried Tina Joemat-Pettersson, provincial minister of education in the Northern Cape, told the Mail & Guardian. ‘But […]
A week after the Mail & Guardian reported the four-year mystery of a nuclear worker’s death, his family received a surprise R6 000 cheque from the Department of Labour. The covering letter stipulated that the money was for burial expenses –although Victor Motha was buried four years ago and his family has received a departmental refund for funeral costs
A showdown looms in government circles over which government department will preside over environmental impact assessments (EIA) for mines. There is confusion about who will have the final say, after the publication of new EIA regulations. <i>Earthyear</i> reports on a power struggle over who should authorise environmental impact assessments for mining.
Mining is never a pretty sight. It has a deserved reputation for defacing nature and putting profit before everything, including the environment. By their very essence, mining and conservation seem to be antithetical concepts. Many old, abandoned mines are unrehabilitated and environmental hazards. <i>Earthyear</i> finds out what’s being done to clean them up.
If conservation is to be mainstreamed, its practitioners cannot afford to ignore big businesses such as mining and oil companies, says Valli Moosa on taking over the reins at the largest conservation NGO in the world. <i>Earthyear</i> spoke to Valli Moosa the day after his election as president the IUCN-The World Conservation Union.
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/ 27 February 2005
Four years after a promising 21-year-old chemical engineer died after an accident at the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa), his family is still looking for answers. Victor Motha’s death has highlighted concerns about the safety of workers at Necsa’s Pelindaba plant, which the Department of Minerals and Energy oversees.
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/ 28 January 2005
Only 500 protesters turned out for a two-day strike in Swaziland called by the country’s trade unions to demand political reforms — but organisers claimed police roadblocks intimidated others intending to join in. The stayaway was called to protest against "a non-democratic Constitution that retains the powers of sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy".
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/ 21 January 2005
Pro-democracy agitation is coming to the boil in the kingdom of Swaziland, with the large-scale theft of detonators from a coalmine and a looming general strike spearheaded by the trade union movement. The police were tight-lipped about the theft of detonators at the Swiss-owned Maloma Colliery in south-west Swaziland last week.