Need for ‘separate oil and gas law’
BY CAROL PATON AND PAUL VECCHIATTO – The separation of the oil and gas sector into a different piece of legislation could be part of the changes to the draft law that will govern the country’s mining sector, if Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi has his way. Amendments to the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development […]
Welfare grants help children walk taller
BY CAROL PATON – CHILDREN in households that receive a government child support grant grow taller, are less likely to repeat a grade at school and benefit from increased expenditure on food, compared with “adult products” like alcohol and cigarettes, says a recent research paper published by online policy forum Econ3x3. The paper by University […]
SPII Annual Report 2013
THE PAST YEAR HAS PROVED TO BE A VERY Significant one and history will no doubt favour us with an ability to gauge the watershed nature of 2013 in the coming years. However, even with the distance of a few months, there are many interesting markers. At SPII we have had an exciting year. Our […]
Matter of time before Malema discovers Piketty
by Jonny Steinberg – IT IS a matter of time before the work of French economist Thomas Piketty begins to influence debates about wealth and redistribution in SA. For those who have spent the past three months living in a box, Piketty’s 700-page tome, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is a runaway bestseller that has […]
Equatorial Guinea: One man’s fight for rights in Africa’s most repressive dictatorship
By Simon Allison – Equatorial Guinea has one of the worst human rights records on the continent, all overseen by Africa’s longest serving dictator. It is a model of how not to run a country – especially one with such vast oil reserves. Fortunately, there are Equatorial Guineans willing and able to stand up for […]
A few good whites: Will civil society take Dr Ramphele back?
By Sisonke Msimang – Ramphele’s assumption that she will be accepted into civil society, where she can continue her project of ‘active citizenship’ without having to be directly accountable to a real live constituency, speaks volumes. The good doctor is not wrong in this regard. Sadly, many civil society groups will accept her because the […]
There’s more to getting maid in SA
By Victoria John – Last week a group of Mail & Guardian readers rallied around to rage at a column published by Haji Mohamed Dawjee. The column makes qualified statements that the white people of Johannesburg’s leafy suburb of Parkhurst might be delegating child-minding to domestic workers so that they are freed up to walk their […]
Economic freedom for refugees: The Ugandan model
When a team from Oxford University’s Humanitarian Innovation Project set out to explore what work refugees and asylum seekers in Uganda had managed to find, they were struck by the breadth and scale of businesses they were engaged in – from being café owners to vegetable sellers, to farmers growing maize on a commercial scale, […]
Investment in stokvels gaining ground
By Liziwe Ndalana Cape Town – Stokvels are still an immensely popular way of saving for many South Africans, but the new trend is to put money away for investment and creating wealth rather than saving up for funerals and groceries. “Stokvels are no longer the domain of people in need of a collective pot […]
More Africans in extreme poverty – UN
United Nations – More sub-Saharan Africans are living in extreme poverty now than in 1990, said a major United Nations report on Monday, warning the region will miss most of its development goals. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), set in 2000, strive to halve extreme poverty and hunger in the world by 2015. They also […]
