We have all heard of "shack chic", "shabby chic" and "township chic". But how about "shit chic"? In the rural townships between Polokwane and Tzaneen in Limpopo, people are decorating their long drops (pit toilets) in highly expressive and individual ways, despite obviously limited resources.
It has been long time coming — but even now that it is here, the real work of implementing career-path mapping and incentive schemes for teachers is only just beginning. The R6,9-billion that was recently allocated for teachers’ salaries will be spent over three years. Of this, R2,7-billion will be used to settle backlogs in salary payments.
An unusually broad coalition of 12 United States environmental and public-interest groups launched a national boycott on Tuesday of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, for undermining efforts to combat global warming and lobbying Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling.
"Before the start of the summer rainy season, the Klaserie river is more a lush reed bed than a body of moving water, although it retains a number of permanent pools. Early one overcast morning, I had the privilege of being the sole companion of wilderness guide Alan McSmith on a long, meandering walk through the dry Klaserie bush", writes Maureen Brady.
To see (and hear) Bernie Baatjies and his circle of friends slapping down the pack of cards one by one in a game of klaberjas on a small table in an upmarket restaurant in the strangely rebirthing, formerly deeply Jewish Johannesburg suburb of Norwood, you would not think that you were that far from a mixed sidewalk gang of tsotsis.
Many years ago I asked a Ugandan classmate whether horrific accounts of Idi Amin’s regime were true or the result of Western propaganda. Though we were in Senegal, Joe looked around to check if anyone was listening, leaned forward and said in a whisper: ”My sister, the truth is 10 times worse than anything you have ever read in the papers.”
About 62 000 land claims were settled by June this year, Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza said on Monday. About 17 000 land claims still need to be settled under the land-reform programme. Didiza was briefing reporters on the upcoming land summit to be held towards the end of the month.
John Vidal scratched the surface of what is a bigger problem bedevilling the Zimbabwe political debate. The American political philosopher of German descent, Leo Strauss, called it the reductio ad Hitlerum. Noting the increased use of Nazi analogies, he argued that it was fallacious to refute a view simply because Hitler happened to share it.
Just outside South Africa’s borders, a humanitarian crisis is brewing. Despite a news blackout imposed by Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, conditions in a large camp housing those displaced by Mugabe’s Operation Murambatsvina are drawing sharp criticism from countries around the world.
Click on image for full-size view.