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/ 20 December 2003
For South Africans, one lesson there is that revolutions are not once-and-for-all-time eruptions: the ones that matter — that enable the enactment of fundamental human rights for all — need constant renewal, rethinking. Kader Asmal’s Revolutionary Express train departs on January 1, writes David Macfarlane.
"The station bomb in 1960 was the first act of urban terrorism in South Africa." True or false?
In the year he celebrates his 50th birthday, Professor Loyiso Nongxa reaches another milestone. Last week he was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, the institution’s first African leader.
Minister of Education Kader Asmal has released a review of public schools’ financing, resourcing and education costs. But the government’s review of education spending is weak and its proposed remedies are inadequate, say stakeholders
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/ 4 November 2002
The Eastern Cape government is resisting attempts to cast light on alleged corruption in its Department of Education. And the role of Premier Makhenkesi Stofile is again under the spotlight in a two-year sequence of events that remains haunted by controversy and mystery.
Most university and technikon students do not support the Cabinet-endorsed tertiary mergers as the chief means of restructuring higher education. This is the conclusion of a survey detailed in the latest edition of the <i>Quarterly Review of Education and Training in South Africa</i>.
Tertiary institutions this week received government notice of drastic alterations to their teaching programmes, to kick in from next year.
Concluding a torrid meeting on Wednesday, the Unisa council voted overwhelmingly that the university would not pay the legal costs its chairperson McCaps Motimele incurred in defending charges of sexual harassment and defamation brought by former Unisa Professor Margaret Orr, well-placed sources say. And it voted unanimously that Motimele should resign from the council.
Strategic institutional leadership, strong government and staff participation are among the factors that are essential to successful mergers among tertiary institutions. But mergers already under way in South Africa do not show clear efficiency or financial gains, nor have they achieved greater racial or gender equity among staff and students.
Unisa management is monitoring staff phone calls, e-mails and faxes to ascertain who is communicating with the media, the <i>Mail&Guardian</i> has learnt.
Low-wage workers have been prime victims of transformation in South African higher education, and unions at universities have been eroded in the process. Power relations that disadvantage workers have placed much of the burden on them.
Fort Hare survives, the University of the Transkei goes, and Rand Afrikaans University will merge with Technikon Witwatersrand. But "no institution will be left untouched", said Minister of Education Kader Asmal, announcing the Cabinet’s approval this week.
The cash-strapped South African Union of Journalists (SAUJ) lurched into further crisis this week with the abrupt resignation of its president, Sechaba ka’Nkosi, who alleges that the union is "reneging" on the interests of union members
EIGHT provincial education departments massively underspent in the past financial year, with at least R248-million going a-begging in Gauteng, the same amount in the Eastern Cape, and R109-million in the Free State.
THE newly formed Education Rights Project is challenging the state to keep its education promises
Universities are mobilising to have the leading role they can play in sustainable development formally recognised at the Jo’burg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) — and beyond.
Millions of South Africa’s poorest citizens continue to have their plight ignored because of the National Development Agency’s (NDA) ongoing inability to perform its central function, which is to channel money to non-profit organisations in their battle against poverty. And some NDA board members are now under attack for abusing their positions to enrich and […]
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/ 19 January 2001
A wide range of private education companies are outraged at limitations the government is imposing on their businesses.