Residents in Nature’s Valley, a popular holiday village on the Western Cape’s Garden Route, are at each others throats about troops of baboons that raid homes in search of festive leftovers. Like the ”dethroned white males” who have become ”alienated, depressed spoilers” in the recent sparked by Malegapuru Makgoba, some residents want to take out their wrath on the primates by shooting them.
More than half the country’s teachers intend leaving the profession. And as low morale, job dissatisfaction, HIV/Aids and premature mortality devastate public schools, the number of teachers has declined over the past seven years. By 2002/03, 21 000 teachers (about 6%) were leaving the system annually. The Education Labour Relations Council released these findings in Cape Town on Thursday.
Old Mutual Healthcare, a division of London- and Johannesburg-listed Old Mutual plc, has dominated the results of the annual TWIG SA research into service levels across South Africa’s health-care industry, being ranked by medical providers as first in terms of overall service.
Kojo Annan, son of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, extended his lobbying efforts to South Africa on behalf of a company that became a prime contractor to the world body. Details of the younger Annan’s local visit are contained in a 144-page report released this week.
A team of investigators from the International Criminal Court (ICC) is ready to deploy to Sudan’s Darfur region to evaluate war crimes, following passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution giving the tribunal jurisdiction, officials said. In a hard-negotiated compromise, the United States was one of four countries to abstain.
Mike van Graan argues that Afrikaans is doing superbly because of a past that has economically empowered its primary users, for whom language and the arts are integral components of their identity.
The end of a four-match losing streak for the Sharks came not a moment too soon. In beating the Brumbies so emphatically in Durban the Sharks not only earned a shot at redemption, but also became the only local side to win in round five of the Super 12. In the greater scheme of things the five log points thus earned are irrelevant.
Undefeated centuries by opener Wavell Hinds and new captain Shivnarine Chanderpaul led the West Indies to 347 for three against South Africa in dominating the first day of the opening Test at Bourda on Thursday. Hinds blasted a career-best 188 and Chanderpaul was at 102 not out in a brilliant 241-run fourth-wicket stand.
Is it ungrateful to compare a cricket tour of the West Indies to a dilapidated funfair, to suggest that the cricket on display is the equivalent of empty shopping packets and old ticket stubs fluttering sadly on tangled barbed wire? Surely any Test series is an occasion, especially one spread across the tarnished jewels of the beautiful, poor West Indian islands?
Tax authorities in southern India have found a new way to handle tax evaders: sending teams of traditional drummers to pound away noisily outside their homes or shops until they pay up. Tax officials in Andhra Pradesh state’s Rajahmundry city said on Thursday they have recovered three-quarters of the money owed by people there