The social security and retirement reform discussion paper has given an outline of what South Africans can expect from the social security system, which should be be introduced in 2010. The contributions will be compulsory and will be collected by the South African Revenue Service from the employer.
Former Malawian president Bakili Muluzi dominated local media headlines over the past three weeks after returning from the United Kingdom, where he went for a medical check-up. But this time it is not his health but his desire to run again as president in 2009 elections that has attracted the media’s attention.
"Charity is a very Victorian notion — the further away people are, the more charitable we feel towards them," says Thompson with not a little asperity. "By my thirties I was thoroughly disenchanted by celebrity charity stuff — I just can’t bear it!" she says with a groan. Loathing the lunches-‘n-launches celebrity circuit, Thompson was looking for a way to make a more meaningful contribution.
The average worker in Zimbabwe earns Z$100Â 000 per month, but following last week’s pay hike for teachers and the bulk of the civil servants, prices of basic commodities rose significantly, effectively putting a strain on the newly introduced salaries while those in other sectors were virtually plunged into a hopeless abyss of poverty and deprivation.
Slavery has made a "horrific" return to modern Britain, according to the most wide-ranging study of the secret world of forced labour yet published. Shocking statistics about the country’s sex trade, including an estimated 5 000 under-16s coerced into prostitution, mask equally violence-ridden and illegal practices in jobs ranging from crop-picking and factory work to nursing and the catering trade.
In the past few weeks the Mail & Guardian has carried a number of political views on the crisis of overcrowding and poor sanitation in the Imizamo Yethu informal settlement in Hout Bay. The City of Cape Town has a responsibility to remedy this situation, writes the mayor of Cape Town, Helen Zille.
The Catholic mystic Catherine of Siena claimed that, in a vision, she received the Holy Prepuce or foreskin as a wedding ring symbolising her marriage to Christ. A certain Saint Bridget made it known that she, too, had received bits of prepuce from an angel. It gave her orgasmic-like sensations when she put it on her tongue.
Zimbabwe is hungry and broke, the country’s central bank governor has warned in a frank admission that President Robert Mugabe’s government is unable to provide adequate food supplies or maintain many basic services. Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono told a parliamentary committee that he was struggling to keep the country’s electricity on and the air force aloft.
A public spat over when 200Â 000 tons of duty-free sugar should be imported from the Common Market for East and Southern African (Comesa) bloc to forestall a sugar shortage in Kenya has exposed potential economic sabotage by members of the ruling party.
Deep in the dense, green Mabira Forest Reserve, 40km outside of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, an environmental controversy has been building for months. The 30 000ha that make up Mabira, which was established as a nature reserve in 1932, are equivalent to about 60 000 football fields. The tropical forest is home to countless rare species of plant and animal life.