Is Ronald Suresh Roberts’ <i>Fit to Govern</i> fit to defend Thabo Mbeki from (mainly) "illiberal" critics of different hues? Roberts has positioned himself as a radical nationalist, and unfortunately most critiques of his book to date presume he genuinely speaks from the left, writes Patrick Bond.
The National Research Foundation (NRF) is investigating ways to increase significantly the monetary values of annual grants for honours, masters and doctoral students as part of its plan to produce more researchers. Professor Mzamo Mangaliso, president and chief executive of the NRF, told Higher Learning that the allocations to honours and masters students, in particular, “were woefully inadequate”.
Some universities have expressed concern about the loss of teaching time in the recent public servants’ strike in which teachers participated. They believe that if a catch-up plan is not implemented effectively, it might affect this year’s matric pass rate. There is concern that weaker matric learners who are borderline university candidates might fail the exam, resulting in a low university intake.
About halfway through this book, I was still wondering why Natasha Distiller had felt the need to write it when — out of left field, so to speak (actually right field) — there arrived in my inbox a press release that provided at least one possible answer, writes David Macfarlane.
Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged: Book Two of the First Law (Gollancz) puts some very modern preoccupations — the nature of war and the motivation of torturers — under the fantasy glass. His main protagonists are, in his own words, ”a crippled torturer, a sneering, self-serving nobleman and a psychopathic barbarian with a bloody history”, writes Gwen Ansell.
”If I am going to change anything in my script, it will be punctuation marks. I am not changing anything else,” says Cont Mhlanga, a prominent Zimbabwean playwright and founder of Bulawayo-based Amakhosi Theatre Production House, in response to the banning of his play titled The Good President.
Zimbabwe is a long way from being ready to join Southern Africa’s rand monetary union, South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni was quoted as saying on Monday. ”A very high degree of macroeconomic convergence is necessary. They have a very long way to go,” he said.
Seven people were killed in a collision between a bus and a fire engine in Port Shepstone in KwaZulu-Natal on Monday. The crash claimed the lives of three firemen and four bus passengers, six of whom died on the scene. Police spokesperson Zandra Hechter said the seventh accident victim died in the Port Shepstone Provincial Hospital.
Human remains believed to be those of the ”Pebco Three”, who were murdered by apartheid-era police, were found on a farm near Cradock, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said on Monday. Spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi said NPA investigators followed up several leads and discovered the remains during a dig on the Cradock farm known as Post Chalmers.
Iraqi fishmongers complained on Monday that rumours of river carp eating human flesh had caused sales to plummet, even though senior clerics denied reports they had banned the fish from the table. Over the past four years, the bodies of hundreds of victims of the city’s death squads and militias have been dumped in the Tigris.