No image available
/ 11 September 2007
Jeroen van der Veer (60), the head of Shell, earned £2,9million last year, the average for FTSE-100 firms and almost a quarter of what was paid to his former business rival, Lord Browne at BP. The relatively modest salary suits the slightly downbeat Dutchman, who is a mile away in style from the garrulous and glitzy Browne.
No image available
/ 11 September 2007
A new report on South Africa’s energy future warns that if the nation does not rethink its development strategy it could herald ruin for local farmers and the poor. It calls for a long, hard look at the accelerated and shared growth initiative for South Africa. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas’s South African chapter released its report on the country’s energy future last month.
No image available
/ 11 September 2007
Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned recently. To keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10 000 years combined, the experts said.
No image available
/ 11 September 2007
One young Russian woman sends an SMS to another’s cellphone in central Moscow: ”Hi, Katya. Ne poiti li nam drink coffee? Call asap! Cheers, Masha.” The uninitiated might take this for some technical garble, but when 24-year-old student Masha Kuznetsova recently invited her journalist friend Katya out for a coffee, she was using the latest argot of the new Russia.
No image available
/ 11 September 2007
There has been much speculation that South Africa’s nine provinces could be downscaled to administrative hubs because of their apparent inefficiency and ineffectiveness. I believe this is a knee-jerk reaction, not a solution, to the present malaise. My party and I have always believed that South Africa is simply too large and diverse to be administered as a unitary state, writes president of the Inkatha Freedom Party Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
No image available
/ 11 September 2007
Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille appeared briefly in the Mitchells Plain Magistrate’s court on Tuesday on a charge under the Regulation of Gatherings Act. Zille, who is also mayor of Cape Town, was arrested on Sunday following an anti-drug march with members of the Mitchell’s Plain community.
No image available
/ 11 September 2007
Despite all that can be said for how far South Africa has come from its apartheid past, one issue continues to haunt the present — that of racial injustice. Not that one would readily know it, as it is something which even South Africa’s leading public intellectuals do not seem to see or speak about.
Click on image for full-size view.
No image available
/ 10 September 2007
The present vice-chairperson of the University of Pretoria’s student representative council (SRC), Cobus van der Linde, will not be a candidate in Tuesday’s elections for next year’s SRC. Pretoria High Court judge Lettie Malopa on Monday dismissed Van der Linde’s urgent application to remain on the candidates list.
No image available
/ 10 September 2007
The City of Tshwane was considering on Monday evening whether or not to fire companies it had hired to remove refuse. ”We are mulling over it and considering all factors,” said spokesperson Console Tleane. Letters had been handed to Milnex and Capacity over the weekend telling them to get their workers back on the job or have their contracts with the city cancelled.