Tag Archives: South Africa

SA is overexploiting its water system, and the problem is getting harder and costlier to fix. Even if all government strategies are implemented, the country's demand for water will still outstrip supply.

South Africa can look to the arid Israeli model for its water solutions.

Are the estimated one million or so Chinese nationals who live and work on the African continent a neo-colonialist scourge that matches, if not outstrips, the one that preceded it? Or are they flying solo?

President Barack Obama historic address at the African Union headquarters on Tuesday was every bit as rousing as he intended it to be – inspiring yet cutting, easy-going yet contemporary. No bluster. Just Obama being Obamaesque.

Pakistan needs those involved in its World Cup cricket team selection to keep the national interest before personal likes and dislikes. But then this is Pakistan where merit is a disqualifier both in sports and politics.

For some parts of Africa 2014 has been a bad year. Wars in South Sudan and the Central African Republic continued, and Libya all but imploded. But the year was also good for ruling parties and former liberation movements in Southern Africa. From Namibia to Botswana, South Africa and Mozambique, those in power stayed in power.

Sport, they say, mirrors life. Rarely, though, does it mirror the grim realities that force us to take time to examine our own frailties. Phil Hughes, whose life was ended doing what he loved most, forces introspection of just how fragile life can be.

While there is much talk about replacing Jacques Kallis as a bowler, closer inspection would reveal they’ve actually done so already, without even realizing it. It’s now about fine-tuning the resources and getting the best out of them before the 2015 World Cup.

The biggest reports of racism in sports come from football stadiums across Europe, but now the same ugly issue has also reared its head in South Africa.

Despite being a middle-income country, South Africa has a long and shameful history of those in power ignoring the needs and the interests of the majority. Colonial and subsequent Apartheid laws reduced black people in South Africa to merely being cheap labor to service the needs of these economies. Poverty, inequality and hunger, while visible in the faces and cupped hands of people at traffic lights in middle-class neighborhoods, largely continue to be felt most in townships, informal settlements and rural areas which are often located far away from economic and suburban hubs.