The net is closing in on officials and contractors implicated in the security scandal that has rocked Telkom Stefaans Brmmer and Mungo Soggot Telkom pressed criminal charges this week against a controversial security company accused of colluding with Bheki Langa, the former number three at the parastatal who resigned under a cloud last month. Langa, […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo Nigeria’s joy was Liberia’s sorrow on Sunday as the Super Eagles thrashed neighbours Ghana 3-0 to wrap up the final berth available to Africa for next year’s World Cup in Japan and Korea. Liberia’s former world footballer of the year, George Weah, could not accept defeat graciously and launched a vicious attack on […]
Ulrike Kistner on the world of work and the world of learning the making of a beautiful fit If job ads are anything to go by, hirers of educated free labour power in plentiful supply are looking for adepts in management, policy, strategy, service and leadership. Sought-after virtues include initiative, self-motivation, innovativeness, “enthusiasm for transformation”, […]
A union has accused ANC MPs of being bad bosses and says ‘baasskap’ is alive and well in Parliament Barry Streek The African National Congress has only about 100 staffers at Parliament, but is facing “a litany” of cases at the Labour Court and the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). In the most […]
Crumbled pieces of paper are all she has to show for the many trips she’s made to the local police Khadija Magardie and Xoli Nxumalo Since her divorce three years ago Mantoa Chabalala has been stalked, threatened, beaten, verbally abused, narrowly missed being shot in the head and had an undertaker turn up to collect […]
Stress and mental health issues are showing a worrying rise in higher education. Kate Coxon reports Simon is in his second year as a lecturer at a university in the south-east of England. In an average week he reckons he clocks up more than 60 hours and since starting the job the 28-year-old has lost […]
Barry Streek The government has launched a campaign to open up the fishing industry worth R2,5-billion a year to small-scale and subsistence fishers. The campaign also includes provision for poverty alleviation so, unlike commercial fishermen, those who fish for food security purposes don’t have to apply for fishing quotas. The announcement follows the expiry of […]
But unions say the new curriculum could fall flat on its face if implementation is not up to scratch David Macfarlane An exceptionally bold language policy forms a major part of the new school curriculum released in draft form this week. But the draft lacks any detailed budget for implementation, raising questions about how successfully […]
While today’s research style may be “RAEable”, it has become so unreadable it risks losing its audience, argues Les Back The piles of books, papers and reports have been dispatched to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) panels from universities throughout Britain, but the effects on the quality of scholarly writing linger. The exercise is narrowing […]
Bongani Majola The recent land occupation in Bredell, near Kempton Park, dramatically highlighted the extent of South Africa’s housing problem. More than 5,5-million South Africans live in self-constructed, informal dwellings. Many of these people have insecure tenure and live in appalling conditions in squatter settlements. As of May the number of houses completed or under […]
The government should consult sufficiently on the retraining of under-qualified teachers Colloquium Hlengani Siweya The Ministry of Education, and its mathematics and science advisers, must stop sidelining academics in working out how best to retrain maths and science schoolteachers. The ministry must begin engaging with academics on the simplest but most effective approaches to deal […]
David Macfarlane All academic study involves extended periods of solitary work, but postgraduate courses most of all. Stepping from relatively structured and supportive bachelor-level courses to master’s and doctoral levels is daunting for many students sometimes overwhelmingly so, as high dropout rates at some institutions demonstrate. The University of the Western Cape (UWC) this year […]
Greyville celebrates the first weekend of the racing season with a 12-race programme on Saturday, including three grade 2 events and, of course, the R500000 grade 1 Gold Cup over 3200m. The traditional pipe-opener handicap has attracted a full field of 20, which includes David Payne’s Durban July third Double Reef. Stable jockey Kevin Shea […]
Familiarity has bred a bit of contempt, reports Martin Gillingham If the Olympic movement has reason to thank track and field’s late boss Dr Primo Nebiolo, then it is for his decision 10 years ago to double the frequency of the world athletics championships. It was a move motivated more by Nebiolo’s greed for broadcasting […]
Cape Town | Wednesday A JUDGE on Tuesday ruled that an English court order forcing foreign journalists in South Africa to hand over video footage of a vigilante lynching was invalid. Cape Town High Court Judge Jeannette Traverso found that international news agencies Reuters and Associated Press (AP) did not have to submit video footage […]
TALKS between representatives of Burundi government and those of the rebel CNDD-FDD were on Friday adjourned till August, SAPA reported. It quoted South African deputy president, Jacob Zuma, who mediated the talks as expressing optimism about the outcome of the talks. He told journalists that another round of talks would be held at a venue […]
FOUR Tanzanian teenagers, who went missing at an international scouting convention in Virginia, have turned up in Washington, turned themselves in to police and now are seeking political asylum, authorities here said on Tuesday. “The four boy scouts … have been found safe and unharmed,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said in a statement. […]
CHRISTOF MALETSKY, Windhoek | Thursday THE South African Broadcasting Corporation last night apologised to President Sam Nujoma for quoting him out of context in a documentary programme aired last month. The programme Special Assignment broadcast an apology for the “very serious journalistic error” which was read out by the presenter. The text of the apology […]
Cape Town | Thursday THE South African Navy icebreaker Outeniqua was racing Wednesday to remote Marion Island, 1_100km southeast of Cape Town, to aid two seriously ill members of a weather service expedition, officials said. The icebreaker, expected to arrive late Friday or early Saturday, has a fully equipped hospital on board, complete with operating […]
IRIN, City | day NIGERIA plans to launch the largest Aids treatment program in Africa using cheap generic drugs on 1 September, AP reported on Tuesday. Stephen Lewis, the special envoy of Secretary-General Kofi Annan for HIV/Aids in Africa told a press conference on Monday that the Nigerian government’s commitment demonstrates that efforts are under […]
FINANCE and economic experts in Malawi on Wednesday took President Bakili Muluzi’s government to task over the suspension of a four-year-old program to privatise some 100 loss-making parastatals. The Malawi cabinet last week suspended the much vaunted privatization program without giving a reason. “The general public want an explanation from government because there are still […]
SUDAN’S health ministry has sent an emergency medical team to the city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea after around 40 people died of sunstroke there during a heatwave. Health minister Ahmed Bilal Osman said in a statement that 38 people, most of them elderly, had died from the heat out of a total […]
UNITED NATIONS Secretary-General Kofi Annan named former Ugandan Health Minister Crispus Kiyonga as head of the transition team for the UN-brokered Global Aids and Health Fund on Monday. Kiyonga, who until last week oversaw what many observers consider to be “one of Africa’s most effective AIDS-prevention campaigns,” will head a group charged with determining how […]
OVER 2_500 residents of the northern Ethiopia border town of Himora have been displaced from their homes following the overflowing of the Tekeze river, Ethiopia radio reported on Monday. This flooded parts of the town, forcing residents to flee to higher ground. The river forms part of the common border between Ethiopia and Eritrea until […]
WERNER MENGES, Windhoek | Wednesday THE 125 men accused of high treason and other alleged offences in what is set to be Namibia’s biggest trial since Independence are set to appear in the High Court at Grootfontein tomorrow, with the ranks of their defence lawyers now reduced to one solitary attorney. Tsumeb attorney Chris van […]
MPUMALANGAs renegade lion almost caused a pile-up on the N4 highway just outside the provincial capital Nelspruit on Monday night when it dashed across the busy road. Shaken motorists called the local radio station from the scene, describing how the young male lion casually loped across the double-carriage motorway at 8pm before disappearing into orange […]
Cape Town | Wednesday A JUDGE on Tuesday ruled that an English court order forcing foreign journalists in South Africa to hand over video footage of a vigilante lynching was invalid. Cape Town High Court Judge Jeannette Traverso found that international news agencies Reuters and Associated Press (AP) did not have to submit video footage […]
HUNDREDS of people protested angrily outside a court here Monday after the judge hearing a suit against US drugs company Pfizer failed to turn up and case had to be adjourned. A high court in Kano, northern Nigeria, in March gave leave to three Nigerian families to sue Pfizer in a class action over tests […]
NIGERIA’S President Olusegun Obasanjo has mediated in a spat between the country’s two main bourses over which has the right to call itself the country’s leading exchange. Officials of Nigeria’s first bourse, established in Lagos in 1961, were suspended in May by the regulatory agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), over their refusal to […]
ANOTHER endangered mountain gorilla died in a crossfire in the forested Virunga volcanoes which straddle the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and eastern DRC, a statement from the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) said. AWF quoted the director of the International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP), Annette Lanjouw, as saying that Rugendo [the dead gorilla], was shot dead […]
Pretoria | Tuesday WOUTER BASSON, the mastermind behind apartheid South Africa’s chemical warfare programme, on Monday denied having supplied potions to kill liberation fighters from the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo). Basson (51) was contradicting testimony by a former fellow soldier in the Pretoria High Court that Basson had given him deadly muscle relaxants […]
A YOUNG male lion that escaped from the Kruger National Park two weeks ago is still on the prowl in forests surrounding the small holiday town of White River in Mpumalanga. Mpumalanga Parks Board spokesman Gary Sutter said on Monday the renegade lion had dodged baited traps and ranger patrols but was believed to still […]