Charlene Smith South Africa has declined an offer by the Thailand government of free technology for the manufacture of 300 generic drugs that will cut prices for HIV medicines up to tenfold. Thailand has pledged not to rest until every African country has generic drugs for HIV and has vowed to “ring South Africa with […]

Glenda Daniels Internal strife and chaos among key civil society players escalated this week and now bedevil the success of the World Summit on Sustainable Development due to take place in Johannesburg in eight months’ time. This week the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), arguably the largest component of civil society with nearly […]

It is amazing how low some women stoop to drive luxury vehicles. The MECs for health for Mpumalanga and Northern Cape have blocked anti-retroviral drugs for those raped. But the case of Northern Cape MEC for Health, Elizabeth Dipuo Peters, is particularly reprehensible. The province was the first, in Octber 1999, with direct permission from […]

Spoornet has struck a multimillion-rand deal to operate the entire stretch of railway to Maputo. John Matshikiza went for the ride It must be once in a lifetime, if ever, that you get a chance to travel on Spoornet’s luxurious Blue Train. The Blue Train has won a whole slew of accolades over the years, […]

Thebe Mabanga Another year is on us and in radio and, as always, we expect thrills and spills, sometimes with the latter, rather unfortunately, dominant. The first major spill to befall us has been brewing from last year, and it comes from a station that was once the jewel of black radio but is now […]

When the presidency recruited Titu Mafolo as a political adviser it was aware that he had left a previous job under a cloud Mungo Soggot The Office of the President hired Titus Mafolo President Thabo Mbeki’s adviser recently charged with fraud and perjury knowing that he had a chequered employment history involving allegations of dishonesty. […]

David Macfarlane Did Unisa receive presidential approval for its current court action against Minister of Education Kader Asmal? Or is Unisa’s new vice-chancellor, Dr Barney Pityana, claiming rather more exalted support for his part on the ongoing warfare against Asmal than the facts warrant? Senior Unisa academics raise the possibility that President Thabo Mbeki has […]

An ongoing project is monitoring the success of the reintroduction of elephants at St Lucia Niki Moore How much does an elephant charge? At today’s exchange rates, about 140m. That’s a lot of elephant to have coming at you from the forests of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park. “When you do this job, you […]

Fiona Macleod South African taxpayers may have to fork out millions of rands for the environmental rehabilitation of asbestos mines abandoned by British multinational Cape plc, which has agreed to settle its marathon legal battle with locals suffering asbestos-related diseases. A precondition of the legal settlement agreed shortly before Christmas between Cape and locals suffering […]

HERVE BAR, Goma | Friday TENS of thousands of residents of Goma had fled their homes late on Thursday and vast areas of the town were set ablaze by lava flows from an erupting volcano. “Goma is burning,” shouted a driver in a line of vehicles who had just arrived at the border with Rwanda […]