Letters

Cosatu reiterates |full support |for demands

Cosatu has reiterated its full support for the strike by the public service unions and their "fully justified demands" for a living wage and |better working conditions. [ Full Story... ]

'Restrain yourselves' state warns strikers "

THE public sector strike yesterday took a new twist when the government won a court order to stop violence among some of the striking workers, paving the way for the prosecution of those who defy the order. [ Full Story... ]

A nurse's story ...

CLAD in blue jeans, takkies, a red |T-shirt emblazoned with a Nehawu logo, a matching red hat and carrying a yellow vuvuzela, Thenjiwe Mkhize* is a typical striker eager to make her voice heard. [ Full Story... ]

SA army needs 'women-friendly' arsenal, says Makwetla

THABANG MAKWETLA, the Deputy Minister for Defence and Military Veterans, has called on the SA National Defence Force to procure "women-friendly arsenal". [ Full Story... ]

SANDF roped in to help hospitals in crisis due to strike

INCREASINGLY desperate to minimise the collapse of South Africa's health care services around the country as a result |of the ongoing strike by healthcare professionals, the government has roped in the army's medical service to attend to patients. [ Full Story... ]

'Restrain yourselves' state warns strikers "

THE public sector strike yesterday took a new twist when the government won a court order to stop violence among some of the striking workers, paving the way for the prosecution of those who defy the order. [ Full Story... ]

Quotes of the week

"Every single ANC spokesman who gets a platform slams the media as if we were... Osama bin Laden." - South African National Editors Forum chairman Mondli Makhanya at a roundtable discussion on media freedom hosted by Talk Radio 702 in Johannesburg. [ Full Story... ]

ANC leadership's big test

The crippling strike by public sector workers is the biggest test for President Jacob Zuma's leadership. Zuma has made it known that he knows nothing about economics, except that his neighbour must not go hungry. The public sector workers, some of whom work far harder than he does, are telling him that they are hungry. Many look after extended families, who have been retrenched in the private sector. [ Full Story... ]

Plenty to (un)learn from China visit

President Jacob Zuma's visit to China next week is significant both in terms of what we need to learn from China and, more importantly, what we need to eschew. And what we need to learn from the Chinese is what every country would like to. It's about the economy. Since last year, China has become South Africa's largest export destination. [ Full Story... ]

The good and the bad about central planning

IN a democratic system, the processes through which decisions are made are as important as the results achieved through those decisions. This means that democratic governments should be consultative in relation to the process of governing on one hand, and they also have to ensure that their decisions bear substantive impacts on the lives of the people. [ Full Story... ]

History favours media in fight

In its fight for freedom, the South Africa's press has history on it side. [ Full Story... ]

Defend free speech with your vote

As a South African who has been through the darkest days of apartheid, it pains me greatly to see the retreat from the principles of openness, transparency and accountability that underpin our constitution and the regression into obsessive bureaucratic secrecy. [ Full Story... ]

Information hijackers go forward to the past

My father, Horace Flather, who was editor of The Star over a period of time during the apartheid regime, likened his job to "crossing a minefield blindfolded". His responsibility under an increasingly paranoid government was to keep his readers informed without jeopardising the right to publish. Furthermore, he had the future of a large staff to consider as well as a newspaper's bread and butter, the advertisers, who were not keen to put their money into a defiantly anti-government "mouth". [ Full Story... ]

The poor majority have greater concerns than media freedom

The majority of citizens have chosen silence. They have chosen self-censorship on the issue of freedom of expression. [ Full Story... ]

How to make migration a boon

Since the demise of apartheid the country has undergone a population metamorphosis, experiencing an inflow of migrants from many countries around the world, but mostly from Africa. Bearing in mind that this country has scarce resources, the nation then had to absorb the newcomers. [ Full Story... ]

Scandalous, shocking, heart-breaking ...

Karl Marx's letter to his father in 1837 well describes Ruth First's life. Marx wrote: "If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people." [ Full Story... ]

ANC hostility to the media began long before Polokwane

It is amusingly astonishing that we only discovered this year that the ANC's attitude towards the media is downright hostile. [ Full Story... ]

Winning team is the best team

The "same-sex marriage" between Helen Zille of the DA and the ID's Patricia de Lille is to be welcomed, but there is justification in ANC criticism that the two leaders are more inclined to concentrate on ANC faults than on promoting their own policies. [ Full Story... ]

Long road to freedom ... short road to slavery

Given the current literally wholesale and utterly merciless "scramble for getting rich quick" among the new South African economic and political elite, there is a striking parallel between Yugoslavia (my home country) following the communist takeover after World War II and South Africa today. But these are by no means isolated phenomena: in all the revolutionary takeovers throughout history the ascending powers used their newly acquired status to assert themselves not only politically, but most of all economically. [ Full Story... ]