What will a fair allocation of a COVID-19 vaccine look like in South Africa? An efficacious COVID-19 vaccine would undoubtedly be a global public good that, in the context of a pandemic, is urgently and synchronously required by the global community. These unique features make allocation of an approved COVID-19 …
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Herd (Immunity) Today, Gone Tomorrow
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay By ALEX WELTE As of the time of writing (mid-October 2020), there is much talk in South Africa about a ‘second wave’ of COVID-19. In Europe, it is much more than talk, with COVID-19 diagnoses, hospital admissions, and deaths, not to mention ‘restrictions’, all …
Read More »Historic Ghost House Demolished Days After Heritage Impact Assessment Published
By PENNY SWIFT Less than a week after publication of a heritage impact assessment (HIA) on an iconic haunted ghost house on the M4 near Durban, the building was razed to the ground. The demolition was ordered by the local eThekwini Council that had previously demanded the owner, Saantha Naidu Group of …
Read More »Award-Winning Nigerian Floating School Wrecked
By PENNY SWIFT A controversial but much celebrated, award winning three-story floating school built on the Lagos Lagoon in 2013 has collapsed following torrential rain. Constructed as a prototype to show how floating buildings could improve the lives of the impoverished Makoko community, it was designed by Kunlé Adeyemi, a Nigerian …
Read More »Charleston: It’s Not Over
Since the 1920s Charleston has been the name of a dance; a dance with roots in Africa, and made white and famous on Broadway. Now Charleston is the name of a massacre, the murder of nine people and the desecration of the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. About Charleston and …
Read More »FIFA Exposes a Chink in the ANC’s Control of Government
By ALEXANDER O’RIORDAN Last night Sepp Blatter resigned after 17 years in the position as president of football’s global governing body, FIFA. The resignation was to be expected since American criminal investigators last week indicted a host of FIFA executives on charges related to corruption and wire fraud. Notably, these charges …
Read More »Reason after Liberalism
Comment by RICHARD PITHOUSE In recent days and weeks the liberal consensus on which the post-apartheid order was founded has been burnt away like morning mist giving way to the heat of the rising sun. From our liberal universities to the streets of Durban and Johannesburg, liberal values have been spurned. …
Read More »Future for Progressive Politics in South Africa
As Latin America’s Pink Tide sweeps across Europe, what are the prospects for a more progressive brand of politics in South Africa? By FAZILA FAROUK Analysts argue that the expulsion of Zwelinzima Vavi and Numsa from Cosatu, by a faction sympathetic to President Jacob Zuma, have clear consequences for a …
Read More »Labour Rights and Karoo Farmworkers: Can Power Relations Be Challenged?
By FEMKE BRANDT The Labour Relations Amendment Act of 2014 (Section 198 of the LRA) introduces important new rights for labour broker, contract and part-time workers. Two issues emerge in relation to how these new labour rights affect farmworkers in the Karoo. Firstly, it is highly unlikely that the amendments …
Read More »Commissions of Inquiry or Omission?
By DALE McKINLEY Amongst its many other attributes, South Africa could arguably be called the commission capital of the world. While there is no official list of how many commissions of inquiry there have been in the 20 years since 1994, suffice to say that the numbers are impressive. …
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