South Africa transfers just over R50 billion a year to Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland with no strings attached By ALEXANDER O’RIORDAN The Southern African Customs Union (SACU) is most easily identifiable in Botswana’s, Lesotho’s, Namibia’s and Swaziland’s (BLNS) use of the South African Rand as the basis for their …
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Ambiguous Application of Affirmative Action Leaves South Africa Untransformed
By ANNA MAJAVU After almost 21 years, affirmative action has not taken root in South Africa and most sectors of the economy, including academic institutions, remain “untransformed”. The most recent Commission for Employment Equity’s annual report noted that whites continued to retain the vast majority of the top positions in …
Read More »South Africa’s Electricity Crisis: Power to the People?
Big Business is both the primary consumer of electricity and the principal culprit when it comes to non-payment for services By DALE T McKINLEY AMANDLA NGAWETHU! We hear it all the time and many regularly shout it. Indeed, “power to the people” has been a crucial part of South Africa’s …
Read More »In Search of a Meaningful Agenda for Human Rights Day in South Africa
By JANE DUNCAN On 21 March 1960, the apartheid police opened fire on a crowd of protestors in Sharpeville, killing 69 people. Five decades on, post-apartheid South Africa remembers these events annually, on Human Rights Day. The government has attempted to depoliticize the event, shifting the day from one that is …
Read More »Newly Qualified Black Teachers Struggle to Find Jobs Despite Overcrowding in South Africa’s Classrooms
By ANNA MAJAVU South Africa has a growing number of unemployed teaching graduates, especially newly qualified Black teachers. When Dr Blade Nzimande took office as Higher Education minister, he increased the number of bursaries for teacher training, supposedly to remedy the extreme shortage of teachers. Last year, R2.4-billion was allocated …
Read More »Land, Dignity & Democracy: South Africa’s Constitution Does Allow for Expropriation
By RICHARD PITHOUSE At a public discussion on the land question in Johannesburg on Friday, February 27, Dikgang Moseneke, the Deputy Chief Judge of the Constitutional Court, began his remarks with a well-known quote from Frantz Fanon: For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is …
Read More »South Africa’s New Food and Nutrition Policy Fails to Address Constitutional Right to Food
By BUSISO MOYO Everyone seems to have an interest in food policy these days, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with its Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, to the G8 with its New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, to social movements, civil society networks and those …
Read More »Laughing President: The Real Reason Jacob Zuma Can’t Stop Smiling
By ALEXANDER O’RIORDAN What happened in the South African Parliament last week was a carefully engineered spectacle of power Last week’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) and the subsequent fallout is being voraciously dissected in the press. Most of the analysis, however, is on what the media presumes are …
Read More »Mining Indaba Rethinks the Role of Mining in South Africa
Nothing Changes Until Something Big Happens By SALIEM FAKIR Last week the Mining Indaba came and went just like it does every year. Some 7,000 people attended. On its margins, outside of the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), a different kind of mining indaba, a people’s indaba, took place …
Read More »SONA 2015: Leila Khaled’s Presence In Parliament Lost in Pandemonium of Local Politics
By ANNA MAJAVU The Tripartite Alliance’s support of the BDS Movement is weakened by the ruling party’s confusing stance on Israel/Palestine Amongst the audience in Parliament’s public gallery for President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) was a Palestinian freedom icon who carried with her the hopes of …
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