A Mercy To All

Christopher Rutledge questions South Africa’s moral fibre when dealing with issues pertaining to social well-being and fundamental human rights of citizens. He argues that much has been said about the decline of moral leadership in government, but few have dared to divert their gaze to the lack of ethical and moral integrity of the business world. How ethical is South Africa’s business world?

Newsmakers and Guest Experts offer their insights and perspectives into the national and global discourse on politics, economics, education, social matters and comprehensive dialogues on cultural diversity and other essential issues of public interest like, poverty alleviation, unemployment rate and health related issues.

The issue of Africa being portrayed in a negative image has been raised for decades with complaints that western media focuses more on wars, famine and so on. Media Tenor has conducted a 12 month analysis on how Africa has been reported on in global TV coverage. Just what has it revealed and what were the results?

As West Africa celebrates winning the fight against the deadly Ebola through a united international effort, we take this opportunity now to acknowledge the South African team’s contribution. Just what was it like being part of the operation and what assistance did South Africans give to the affected countries?

According to the United States Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program, the survival rate of patients diagnosed with prostate, malignant melanoma, bowel, female breast, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukaemia cancers, has improved about 40% over the last 40 years. What are some of the reasons behind this and what is the situation in South Africa...

Pancras Malani (from Burundi) conducted several interviews with Rwandan refugees in Cape Town between 2011 and 2014. He did this, simply to determine their degree of integration into local communities. Some of them have been in South Africa since 1994 while others have continuously been trickling in till today. According to him, most of them encounter some challenges of legal, economic, social and cultural nature but their biggest challenge is South Africa’s refugee policy (they argue that it makes their livelihoods very difficult). He joins us now to talk about the plight of refugees in South Africa.

Post Africa Day we ask, why is it that African languages do not have pride of place at the continent’s institutions? We hear from Prof Kaschula who argues that the answer lies in our collective history: colonialism made us look down on everything that is African. This includes our languages, cultures and religions.

On the 1st of May this year, we hosted truck drivers on the programme to talk about some of the challenges they are facing on the road. Many of them called in and spoke about issues of salaries, allowances, having to pay for goods that get stolen from their truck and how employers deduct their salaries without even talking to them first. We then approached the Department of Labour to find out how they deal with issues pertaining to truck drivers....

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