The controversial National Prosecuting Authority Amendment Act and the South African Police Services Amendment Act bring about respectively the demise of Directorate of Special Operation (DSO) or the Scorpions, as they are known to the public, and the creation of a new unit to deal with, inter alia, organised crime to replace the Scorpions. This […]
Author Archive | @ifaisa
First Steps in Basic Education
Everyone in South Africa is entitled to a basic education. This is a right guaranteed to child and adult alike in our Bill of Rights. The state is obliged to promote and fulfill this right. It has not been doing so on a disastrous scale. The statistics are sobering; only 3.5% of the black (African) […]
Public School Principals and the principles of accountability (cont.)
It is not alarmist to suggest that the public school system in South Africa is dysfunctional. The last year for which comprehensive statistics are available is 2007. In that year 278,000 black learners did emerge clutching their matriculation certificates proudly in their hands. Unfortunately, on being tested for their functional literacy, it emerged that only […]
The Dawning Of The Age Of Responsibility
If one takes into account that the economy of the United States is about 100 times the size of the South African economy, that the World Bank has its tentacles in every nook and cranny of the global economy and that South Africa is part of that global economy, then it is plain that it […]
Mamphela Ramphele’s Five Point Plan for Education (cont.)
So when a former Vice Chancellor of UCT, who is also ex managing director of the World Bank, recently took the trouble to address national education issues at the invitation of the Social Justice Coalition, her message deserves close attention. Mamphela Ramphele did not disappoint. In an atmosphere reminiscent of the re-energizing meetings of the […]
Reforming Basic Education in South Africa (cont.)
One of the more hopeful signs to emerge from the changes wrought at Polokwane is that the new leadership of the ANC appears to have identified the state of basic education in the country as a problem in need of urgent attention. The recently published article by Blade Nzimande, and Dr Kronenberg’s excoriation of OBE […]
Open Letter To President Kgalema Motlanthe By Archbishop Tutu And Former President F.W. de Klerk (1st December 2008)
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Affirmative Action: Redressing Or Creating Imbalances? (Cont.)
The appropriate starting point for discussing the legislative and other measures actually taken since 1994 is the origin of them all: section 9 (2) itself. It is part of the equality provision set out in the Bill of Rights. This is a provision which is central to the achievement of the constitutional goals of the […]
Qunta’s Blind Spot (Cont.)
If we take as our starting point, as we must, that the new South Africa is a non-racist, non-sexist democracy in which equality is a guaranteed right and unfair discrimination is frowned upon to such an extent that discrimination on grounds of race or gender is regarded to be unfair (unless it is established that […]
