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Imagine John Lennon at 80

In 1975, John Lennon wrote in a letter, ‘I’ll live till a ripe old age! I’m sure of it.’ In 1980, he wrote in a song on Double Fantasy, the last album before he died, ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’ And then life happened…

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Letter to American voters: Vote for all our rights

These days, in the age of global pandemics, global climate change, global financial systems, global migration and global inequality, we are all global citizens. Unfortunately, though, we do not yet have global voting rights. Although our governments sit in global bodies like the United Nations (UN), they rarely consult us on the resolutions they adopt. This leaves us powerless to shape some of the political processes that have the greatest impact on our lives. But there are also countries whose politics affect the whole world. One of these is the United States, whose election on 3 November 2020 is of global importance.

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Gauteng’s Covid-19 infrastructure splurge: New report on R1.2bn spend raises more questions than answers

The plot thickens over the Gauteng Provincial Government’s health infrastructure programme, planned for a Covid-19 wave that has now passed, which is starting to look like a big white elephant. The worst part is that the buildings and ICU units that were supposed to be up and running when Covid-19 hit SA’s most densely populated province, are still under construction.

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Big questions loom over Gauteng’s billion-rand ICU field hospitals

The Gauteng government has spent hundreds of millions of rands on ‘barrack-style field hospitals’ in anticipation of a Covid-19 surge which has already passed, with most of these nowhere near close to completion. Doctors say these structures were also not fit for purpose and warned billions more could be wasted. This suggests the construction of 1,400 additional ICU beds, a signature project of the provincial health department may turn out to be the biggest misspending of emergency health funds that has yet bedevilled the pandemic response.

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Rise up, fallen fighters!

In the last few months we have seen the deaths of ordinary people who helped define our heritage by becoming extraordinary: Andrew Mlangeni, Achmat Dangor and George Bizos. These were people whose lives contained South Africa’s raging currents, epitomised its human beauty and witnessed its cruelty and brutality. 

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The vital need for economic democracy in South Africa

“Economists have only ruined the world – the point is to improve it”. (With a nod to Karl Marx) Today is the United Nations International Day of Democracy. At a time when democracy is under attack in so many parts of the world, the day could not be more important. But rather than activists satisfying ourselves with glib platitudes, we should ask deeper questions about what’s going wrong. One obvious area we should look at is the disconnect between democracy and economy.

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Media and journalism under threat: What can civil society do?

The media has been under attack for a long time. Sadly though, this is not only from dictators, corrupt criminal networks and those who benefit from obscuring the truth about what is happening in society. This we expect. We can handle our enemies. What is equally threatening now is the pressure from commercial and economic forces, and the shift to digital media, which has reduced advertising revenues that for a century held up print media, and the daily newspaper in particular.

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