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South Africa has normalised heavy drinking and policy alone won’t change that – it has to be a cultural shift. Photo: File

Stop ignoring the heavy drinking red flags

It will take more than policy to change South Africans’ excessive use of alcohol; we all need to take part in the Sober Curious movement

The rural economy depends on resource-based industries such as agriculture, mining, fishing, tourism and forestry. Photo: File

Infrastructure, governance failures limit growth of agriculture and development in rural areas

The rural economy should not be forgotten in South Africa’s economic growth agenda,

These countries need to rethink the prohibitive tariffs they place on each other

Brics leaders must take steps on policy to facilitate between member countries

These countries need to rethink the prohibitive tariffs they place on each other

In 2023, under president Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa ranked 94 out of 165 countries in economic freedom. This is the lowest since 1994, according to the Economic Freedom of the World Report. (Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Smaller government and increased privatisation will boost GNU economy, says think tank

The FMF Charter says the size of cabinet should be reduced and policy changes introduced to benefit the poor and create jobs

The labour court last week halted an attempt by the South African Police Service management to subject Major General Feroz Khan, its head of security and counter-intelligence, to an expeditious disciplinary process which could have led to his summary dismissal.
(Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

A new minister must lead reform of the police 

A lack of effective political leadership has contributed to the stagnation and decline of the South African Police Service

A general election campaign poster for the Democratic Alliance party, center, sits between posters showing Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, and Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), on the road side in Pretoria, South Africa, on Thursday, April 18, 2019. The governing African National Congress has dominated national elections since the end of white-minority rule in 1994, with the DA securing about 22 percent of the vote in 2014. Polls suggest the ANC will keep its majority in the May 8 ballot. Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images

How South Africa can prepare itself for coalition governance

Advanced democracies with coalition governments and strong committees understand the necessity of developing rules and institutions to mitigate executive unaccountability

Ntokozo Xaba was found dead with multiple stab wounds at her off-campus residence in Pretoria Gardens on 2 February, after her friends could not reach her over the phone.(Instagram/@ntokozoxaba_)

Editorial | Ntokozo Xaba: There’s nowhere to hide for black women in a country designed to suppress

This is the country in which falling in love may be a death sentence and romance is being stabbed to death, remains dismembered and stuffed into a suitcase to be left on the street

Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, speaks on day two of the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town, South Africa, on Tuesday, May 10, 2022. Mining executives, investors and government ministers are meeting in Cape Town for the African Mining Indaba, the continents biggest gathering of one of its most vital industries. Photographer: Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Ramaphosa vows to fix logistics constraints that have cost the mining sector R51 billion in exports

Ramaphosa calls on the private sector and labour to work with Transnet and the government to fix escalating problems

South Africa’s emerging cannabis economy is in full swing.  Photo: Getty Images

SMMEs are key to the growth of South Africa’s cannabis industry

Almost a year after the president swore to advance the sector, the government is yet to finalise its master plan, giving big business the edge

President Cyril Ramaphosa at the ANC 55th Elective Conference in Nasrec. Photo: Supplied

Ramaphosa scraped through 2022, but what will it take for South Africa to win in 2023?

What we need from the media is to be able to see much more clearly what the policy options are for getting us out of this mess

The former president has called for the movement of people and goods between South Africa and African states to be easier

Motlanthe: Our immigration policy has lost Africa’s trust

The former president has called for the movement of people and goods between South Africa and African states to be easier

Health surveillance workers in Malawi focus on under-fives and pregnant mothers

Four lessons from good policymaking in Africa

Instead of only focusing on what went wrong, analysing policies that have improved people’s lives helps governments NGOs in other actions

(Mail & Guardian)

Editorial: The coming catastrophe of higher food, fuel prices for South Africa’s middle class

Consumers, who have remained resilient despite South Africa’s economic woes over the past decade, are being squeezed on all fronts. What are the policy options? Or is it the same…

Words: Among SA’s celebrated people is activist, academic and writer Charlotte Maxeke

OPINION| Black writers and publishers are South Africa’s ‘linguistic orphans’

The challenges we face in the world of scholarly and leisure reading and writing are not unique to our country but it is crucial to overcome them if we want to be as good as we…

More recently, the government chose to relinquish its majority stakeholding in SAA, after it became the first parastatal to go into business rescue. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

ANC document says parastatal model is on its last legs

The document, drafted ahead of the governing party’s policy conference later this year, poses the need for broader public-private collaboration

(Mail & Guardian)

Editorial: Praise for treasury’s Mogajane, but his replacement faces a battle

When Dondo Mogajane became director general of the national treasury, question marks were raised about his ability to defend the institution. Five years later, it was a war well…

An ill wind: An engineer works on a wind turbine at the Sere Wind farm, close to Vredendal, about six years ago. A number of local wind-tower and solar manufacturing plants have been shut down in recent years because of delays in procurement. (Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images)

South Africa must design an energy transition that creates jobs and growth

Appropriate policy, supported by a social compact by labour, business, communities and the government, can maximise the opportunities of the just transition

Youth unemployment rose to 43.8% among 15-to-34-year-olds in Q4 2025, even as the headline rate fell. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

A social compact is key to fighting rising unemployment and low growth

At its core, the social compact approach calls for increased co-operation and trust between business, labour, community and the government for the betterment of South Africa

S20 warns that climate change is endangering human health, food systems and ecosystems worldwide

The time is ripe for Africa’s food policy to change

Food systems lack resilience in the face of crisis and that feed crises of their own making, driving climate change and fuelling epidemics of hunger, malnutrition, obesity and…

(Mail & Guardian)

Editorial: The West dithers, but South Africa has to take some responsibility for this wave

We can’t bury our heads in the sand: there is no way to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic other than vaccination. South Africa — and the rest of Africa — still has a long way to go