Current developments in South Africa are reminiscent of events in 1985. In that year South Africa experienced high costs from currency depreciation and adverse political developments. At the time the country faced increasing international sanctions and isolation, while the exchange rate of the rand remained under severe pressure, recording sharp falls in the international value of the rand.

On 30 September 1989, at the height of apartheid Archbishop Desmond Tutu leads a group of protesters for a walk on a "whites only" beach at the Strand. White South Africans need to acknowledge the hurt resulting from apartheid, says the author. Picture: Willie de Klerk

Apologies are still needed for the pain caused by apartheid, writes Joanne Joseph.

Students block registration at Wits' Braamfontein Campus in Johannesburg on Monday. Picture: FREDDY MAVUNDA

ARE universities a financial bottomless pit? It may seem that they are.

Shortly after both President Jacob Zuma and Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande announced billions of rand in additional funding to reduce registration fees, relieve debt and increase the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), universities were confronted by militant students demanding financial relief at the beginning of the new academic year.

Nobody wants a repeat of Marikana's bloody August 16 2012. But what measures are being put in place to prevent that?

As we report in this edition, a peacekeeping force of some kind has been mooted to end the violence still haunting the platinum belt, where unionists on both sides of the labour divide have been murdered, and where, it is feared, a situation similar to that which led to 44 deaths last year could be developing. Nobody wants a rerun of August 16 2012, but what is happening to prevent that?

“My generation led Africa to political freedom. The current generation of leaders and peoples of Africa must pick up the flickering torch of African freedom, refuel it with their enthusiasm and determination, and carry it forward,” said Tanzania’s first president, Julius Nyerere, one of the founding fathers of the OAU, in a speech given in Accra on the occasion of Ghana’s 40th independence anniversary celebrations on 6 March 1997. This piece is extracted from that speech.

Johannesburg - One picture, taken amid the chaos of flying bullets and crying schoolchildren, became the iconic image that thrust the 1976 Soweto uprisings into world headlines.

But while that photograph exposed the brutality of the apartheid police and shocked the world, it also saw an abrupt end to the career of the man behind the lens.

Photographer Sam Nzima believes while the picture catapulted him to sudden fame, it also destroyed his life.

The small Pentax camera he used on June 16, 1976 had cost him R180, which had taken a year for him to pay off.

If he launches a party, Julius Malema might not win at the next elections but he still is dangerous for the ANC. Khaya Dlanga explains why.

If things work out as some think, Julius Malema will launch a new political party. This election season is going to be interesting, especially with the return of Malema. Just how interesting he will make it is unpredictable.

The UN office on Drugs and Crime reported in their 2010 World Report that South Africa is the largest International player in the Import and Export of drugs. Since then drugs have escalated out of control due to the fact that our Law Enforcement Agencies refuse to investigate many of the drug cartels operating in South Africa.

It is with no surprise that we find a growing youth bulge, incredibly phenomenal rates of unemployment, poverty widening gaps in inequality, challenges with education, electricity and labour disputes that are spiralling dismally out of control.

The reality of our situation is not statistical or academic; it is based on the insatiable greed of colonialists who continue to mutilate the African continent and condemn it, through ungodly indebtedness that the continent, regardless of its mineral wealth, continues to pay at the expense of ravenous consumerism.

The epitaph on the granite base of the statue in the English town of Bedford simply states, “No white person has done more for South Africa than Trevor Huddleston,” the words of Nelson Mandela.

I don’t know if Father Trevor, as we used to call him in Sophiatown, would be totally comfortable with the fact that a 12-word précis of his life should include the descriptor, “white”. Why did Madiba not use a nationalist or professional reference instead, such as, “No English person” or, “No Christian person”?