Programme News
7 December 2013
(News)
Nelson Mandela’s qualities as a leader who truly served his people and remained humble are the most important lessons to be learnt from his life, law firm Routledge Modise’s chairman, Lavery Modise, said on Friday.
"He brought out the best of what is expected in a leader. I cannot think of a better example. It will be a hard act to follow, but we should all try to emulate him,...
6 December 2013
(Press release)
It is difficult to come to terms with the news that the world’s most revered statesman and human rights activist is gone. As is so often said, he now belongs to the ages.
Although an old man, he seemed immortal. But Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a man, a man whose dedication to the struggle against Apartheid and injustice, and opposition to oppression moulded him into a beacon and a...
11 October 2013
(News)
As the temperature soars past 30° C in the small town of Carolina in Mpumalanga, a lone public tap stands at the entrance of the town hall. Community members use water from the tap to wash their feet under the watchful gaze of a guard. But in the hours preceding a town hall meeting on Wednesday, not a single soul took a sip of the clean-looking water.
Residents streamed in their hundreds into...
4 October 2013
(News)
As mine polluters get off scot-free, locals wait for the next deadly build-up of acids in the community's drinking water.
In January last year, exceptionally heavy rainfall led to the collapse of the water system in the small Mpumalanga town of Carolina. People fell ill, and the municipality was slow to tell them that they could not drink the water. Water tankers and mosques were the only...
25 September 2013
(News)
It is a question often dodged by government leaders at press conferences: Why not "ring-fence" a part of the royalties and taxes clawed from mining companies and earmark them to be spent on local communities?
Shrug.
National Treasury's spoils from mining - some R27-billion last year, according to the Chamber of Mines - goes into a general pool and is then thinly spread from Port...
25 September 2013
(News)
Trouble is brewing in Mokopane, Limpopo, where a community is fighting the establishment of what is expected to be the world's biggest platinum mine.
Community members in several villages accuse Canadian mining group Ivanhoe Mines of attempting to shove them aside to make way for its Platreef mine.
Ivanplats, an Ivanhoe subsidiary, is prospecting around the villages of Kgobudi, Magongoa,...
12 September 2013
(News)
Special Assignment investigates the rising tensions between communities within the platinum belt and the mining corporations - over the use and availability of water.
We visit the platinum mines from Marikana to the north western side of the Pilanesberg in Motlhabe village, with their rapidly urbanising communities, and examine the consequences of wall-to-wall mining applications on the supply...
8 September 2013
(News)
People who were relocated from the village of Ga-Pila in Mokopane, formerly Potgietersrus, are accusing mining giant Anglo Platinum (Amplats) of a litany of broken promises.
Amplats asked the villagers to make way for a mining dump. They were shifted to the nearby Sterkwater.
Now they say Amplats short-changed them on the relocation fee and failed to provide them with services they promised...
30 August 2013
(News)
Prospecting for one of the world's largest platinum mines has already taken farming land from a Limpopo community.
Their future is uncertain and people are getting angrier about living in limbo
In 1994, most South Africans opened the gates to freedom. In that year, Frank Mofokeng* lost his ancestral plot and his only source of income.
One morning he woke up and walked the few kilometres to...
30 August 2013
(News)
Prospecting for one of the world's largest platinum mines has already taken farming land from a Limpopo community.
Their future is uncertain and people are getting angrier about living in limbo
In 1994, most South Africans opened the gates to freedom. In that year, Frank Mofokeng* lost his ancestral plot and his only source of income.
One morning he woke up and walked the few kilometres to...