ACCORDING to Business Day, longstanding proposals to require doctors and other providers of health services to obtain "certificates of need" from the government before they are allowed to practise have once again been put on hold. That is no reason, however, why we should not explore extending this concept.
In a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Bobby Godsell of Business Leadership SA said it was time for South Africans in business, civil society, the churches, and government to be "courageous and forthright and candid in our views about how to secure our future".
Arguably, however, it has undermined that system in that the sentences imposed are heavier than the crime itself warrants. One of the men, Theo Martins Jackson, was given a sentence of 19 years' imprisonment, of which five were suspended, so that his effective sentence is 14 years. The other, Willem Oosthuizen, was given 16 years of which five were suspended, leaving an effective sentence of 11 years.
Sun glints off the tin roofs of a nearby shack settlement, home of the boy lying in the dust at our feet. Between us and his parents’ shack is a vast sunflower field owned by Pieter Karsten, a leading farmer and businessman in the town of Coligny.
A few months ago Ms Zille quoted Nelson Mandela as having said that South Africa's understanding of the rule of law was part of our colonial heritage. Marian Tupy of the Cato Institute in Washington recalled that a one-time Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said that the judiciary and legal system were among the great institutions derived from British-Indian administration.
Sipho Seepe wrote in Business Day this morning that, "Lekota dug his grave as soon as he sought to distance himself from former president Thabo Mbeki — the mastermind behind COPE. But Lekota should have known better. He is part of a bunch for whom democracy is acceptable as long as it delivers a preferred candidate. When this fails, there are always plans B and C."
LARGELY unnoticed, the Department of Trade and Industry is quietly processing legislation that will, in effect, expropriate copyrights on the death of their owner.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has found a new way to weaken patent rights via the Copyright Amendment Bill of 2015 (the Copyright Bill) and its proposed new “intellectual property tribunal” (the IP tribunal).
5 December 2017 - The reluctance to come out is a rational response to the community's exposure to frightening levels of violence and abuse.
The day before finance minister Pravin Gordhan delivered a budget speech that was supposed to show how South Africa’s economy is being turned around, the National Assembly quietly adopted the Expropriation Bill of 2015, which is sure to damage investment and further constrain economic growth.
From Jacob Zuma to Cyril Ramaphosa (and scores in between) South Africa’s politicians (and a fair number of journalists and social justice activists) have engaged in a week of nauseating adulation of deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Various threats of violence against whites were also reported. Velaphi Khumalo, an employee of the Gauteng provincial administration, tweeted that whites should be ‘hacked and killed like Jews’ and their children ‘used as garden fertiliser’. Other comments by black South Africans called for whites to be ‘poisoned and killed’, urged ‘the total destruction of white people’, and advocated a civil war in which ‘all white people would be killed’.
In his response to the debate on the 2016 State of the Nation Address, president Jacob Zuma reiterated Parliament will consider the promulgation of the Cyber Crimes and Related Matters Bill during the first half of this year. The South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has concerns with this Bill.
The supreme irony is that Ramaphosa’s vast wealth is founded on political access to white capital eager for access to government.
In his fortnightly column in Business Day, John Kane-Berman, the Institute's CEO, writes that the Democratic Alliance (DA) should use the moral authority of the party's history and fight against the racial practices of the ruling tripartite alliance.
The South African visa spat has been well documented as has the squabble between Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom and Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba. The figures show that tourist numbers have fallen from key regions, while many jobs are said to be on the line. Not something the government needs to deal with as unemployment already sits at 1 in 4. The President has called for a review of the whole debacle but the damage may have already been done.
John Kane-Berman asks whether that is what President Zuma really wants.
25 March 2018 - The death of five-year-old Lumka Mketwa in a pit latrine at her school in the Eastern Cape earlier this month is already disappearing from news columns. After a time Lumka will be in the news again when one of the watchdog organisations demanding better facilities in schools, or a public-interest law firm, brings a case to court seeking compensatory damages for her family.
Approximately 60% of black people disagreed with the statement that “South Africa is a country for black-Africans and white people must learn to take second place”. Only 30% agreed and 10% were uncertain.
