While South Africa has previously been perceived to have highest food security in Africa, the United Nations (UN) estimates that the “number of malnourished children is increasing so rapidly that, by 2025, 1.7 million children under the age of five will suffer from stunted growth”.3 The effects of an inadequate diet cannot be reversed and will have intergenerational consequences. BP 564 – […]
The Department of Home Affairs has acknowledged that there is an increase in the backlog of visa applications waiting to be processed. The overall backlog goes back as far as 2016. It blames the delays on the closure of the workplace during COVID, lack of staff and the length of the process. At present any application has to […]
Each year World Tuberculosis Day (TB) is commemorated on 24th March to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of the disease, and to increase efforts to end the global epidemic. Family Digest 54 – World Tuberculosis Day by Lois Law
All over the world today extractable resources exist in large reserves that can be used as raw materials to feed into industries such as iron and steel production, energy generation and high-tech manufacturing. This makes mining a very significant industry that supports global economic development, but of course the process of mining dates back to pre-historic times, when people first dug up useful […]
SONA is done and dusted, the budget has been delivered, and the cabinet game of musical chairs has come and gone. So let’s have a look at some of the finer details of what the Minister of Finance told us in his budget speech, bearing in mind that far more detail is contained in the […]
In January 2018, shortly after he became president of the ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the party’s 106th birthday celebrations in East London. Eagerly wielding a new broom, he said, “As you can see, this year we started on time. It’s a clear signal that things are changing. The NEC meeting also started on time. Nelson […]
It is no secret that gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) is a pandemic in South Africa. On 17th February the Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, delivered an overview of the 2022/2023 quarter three crime statistics. There had been an 11.6% rise in all forms of contact crimes, with murder increasing by 10.1% and a 9.6% […]
Cancer is a public health issue of major concern. According to the Department of Health (DoH), cancer is the second leading cause of death, globally. It is a non-communicable disease which is caused by abnormal cells dividing uncontrollably and, in so doing, destroying body tissue and resulting in tumours. “Cancerous tumours spread into, or invade, […]
We live in an era of worsening setbacks for mobile people, especially in terms of their basic human rights. This is evidenced very clearly in many parts of the world. Increasingly, experts point to what they call ‘the primary and secondary barriers’ to the exercise of human rights. Refugee Digest 73 – Migrants, Refugees and […]
Last week the Acting Judge President of the Western Cape High Court, Judge Patricia Goliath, handed down a far-reaching judgement in which she declared sections 22(12)&(13) of the Refugees Act 130 of 1998, as well as Regulation 9 and Form 3 of the regulations under the Act, to be unconstitutional. She directed that the legislation […]
