History Matters

I was informed of Neville´s cancer some time ago by close friends who knew our close friendship – but Neville was not only my friend (he was considerably older being born in 1936 and I in 1948) but also of many members of the Gool and Abdurahman family – who were closely connected to Cmde. [...]

In July 1981, 1,700 workers at the Penge asbestos mine in the Northwestern Transvaal struck after a bitter, two year struggle for recognition by the Black Allied Mine and Construction Workers Union. After four days, the mine owners fired all of the workers, who then responded by occupying the living compounds attached to the mine. [...]

During the 1960s, organised black opposition to apartheid had been highly reduced and controlled after the Sharpeville massacre and the imprisonment and exile of most of the African National Congress (ANC) leaders. However, the year 1969 saw the birth of a new organization exclusively formed by black university students: the South African Students Organization (SASO). [...]

Donors should expose and combat the double standard of companies exploiting weak oversight to sell poor-quality products to lower-income markets ROGER BATE Published: 2012/07/10 07:22:42 AM GLOBAL health agencies and western donors have made great efforts in recent years to subsidise and improve the supply of medicines for diseases affecting the world’s poorest people, particularly [...]

2012-07-08 10:00 Angie Motshekga After reading various articles about the textbook issue in Limpopo, I could not help but write this letter. I have no doubt that not only am I capable of fulfilling my responsibilities, but with the current team in the national department and in provinces, we have steered this ship well in [...]

2012-07-01 10:00 Alistair McKay Many excellent pieces of introspection and reflection have been written recently, and it’s about time. We haven’t done enough introspection in South Africa, especially among white people. We are a nation emerging from a mass tragedy – much like the Germans after World War II – and yet too few white [...]

29 Jun 2012 09:09 – Shula Marks National records are vital to democracy, yet they are consistently neglected by the government, writes Shula Marks. For most people other than historians and lawyers, the notion of a public archive is almost certainly rather hazy. Insofar as they think about it at all, the public probably believes [...]

2012-06-24 08:42 South Africa’s decision to contribute to the firewall that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is preparing if the eurozone comes crashing down needs to be commended. We are not handing over a pot filled with two billion one-dollar bills, we are simply committing ourselves to be ready to help if the euro crashes. [...]

By Glenn Ashton, 18 June 2012 South Africa looms large in the affairs of the Kingdoms of Swaziland and Lesotho, the local geo-political giant. Economically, each receives disproportionate amounts of their annual GDP directly from South Africa. Each is profoundly reliant on their powerful neighbour for the supply of food, fuel, goods and services and [...]