The majority of public schools in our country can be regarded as sites of a moral panic that highlights criminality, vandalism, bullying and violence, as well as ”drop-out” and academic failure. Middle-class kids experience an education that is largely unchanged in terms of quality and resources from pre-1994 practices.
Much has been said about the skills shortage in South Africa. Yet, while both the public and private sectors of the economy decry this, almost everyone knows of an unemployed graduate in their area. Many such graduates are engineers. And unemployment rates are highest among young South Africans — 65% compared to 37% of the general working age population.
A study aid DVD that is already being used very effectively by students at Stellenbosch University (SU) could make a national impact soon. The LearnWell4Life DVD addresses nine of the most topical study challenges experienced by senior school learners and university students across the world.
Until recently in South African higher education, academic freedom was not a sexy issue. Those arguing in its defence were often perceived to have been using the issue to preserve the status quo in higher education and resist transformation. However, this matter is now perhaps the most interesting and hotly contested one in academic and public debates on higher education.
South Africans Simon Alston and Craig Northam have just completed a mammoth journey by bicycle across the African continent, starting in Cairo five-and-a-half months ago and finishing in Cape Town in August, to raise funds for charity. Alston shares some of his thoughts and memories of this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
As we stand in front of the impressive facade of the revamped AngloGold Ashanti building on Turbine Square in downtown Johannesburg, architect, writer-critic and sociologist Professor Alan Lipman explains that Newtown is slowly becoming one of Johannesburg’s most exemplary architectural locations.
A significant tension — if not downright contradiction — is at work in the onÂgoing transformation of South Africa’s university system. Under the singular name of transformation, two projects with distinct and largely opposed political intentions are at work in changing the ecology of higher education. Current policy is stretched between the pull of democratic redress and the push of neoliberal reorganisation.
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World Cup 2010 chief Danny Jordaan defended South Africa’s safety record in hosting major sporting events on Monday, arguing that not one fan or athlete had been affected in 13 years. He claimed that rising tourist numbers indicate there are no major safety issues about which to be concerned.
Taxpayers have coughed up about R2,6-million for security at the private residences of four Free State ministers, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday. The party’s Free State leader, Roy Jankielsohn, said the African National Congress provincial ministers must explain who they were afraid of.