After 1990, South Africa was described as a society in transition towards democracy. This raises a number of questions. When will this transition end? When will a ”normal society” be a reality? There are several ways of answering such questions. Democracy is not a state but a process, argues Vincent Maphai in the first of a series on the end of South Africa’s transition.
What is the ‘real reason’?” leaders of some of the opposition groups asked in a press release to the world’s deaf and dumb press, ”why South African soldiers, armed to the teeth, are so present on Haitian soil, in Gonaives and Port-au-Prince, in particular? The recent Haiti fiasco has left us with egg on our face.
The Women’s Legal Centre (WLC) is taking the state to court to prove that it has a duty of care towards children at school, especially young girls. If the action succeeds it will set a precedent establishing that the state is liable for protecting children while at school. This could have wide-ranging reverberations in a country where almost a third of girls are raped at school.
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The Democratic Alliance has promised to prove wrong critics who say it is a "white party" by ensuring its 2004 election candidates are selected on basis of their representativeness of South African society, as well as on merit.
The Landless People’s Movement (LPM) lamented on Thursday what it described as a grotesque distortion of its programmes by the media, and denied having any violent or lawless intentions. It said it has no plans to ”launch ‘revenge attacks’ or any other ‘vigilante’ action against abusive white farmers or any other landowners”.
The group atop Parmalat’s collapsed dairy empire went bankrupt on Thursday as investigators pursued revelations that are shaking the Italian establishment. Parmalat meanwhile severed all links with international accountants Grant Thornton, for years the auditors of various group divisions.
The North West provincial government said on Thursday that an anti-corruption hotline phone number it had released was incorrect. Premier Popo Molefe said members of the public should use the ”transparency hotline” number to report acts of corruption ”or any deviations from clean and accountable governance”.
A pair of German scientists have become early frontrunners for the 2004 ”Ig Nobels” — the annual awards handed out for eccentric research — thanks to their work in calculating the pooping power of penguins. These flightless birds are known to expel their faeces with great force.
Of an estimated 27-million eligible voters in the country, about 19,4-million have registered to date, the IEC said on Thursday. According to IEC chairperson Brigalia Bam, this is a high rate. If two or three million more people register during the next targeted enrolment weekend, that will amount to a world record, she said.