Environmentalists say South Africa urgently needs a policy on the use of genetically modified crops to prevent damage to the environment. Fiona Macleod reports South Africa is growing a variety of genetically modified (GM) crops, despite the fact that no one really knows what impact they will have on the environment. Environmentalists are calling for […]
Peter Dickson The blue crane, South Africa’s already critically endangered national bird, has become the latest victim of poverty in the Eastern Cape. Through a combination of wars, drought and famine, Southern Africa’s blue crane population has rapidly dwindled from 100 000 to 20 000 in Southern Africa over the past 15 years, placing it […]
Donna Block Share World Everyday I drive the streets of Johannesburg passing posters on street lights and getting pamphlets stuffed through the window of my car with prolific promises of getting rich quick. They profess that money can be made with very little capital and even less man-hours. I don’t usually pay attention to them […]
Ivor Powell A government official in the former ministry of law and order helped to build South Africa’s multibillion-rand private security industry into a private army by changing the country’s legislation. This ensured that the industry became an apartheid private army and that an old- guard network holds the reins in a business that the […]
The United Nations secretary general has appealed to donor countries to open their eyes – and their coffers – to Africa’s suffering, writes Victoria Brittain Declaring that humanitarian catastrophes are reaching “irrevocable crisis proportions” in several African countries, the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, is putting his weight behind a ministerial meeting on Africa […]
Jeremy Collins On Manenberg Avenue in Cape Town there is a wall painted with a portrait of slain rapper Tupac Shakur, depicting the material rewards of thug life. Two blocks away is a new mural, with an entirely different message – protesting domestic violence. Its unveiling on National Women’s Day, on August 9, in the […]
The stand-off between the government and public sector unions over wage demands may blow out of control if it is not properly managed. For many weeks now, negotiations between the two sides have not yielded any positive results, but have turned into a combat which no side appears destined to win. Workers’ fury at the […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby It would have been a wise man indeed who predicted that Wallaby coach Rod Macqueen would have more to worry about than his opposite number in the Springbok camp after last Saturday’s Test in Cape Town. For while South Africa have stumbled from one embarrassment to another during the Tri- Nations, no […]
An organisation in the Cape is attempting to lure kids in gang-infested areas away from criminal activity and into artistic creativity. Adam Haupt reports I’m lurking about the former mental institution Valkenberg’s isolation cells and beginning to wonder just how the organisation CRED (Creative Education with Youth at Risk) came to be located here. The […]
John Matshikiza With the Lid Off How refreshing it was, a couple of weeks ago, to find myself inside an aircraft, preparing to fly away from the South African debate about exactly who or what is entitled to be considered an African, and get out into the real Africa that lies beyond the Limpopo. In […]