How SA can beat the overtourism trap

Man the gates, the tourists are coming! Popular European destinations such as Barcelona, Paris and Venice are being laid to siege by an unrelenting influx of tourists, prompting residents to take to the streets in protest, sometimes disruptively so. It is a tourism meltdown, and an untenable situation for those living in the very cities…

South Africa’s great municipal experiment

South Africa is preparing the most sweeping reconfiguration of local government since 1996. Velenkosini Hlabisa, the minister of co-operative governance and traditional affairs (CoGTA), has unveiled a plan to reduce dysfunction, shore up finances and restore public trust in the country’s 257 municipalities. At least 35 of these are now deemed…

NWU strengthens support for postgraduate studies (honours, master’s, and doctoral)

The North-West University (NWU) is pleased with the overwhelming response to the announcement by our principal and vice-chancellor, Prof. Mzubanzi Bismark Tyobeka, regarding the financial support for qualifying postgraduate students (honours, master’s, and doctoral).This intervention is crucial in ensuring that we…

South Africa’s local power play

South Africa’s municipalities are rediscovering an old habit: generating their own electricity. In a country long dominated by Eskom, the lumbering state utility, the city of eThekwini has announced an ambitious strategy to reduce its reliance on the national grid by 40% by 2030. With Eskom’s ageing infrastructure,…

NWU School of Mines and Mining Engineering set for future success

The North West province of South Africa sits on a bedrock of riches. From platinum to chrome, vanadium to gold, the region is among the most mineral-endowed in the world. Yet its communities remain scarred by poverty and unemployment, relics of a resource economy too often divorced from local benefit. For a province…

Prof Bismark Tyobeka: Starlink should shine in SA’s skies

As Starlink’s vast constellation of satellites traverse the sky in low-Earth orbit, they evoke wonder and awe in those gazing up at the night heavens. Science fiction has become technological reality. Yet, for South Africans, the benefits remain as distant as the stars beyond our solar system.

Here is why. Elon Musk’s satellite internet…

Research unlocks local tree’s feed value for goats

A tree long overlooked as goat feed could help farmers in the North West Province boost meat production and cut feed costs, new research from the North-West University (NWU) has found.

NWU researchers from the subject group Animal Sciences at the Mahikeng Campus, led by primary author Onke Hawu, say the Searsia lancea tree, commonly…

Foreigners in SA jails: Deportation is… complicated

Correctional Services Minister, Dr Pieter Groenewald, recently stated his intention to deport foreign criminals in South African jails back to their countries of origin. The Minister said that about 26 000 foreigners are either serving sentences in South African prisons or are awaiting sentencing. This places a massive burden on taxpayers,…

The new artificial intelligence gospel

Generative artificial intelligence has learnt to mimic the divine. It now produces not only music, prose and images once thought uniquely human, but also digital deities: chatbots that speak in the first person as God. Christianity boasts AI Jesus, Virtual Jesus, Text with Jesus and Ask Jesus. Buddhism has Norbu AI, Islam has Brother Junaid.…

Sir Hilary Beckles receives honorary doctorate from the NWU

On Wednesday, 30 July, the North-West University (NWU) conferred an honorary doctorate on Professor Sir Hilary McDonald Beckles, a distinguished Caribbean historian and vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI). The award recognises Sir Hilary’s formidable academic contributions and his global…