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Fresh burials in Westbury Park Cemetery in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Thursday, June 24, 2021. With Africas most developed nation recording one of the worlds fastest pace of deaths from Covid-19 infections, large swathes of the country are being deluged with offers of burial insurance. Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images

What would you do if your loved one’s body was stuck in a mortuary and you couldn’t bury them?

Families have asked the Congress of Traditional Leaders and the Human Rights Commission to intervene after waiting years to bury their loved ones

South Africa is not a failed state, but we’re fragile

With South Africa on the fiscal precipice, the president needs to take hard decisions instead of focussing on re-election

Emergency: Nurse Salome Nkoana at Tembisa Hospital . The increased demand in Gauteng for oncology services has led to the establishment of treatment centres in the Chris Hani Baragwanath and Dr George Mukhari academic hospitals. (Guillem Sartorio/AFP)

Specialists, nurses quit country’s ailing public health system

South Africa’s nurses are moving to the private sector or being recruited to high-income countries that are affected by the global shortage of healthcare professionals

Uncertainty and dysfunction: The South African National Defence Force and South African Police Service in a joint operation. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Abuse of police funds and ANC infighting a boon for private security firms

The ratio of private security members to citizens is 1:106, whereas that of police officers to citizens is 1:413

Stop sign: South Africa’s only machine that prints driver’s licence cards had to be sent to Germany to be repaired

Driver’s licence pile-up ‘12 months long’

Court battles, Covid-19 restrictions and an ageing machine has resulted in a backlog of 1.4 million driver’s licence cards waiting to be issued

Playing the system: A whistleblower flagged major tender irregularities with the N12 West housing development, where thousands of low-cost housing units were planned, and reported it to the Hawks two years ago – but the City of Matlosana continues to pay MXN Development Construction millions

Suspect mega housing development in Klerksdorp evades scrutiny

Clean governance remains elusive in troubled North West municipality where managers continue to misbehave with impunity

Disruption: Soweto residents protest in front of Maponya Mall against the wave of violence and looting that affected Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in July last year. Photo: Luca Sola/AFP

Can the private sector help to fix ‘a fragile state’?

Privatisation stands to deepen inequalities. But some experts say collaboration between business and government can work in everyone’s interest