If I must die, let me declare for all to know that I will meet my fate like a man.” These are the words Nelson Mandela intended to read out if he was given the death sentence at the Rivonia Trial in June 1964. Half a century later our globally beloved Madiba can know that [...]
When we talk about shale gas mining and fracking, we are not talking about one little well in the middle of the Karoo. We are talking about 60% of South Africa’s land surface being targeted for production. […]
From petrol attendant and bartender to President of the Supreme Court of Appeal and Chancellor of Rhodes University, this is the remarkable story of Judge Lex Mpati. […]
The arid landscape of Carnarvon in the Northern Cape, where the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope is being built, is watched over by quiver trees. Sentries from another time, these silent giants date back to the ancient world of the Khoisan and still further back to an age before any human footprints passed this [...]
The world has its Ivy Leagues, Oxfords, Cambridges, Kyotos, Tokyos, Pekings and Delhis – recognised as the top universities in the world. Why should South Africa be any different? It is long overdue to establish our own top league, perhaps call it the Madiba League, including the top six research-intensive universities in the country. The [...]
In the 1600s and the 1800s over 1,25 million British and European citizens were captured by North African slave traders and taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Morocco. Prodded and examined like livestock, the white slaves were sold to the highest bidder. […]
Neziswa Mcinga, known as ‘Pinky’, was 23 years of age and at a dead end in her life when computer skills came to her community in the deep rural region of Dwesa on the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape. […]
There’s good news and there’s bad when it comes to the state of South Africa’s linefish and seafood. The bad news is that 79% of our key linefish species are over-exploited or collapsed, with populations of household favourites such as Cape Salmon/Geelbek reduced to 3% of their original abundance and kob/kabeljou reduced to somewhere around [...]
You wake up in the morning, switch on your solar-powered lights, head over to your coffee maker and enjoy a delicious renewable energy beverage. You get dressed in carbon neutral clothes produced by off grid factories and catch the wind-powered underground to your energy-efficient office. A dream? No. Welcome to Masdar City in the United [...]
The 1970s at Wits were a time of mass meetings, all-night vigils, marches, arrests and security police spies. The decade ushered in the June 16 uprisings and the era of Africanisation, when the SRC and the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) took a long, hard look at what it meant to be South [...]
