If only Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene had a “good story to tell” when he delivers the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) on Wednesday afternoon. If only that story was that economic growth is up, the deficit is down and government is able to allocate extra funding to universities and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme. Perhaps then the genie could go back in the bottle. But there is no good story and a contagion on student protests has built towards a national shutdown of higher education institutions around the country.

Belinda Bozzoli says core subsidy has consistently fallen in real terms in relation to student numbers, which have, in turn, risen dramatically

The University funding revolution is not happening

The South African government has, since 1994, rendered our Universities unsustainable as institutions of excellence and stability. By imposing a harsh, technocratic and underfunded financial regime upon them, it has all but guaranteed declining quality, and increasing dissatisfaction, some of it violent, amongst students and academic staff.

The Colts from Colombo and the Boer prisoners-of-war who played a two-day match in July 1901.
Back (left to right): Phillipus Ooosthuizen (scorer – Boers), Gert Kotzé, J Coetzer, W de Fransz, Piet du Plessis, C. E. Perera, Sydney Tennant (umpire – Boers), AC Solomonsz (umpire – Colts)
Middle (left to right): Jim Ludovici, Cornelius Otto, S. P. Joseph (scorer – Colts), Alexus Smuts, Tommy Kelaart, RC Dunn, EA Joseph, AT Pollocks, J Forsyth, Tommy Hilder

An ancient African genome has been sequenced for the first time.

Researchers extracted DNA from a 4,500-year-old skull that was discovered in the highlands of Ethiopia.

A comparison with genetic material from today's Africans reveals how our ancient ancestors mixed and moved around the continents.

The findings, published in the journal Science, suggests that about 3,000 years ago there was a huge wave of migration from Eurasia into Africa.

The famed economist reveals the real reason the rich are getting richer -- and what it means for the rest of us

A critic had once remarked of an artist that a painting is not Indian or European simply on account of whether it is painted in India or in Europe. Similarly, one may say that scholarship is not scholarly simply because it is done by academics. Although academic writing ought to advance our knowledge rather than limit our understanding, some academic writing in the last few years appears clearly to be marked by a pursuit of sectarian politics by other means. A recent trend in writing on M.K.

In these times of urgency, when weak and lazy minds would like us to oppose “thought” to “direct action”; and when, precisely because of this propensity for “thoughtless action”, everything is framed in the nihilistic terms of power for the sake of power – in such times what follows might mistakenly be construed as contemptuous.

And yet, as new struggles unfold, hard questions have to be asked. They have to be asked if, in an infernal cycle of repetition but no difference, one form of damaged life is not simply to be replaced by another.

photo credit: A reconstruction of Homo naledi’s head by paleoartist John Gurche, who spent some 700 hours recreating the head from bone scans. University of the Witwatersrand, National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation.

Today’s complex global economy has brought new forms of worker exploitation. And globalisation has made workers ever-more precarious. For example, factory workers in Bangladesh toil long days in buildings that could very possibly collapse and kill them. Foreign guest workers in the Arab Gulf have no legal protections from physical abuse.