Ferial Haffajee looks at the latest book to offer an explanation for the mess we’re in
Black business is going into this election more politically diverse than it has been since the end of apartheid, writes Ferial Haffajee.
Ferial Haffajee asks whether the government’s stance on cultural freedom ignores equal rights for women.
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/ 24 January 2009
What, I wonder, has become of the audacity of our hope? Could it possibly be true that nations get the leaders they deserve?
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/ 21 December 2008
Ferial Haffajee, together with <i>M&G</i> reporters, delivers this year’s report card on government ministers’ perfomance.
Our interesting female politicians are almost all in the opposition. Why is that?
Is it fair to say the SABC has fallen apart because the centre cannot hold, to quote WB Yeats?
Ferial Haffajee on why she agreed to model for Clover.
Remember the days when, as inaugural transport minister, Mac Maharaj insisted that he would continue to drive his beat-up old Jetta? It struck a chord, for it spoke of a government that would live comfortably yet simply. Those days died quickly as the new democrats dusted off old protocol books designed for a venal order.
The thought of South African Communist Party (SACP) leader Blade Nzimande as minister of finance sends shivers down my spine. Not because I fear a Red Fiscus (provided it stays in the black). What concerns me is the cavalier absence of thought and analysis that characterises critiques of the ruling party by the central leaders of the SACP and trade union federation Cosatu.
In 23 days, the Jacob Zuma rape trial has shaken our world. Regardless of the outcome, we are in an altered state. The political damage is incalculable, with the ruling African National Congress now an openly divided and faltering movement. This has had a domino effect on the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
"The <i>Mail & Guardian</i> is a muckraking newspaper. Ours is not a sober newspaper like the <i>Financial Times</i> (though I wish we could occasionally imitate its sobriety) or a paper of record like the <i>Washington Post</i>," writes Ferial Haffajee. Muckraking requires running those articles that stir debate and in the past year we have whet the appetite (and often the ire) of readers — most recently with Malegapuru Makgoba’s article.
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/ 23 January 2005
The SABC’s newsreader purred like a pussycat when she announced last year that the government was giving itself a Christmas present: nine military transport Airbuses at a cost of R1-billion each. The tone of the report was celebratory. The soundbite was from the contracting minister, public enterprise’s Alec Erwin, who praised the deal.
Schabir Shaik will tell the Durban High Court next week that there was nothing improper in his relationship with Deputy President Jacob Zuma, but that they were bound together by deeply personal ties of family and political struggle. Central to the fraud and corruption charges Shaik faces is the allegation that he had a corrupt relationship with Zuma, who facilitated contracts for Shaik’s company in return for bribes. Both Zuma and Shaik have disputed this.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=Insight-National&ao=123337">Politics of patronage</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=Insight-National&ao=123340">Zuma’s popularity undented</a>
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/ 15 November 2003
A ground-breaking study by the United Nations Development Programme has sought to predict what life in Africa could be like by 2025. Contributions to the study came from more than 1 000 African thinkers. Their prognosis: four scenarios ranging from imminent doom to rapid modernisation and heightened prosperity.
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/ 7 November 2003
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s five-nation tour, which began in the island nations of Sao Tome and Principe, will end in South Africa this week. Lula will stay for just a day in South Africa, ending a week-long African tour that has taken him predominantly to Lusophone nations including Angola, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe.
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/ 23 October 2003
South Africa has world-class financial architecture but faces the conundrum that the majority of the poor do not have access to these globally competitive financial services. With more than six in 10 South Africans classified as "unbanked", the challenge is to localise services while continuing to be globally competitive.
Allister Sparks, a grandfather of South African journalism, has fired one of the first volleys in the 10-year assessment with <i>Beyond the Miracle</i>, the third in his series on South Africa, writes Ferial Haffajee.
Less than one in three South Africans who need social grants get it, yet this week’s Cabinet <i>lekgotla</i> officially jettisoned a basic income grant (BIG) in favour of an expanded public works programme.
Deputy President Jacob Zuma this week went for the jugular as he staged a counter-attack against the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions and its chief Bulelani Ngcuka.
Mr Delivery. That’s how some members of the presidency characterised the ascendancy of President Thabo Mbeki in 1999. Since then Mbeki has run a managerialist presidency where emphasis is placed on delivering the "better life for all" that is a cornerstone of the African National Congress in office.
Since she took office in 1999, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has plunged the country into at least 13 crises about HIV/Aids, obscuring the Cabinet’s multibillion-rand efforts to end the damaging era of denial and confrontation.
A range of politicians has crossed the floor to join or start new political homes. On radio talk shows and on the letters pages of newspapers, they are not floor-crossers, but double-crossers.
Cabinet this week approved a black economic empowerment Bill, setting in motion the law that will give guidance and substance to the transfer of wealth.
The Weekly Mail has taken the lid off horrifying conditions in kwaZulu’s medical services.