Mercury

Publisher

Latest documents

• KZN Education Department fails to pay ECD centres

  The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education has failed to comply with a court order to pay three Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres outstanding amounts that they were owed, including payments from the previous financial year.

• Trump’s late-night call

  US President Donald Trump makes a habit of phoning journalists out of the blue and filling them in on the general situation, according to the BBC.

• Recognising victim mentality: signs you may be trapped

  I’d suggest that if two or three of the following ring true, you may be trapped in victim mode, and professional help and coaching are highly recommended:

• McKenzie faces VAR challenges

  NOW that the minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie and his family will be directly involved in South African football – a consortium led by his son (Calvin Lee John) is awaiting the Premier Soccer League’s (PSL) endorsement of their proposal to purchase the top flight status of SuperSport United – he is only about to learn the frustrations and dribbling that comes with involvement.

• Private sector must stand up and be counted in SA’s HIV/AIDS fight

  IT IS often said that politics is the art of the possible. What is certain though, policies like night follows day are consequential. Whether their impact is beneficial, punitive or ineffectual depends on the quality, processing and delivery of the policy decisions, especially when it involves the world’s richest and largest economies driven essentially by competing economic orthodoxies veiling as protectionism of prevailing domination towards hegemony.

• French army leaves bases in Senegal

  PARIS: France yesterday formally handed back its last two military bases in Senegal, leaving Paris with no permanent camps in either west or central Africa.

• Commissions must be given binding powers

  WHEN President Cyril Ramaphosa announced yet another judicial commission to investigate deep-rooted dysfunction within the police, the question wasn’t whether the truth would emerge. It was whether anything would change.

• Meta may face contempt of court order

  Meta, which owns WhatsApp and Instagram, is due to be hauled before court today to face a possible contempt of court order after it was instructed on Monday to permanently remove certain channels and profiles that are distributing graphic child pornography material and allegedly has not done so yet.

• One child still missing, three bodies unclaimed after tragic Eastern Cape floods

  Rescue teams are still searching for a child while three bodies remain unclaimed following deadly floods in the Eastern Cape.

• Health department to hold targeted Mpox vaccination drive in three provinces

  The Department of Health has launched a targeted vaccination campaign to curb the spread of mpox in South Africa, following a gradual increase in laboratory-confirmed cases in 2025.

Featured documents

• Farmgate implicates Cape Town property developer as ‘central figure’

  A CAPE TOWN-based property developer has been named as an alleged central figure in helping President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special adviser, Bejani Chauke, store more than $20 million in cash three weeks after the Phala Phala farm scandal was exposed....

• ‘Promoting democracy’ is a US smokescreen to interfere

  IT IS astounding how many proverbs there are which prove the point that use of force is hardly the best option the majority of the time. “Force is no argument”, “a forced kindness deserves no thanks”, “reason succeeds where force fails”, “you cannot force water up a hill”– these are American...

• Build multilateralism for African development

  Q: At China’s initiative, the UN Security Council held an Open Debate on “Peace and Security in Africa: Addressing Root Causes of Conflict in Post-Pandemic Recovery in Africa”, where Africa and China jointly launched the Initiative on Partnership for Africa’s Development. Can you tell us about the...

• Africa cannot be held to ransom over fossil fuels

  For more than a year, the African Energy Chamber has been pushing back against steadily mounting pressure to halt new foreign investments in Africa’s oil and gas industry....

• Fit for purpose Ineos Grenadier has all the right stuff

  THE design brief was simple, a triangle signifying three non-negotiables that would be the basis for a completely new car aimed directly at the off-road community world wide....

• The promise, and the accompanying challenges of green hydrogen in North Africa

  While much of our attention at the African Energy Chamber (AEC) concentrates on efforts to industrialize the sub-Saharan regions, as covered in our recently released 2025 Outlook Report, The State of African Energy, the more developed North African nations have seen recent progress in the...

• Advancing with the times and seeking common development to build a China-Africa community

  On November 29, Chinese President Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and other African heads of state attended the opening ceremony of the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (Focac) in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal....

• A new era of international relations: old habits die hard

  Russia is in the spotlight of the Western mainstream media’s attention again....

• Russian operation was a forced move

  Today, the attention of the entire world is concentrated on the situation in Ukraine. The first reaction is highly emotional, and understandably so....

• Electoral system overhaul needed for people to govern

  The dramatic scenes that characterised the ousting of the speaker and executive mayors of the City of Joburg and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality in the past few weeks should act as a lesson in how not to configure government, especially at the local level....