The Department of Education has announced that the next and necessary phase of its futuristic policy will be introduced on a trial basis during the second half of this year. The new phase is called Incomes-Based Education and will be exactly what it sounds like. The more the learner pays, the more the learner gets taught.
In an unexpected move that caught political commentators on the back foot, President Thabo Mbeki made a surprise visit to South Africa last Wednesday. His unannounced arrival was leaked to <i>Not the Mail & Guardian</i> by a part-time hangar-sweeper at the South African Air Force base at Swartkops, outside Tshwane.
A startling revelation in a cellphone photograph has been e-mailed to <i>Not the Mail & Guardian</i>. It would seem that the controversial businessman Brett Kebble was not in fact murdered late last year. A man believed to be Kebble has been spotted living it up on what are generally believed to be his ill-gotten gains at a small but exclusive holiday resort on the Caribbean island of St Joseph.
In a move typical of its bold and uncompromising style of African National Congress leadership, a convicted fraudster has been appointed to the Cabinet. Prisoner number 456788/98, Mbelikanqa Moujamgabale, currently serving a 33-year sentence for corruption, theft and fraudulently impersonating a tax collector, is the new deputy minister of local government.
Nasa is to rotate the moon through 180°. “We are doing this for entirely scientific reasons,” said Nasa senior director, Dr Lytton J Vasselberg, “but there will be certain aesthetic advantages as well.” Scheduled to begin in June 2007, a series of explosions will slowly rotate the lunar planet over a series of years.
A Freedom Front Plus (FF+) motion to have all Cabinet members confined to Robben Island for a period of 10 years before they take up their appointments was defeated in Parliament this week. Griep du Pisanie of the FF+ had tabled the motion with what he termed the best of intentions.
Troops loyal to South African presidential hopeful Jacob Zuma have arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo in preparation for a coup against the incumbent President, Joseph Kabila. The African National Congress Youth League is keen to find new sources of income with which to foot the bill for its "babe magnet" BMWs.
Last year began with high hopes — after two decades of neglect — of new, high-level political recognition of the importance of science and technology to development. In addition, certain events, like the Asian tsunami, dominating the headlines reinforced the message. But if there has been significant progress in some individual areas, progress in changing broader attitudes has been slow.
Julian Treger, the activist investor known for causing a number of boardroom bust-ups in London, has emerged as a key player in an investment vehicle seeking to finance black economic empowerment in his native South Africa. Treger wants to use a shell company listed on Aim, London’s junior market, to invest in companies in South Africa that, under local rules, are required to boost their black ownership.
The global economy surprised most people yet again last year and grew nearly as fast as 2004’s 30-year high of 5%, in spite of surging oil prices and a sharp tightening of monetary policy in the United States, which is still the world’s biggest economy by far. But some of the initial worries and problems will exist throughout 2006; they have not gone away.