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/ 13 February 2004
After 10 years of democracy we have many things to be grateful for, not least of them the fact that South Africa is preparing to launch the world’s biggest public sector anti-retroviral treatment programme. But our president does not want to celebrate that his government may well have extended the lives of over 4,5-million people living with HIV by more than 10 years.
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/ 13 February 2004
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon is expected to use his prerogative to ensure that MP Raenette Taljaard, the party’s voice on the arms deal, as well as other key party representatives left in the cold during the list process, returns to Parliament.
It is also likely Leon will intervene to increase the number of black DA candidates for public office.
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/ 13 February 2004
The Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA) has reported that collections of the 1% tourism levy charged on all accommodation in South Africa reached a total of R40-million including VAT, cumulative to September last year.
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/ 13 February 2004
The Engen-sponsored Heidelberg Xairu Blue Crane Route, launched on January 24, brings to 43 the number of tourism routes established by communities across Africa. The significance of this self-empowerment initiative is that it gives grassroots people access to the growth potential of the tourism industry.
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/ 13 February 2004
The problem with trying to write about an island like Zanzibar is that all the descriptions sound like tired clichés from a holiday brochure. The difficulty is that all the adjectives and superlatives one might apply seem somehow meagre or stale. It is all these things and more, but possesses a beauty that almost defies classification.
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/ 13 February 2004
It really is time we were rid of the exercise in the vainglorious called the opening of Parliament. Apart from obvious reasons, like the steadily mounting costs of the affair, there are many other grounds for abandoning what has become a toe-curling embarrassment.
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/ 13 February 2004
National reconciliation is so much easier when one doesn’t have the capacity to vaporise one’s former oppressor at the touch of a button. No nukes has been good news for our little country. Which is why I was perturbed to receive a letter from a major insurance company informing me of a change to the terms of their policies.
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/ 13 February 2004
In recent months Johannesburg drivers have noticed a new phenomenon: blind people begging at traffic lights and major intersections. They are almost exclusively Zimbabwean, and their influx to the city has been sudden.
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/ 13 February 2004
Public health care has been chronically underfunded for the past five years and gross provincial disparities in spending persist, a government report now confirms. As a result, the Treasury’s claims that health budgets have increased significantly in the same period are under renewed fire.
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/ 13 February 2004
Next week’s Budget will increase state spending on social and economic development programmes and job-creation initiatives while trying to ease the country’s personal tax burden — despite a shortfall in the revenue it is expected to receive in the coming year. This is the key prediction for Manuel’s 2004 government spending plan, due to be unveiled in Parliament on Wednesday.