A multibillion-dollar international market in the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation is mushrooming in South Africa. It has become, behind drugs and guns, the third-largest source of profits for organised crime.
Nurses and doctors are still endangered species despite efforts by the Department of Health to retain them, the 2002 South African Health Review has found.
Privatisation of public water utilities came under intense fire at the week-long Third World Water Forum that ended in Japan last Sunday. The World Bank and a handful of European corporations want poor governments to put their water utilities in private hands, ostensibly to improve the management of an ever-scarcer resource.
Further investigation into the Roodefontein Golf Development scandal could reveal a network of corruption.
It is not too late for the developing world to take part in the revolution that is genetic research, key speakers told a major international conference in Stellenbosch recently.
The two local government unions involved in rationalising Johannesburg city council pension funds opposed the blanket dissolution of the 11 existing funds but have not finalised positions on an alternative approach to rationalising these funds.
Many municipalities are struggling to adjust to the new "developmental local government" approach to delivery of basic services and to socio-economic growth, says a report by the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE).
In a country that appears to have coups more often than Japan has elections, you could be forgiven for not really noticing this one. Two weeks ago, in what has become a tiresome drill for the Central African Republic (CAR), the troubled nation had its government deposed by yet another disgruntled army general.
After several 419 fraudsters tried to trade on a bogus ”government mining department”, the Department of Minerals and Energy established a risk management unit to work with police and intelligence officials to track down these conmen.
Only two years ago the idea of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies being ready to charge poor countries lower prices for essential drugs looked like an unrealistic idealist’s dream.