act Busi Moloele NEXT time you’re in Witbank, look carefully between the giant forms of the iron-smelting factory, the electricity power-stations and the gangling steel factory. There, huddled in a space named Kwaguqa, you are likely meet an intrepid band of environmentalists who are trying to make a difference. In 1994, a group of standard […]

The South African Association of Youth Clubs is changing direction again – this time it aims to motivate young people to take charge of their lives. Busi Moloele reports ‘NO, I definitely don’t agree with the label ‘the lost generation’,” says Mokoka Seshabela. “Many young people are on the margins of society – they are […]

MADAM & EVE, South Africa’s most successful comic strip ever, celebrates its fifth anniversary this week. The strip was first published in The Weekly Mail. Madam (a Johannesburg northern-suburbanite) and Eve (her “domestic maintenance assistant”) have won the hearts of millions as they journey through the rocky landscape of the new South Africa while keeping […]

Environmentalists describe seafood farming in Asia as a rape-and-run industry, writes Suzanne Goldenberg in Keyakhali, Bangladesh THEY saw the enforcers coming from a distance – 50 men cycling along the embankment, iron bars and home-made petrol bombs glinting under a bright afternoon sky. As the villagers cowered in their homes, the intruders hacked at the […]

Madeleine Wackernagel The United Nations Human Development Report 1997, released this week, highlights the importance of integrating poverty reduction into economic policies. Only those countries that make “poverty eradication a central objective of their national development policies” will achieve steady and equitable growth in the next century. “The positive and negative experiences over the past […]

In the fight between belief and science, an open mind should be the winner, writes Steve Jones LAST week, an Australian judge intervened in a matter of belief. In the creation versus evolution debate, he took the side of the angels. Ian Plimer, a Melbourne geologist, faces huge costs for taking creationism to court – […]

FRIDAY, 3.30PM SOUTH Africa on Friday motivated for a strictly controlled legal trade in rhino horn and other products, arguing that this will reduce illegal activities. Addressing the 10th conference in Harare, Zimbabwe, of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Natal Parks Board CEO Dr George Hughes argued that the availability of a […]

Bongani Ndodana BRIGHTLY COLOURED tights and tutus worn by children grinning like Cheshire cats seem almost surreal in the dusty streets and squalor of the Cape Flats, where the Cape Town City Ballet (CTCB) have established their Dance for All project. It’s at moments like these that one truly realises the original meaning of those […]

Although the youths of today are receiving an education, they are now battling to find job opportunities. Stuart Hess reports MORE than 40% of young South Africans are neither employed nor in school, according to a study conducted by the National Youth Commission. This alarming figure, which applies to young people aged 14 to 35, […]