The View Point

GUEST: Maurice Smithers, National Coordinator for the South African chapter of the Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance (SAAPA)

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, held in Davos in Switzerland, is the foremost creative force for engaging the world's top leaders in collaborative activities to shape global, regional and industry agendas at the beginning of each year. The Forum's mission is to improving the state of the world and this guides the design and development of the Annual Meeting objectives.

Guest: Mr Andile Nomlala - President of the Black Management Forum

Cyber risks are becoming more complex and challenging and at the rate at which digital technology is evolving and disrupting traditional business models, cyber risks seem to evolve even faster. Cyber risk has moved beyond data breaches and privacy, there are now sophisticated attacks that are disrupting entire countries, industries, businesses and supply chains.

Guest: Mr John Mc Loughlin, a Cybersecurity expert and CEO of J2 Software

Tomorrow marks the last day of the Eastern Cape schools oversight visits. Since the 15th of January, members of the Legislature have been on intensive schools oversight visits across the province. This schools oversight visits programme aims to assess the state of schools readiness and factors that influenced grade 12 results. It also wants to ensure that teaching and learning commerce on the first day of schooling amongst other things.

Guest: Mr Mlibo Qoboshiyane - Deputy Speaker of the Eastern Cape Provincial Legislature

This week scientists made a landmark discovery when ragweed – a highly allergenic weed native to North America – was detected in South African pollen spore traps for the very first time.

Guest: Prof Jonny Peter, head of the Allergy Unit at UCT’s Lung Institute

We’re talking about the Zero Dropout campaign, which is a project of the DG Murray Trust and their aim is to halve the rate of school dropout by 2030.
Although at least 40% of all young people in South Africa drop out of school, there is no
national task force focused on addressing this crisis.

While the overall matric pass rate has improved over time from 58% in 1994 to 81% in 2019, this doesn’t tell us anything about how many learners actually made it to matric.

Guest: Merle Mansfield - Programme Director for the Zero Drop Out Campaign at the DG Murray Trust

When looking at the current water and sanitation situation in South Africa, would it be just to say that municipalities have everything under control? Sewage leakages, short water supply, uncollected refuse, municipalities being place under administration – the list can go on and on.
But the major issue right now is that of municipalities and their ability to deliver water and sanitation services. For the past month we’ve seen reports about community members from various parts of the country complaining about water shortages, filthy drinking water and sewage pipe that have been leaking for a long while whithout being attended to

Guest: Mr Wayne Duvenage, the CEO of OUTA (Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse AND Mr Sputnik Ratau, Spokesperson for the Department of Water and Sanitation

The Chairperson of the board has resigned; there’s a new CEO (whether he will stick around or not, nobody knows); the Deputy President feels that Eskom misled the President but the Presidency doesn’t agree; there’s still load shedding and it is impacting the economy at large; is Eskom using the right power generation model for SA; are there engineers running the ship at Eskom is it all in the hands of business and politics; will we ever see a President who leader who agrees with privatisation?

Guest: Dr Tashiv Ramsander - Director of Cambridge Aerothermal at Cambridge University

Guest: Mr Sandile Swana - Political Analyst AND lecturer at Wits School of governance

Songezo was in conversation Kedibone Mulaudzi - Comedian, MC and organiser of the Soweto Comedy Festival
The Soweto Comedy Festival is set to take place this Saturday the 30th of November. Since its inception 5 years ago the festival has immensely helped in developing comedy brands of Trevor Noah, Eugene Khoza, Tumi Morake, Kedibone Mulaudzi and others. This year, the lineup includes comedian Kagiso Lediga, Trevor Gumbi, Jay Boogie, Alex Kunene just to name a few.
We’re talking about how comedy has evolved and how it takes cognisant of what is happening in the country. Comedians have become more woke and they use their shows to create thought provoking jokes about the unjust realities of the world.

Songezo was in conversation Thembelani Mrwetyana – Uyinene’s uncle
The family of Uyinene Mrwetyana is launching a nonprofit Foundation her honour in Grahamstown tomorrow. Uyinene is the late UCT student who was raped and murdered by former post office worker, Luyanda Botha, 42, in August. Her death sparked outrage in South Africa and around the world. Botha pleaded guilty to the crime and was handed three life sentences just two weeks ago