President Barack Obama’s re-election last week reminds us that the embrace of diversity is America’s greatest gift to the world. South Africa, like the United States, is one of the world’s most diverse countries with a similar burden of history of racial separation. This had led some of us in the small cocooned world of […]
News/Politics
Posted inNews/Politics
Towards a low-carbon Africa
Renewable projects are being planned and implemented throughout Africa, bringing both immediate and long-term solutions to Africa’s energy challenges while congruently attempting to reduce greenhouse gas production and emissions. As a country extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, South Africa has identified water, disease, food security and environmental migration as key areas where […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Will Gauntlett be appointed to the Constitutional Court?
In the legal community you find mainly three types of lawyers. You get the good lawyers who you call up for the straightforward cases. You get the great lawyers for the complicated cases, generally those you want to get to the Constitutional Court. Then you get lawyers like Jeremy Gauntlett, the lawyer that presidents, ministry […]
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No one’s safe in Marikana
I met Marikana community member, mineworker and activist Tsepo M at a coffee shop in Melville. He had some business to attend to in Johannesburg and a colleague set up the meeting for me to discuss the current situation in Marikana. A man in his late 50s, Tsepo’s face bears the markings of years of […]
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Cervical cancer: Women’s lives are worth saving
By Nyasha Chingore-Munazvo and Priti Patel Around the world a woman dies of cervical cancer every two minutes. This is even worse in southern Africa, where cervical cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women — more women in southern Africa die of cervical cancer than breast cancer. Deaths due to cervical cancer […]
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I benefit from the failure of the basic education system
It’s time to admit it. You’re white and you benefited. This is the challenge that Roger Young and Leonard Shapiro have set for white South Africans. The pair created and is selling T-shirts that read across the front: “I benefited from apartheid.” They say the T-shirts are their attempt at beginning “an important conversation about […]
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Sharia law, nemesis of justice
While in transit at Abu Dhabi International Airport recently world-renowned Professor Cyril Karabus from Cape Town was arrested and jailed over a child’s death that occurred 12 years ago. Although his trail is due to take place on November 20 his lawyers have not had access to the medical files and there is good reason […]
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Angie not to blame for teen pregnancy but…
The world’s super-teacher, Ron Clark, recently told CNN how he “met a principal who was recently named as the administrator of the year in her state”. “She was loved and adored by all but she told me she was leaving the profession. I screamed ‘you can’t leave us’ and she quite bluntly replied ‘look, if […]
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St Francis, shack fires and the professionally offended
It sucks being an over-educated Joburg northern suburbs white liberal of a certain age. It really does. You haven’t given over to the cynicism of your parents’ generation, so you’re perpetually in knots over the twin anxieties of your whiteness and your privilege. You spent years at university studying critical discourse analysis, so you never […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Avoiding the resource curse in Africa
Over the last four decades, resource abundant countries in the developing world have consistently under-performed resource poor countries when it comes to economic growth, income inequality and good governance. It has been well established that the more intense a country’s reliance on mineral exports (measured as a percentage of GDP), the more slowly its economy […]
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The American Dream in a rough patch
It’s the American dream with an offshore twist. Although proportionately fewer than in 2008, foreigners in their droves supported Barack Obama in this week’s United States presidential election. The Gallup poll, of 26 000 people in 32 countries, found that 63% thought the US president had a high or very high impact on their lives and […]
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Aid agencies should use local journalists to get message across
By Prue Clarke Mae Azango is one courageous reporter. But she is also a potent weapon in the fight for human rights. Azango’s reporting on female genital cutting (FGC) in her native Liberia earlier this year, brought death threats and sent her and her nine-year-old daughter into hiding. Three weeks later, the Liberian government, having never dared risk votes by […]