While this week's BRICS summit might have been off the radar of Western powers, the leaders of its five member countries launched a financial system to rival Bretton Woods institutions and held an unprecedented meeting with the governments of South America.
The Sixth BRICS Summit which ended Wednesday in Fortaleza, Brazil, attracted more attention than any other such gathering in the alliance’s short history, and not just from its own members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
The growing vitality of the group of countries made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), which is beginning to formalise its institutions even as it tries to bridge very disparate realities, seems to be partly cemented by increasing links between its companies.
Peruse a few reports on global military expenditure and you will not be able to shake the image of the planet as one massive army camp, patrolled by heavily weaponised guards in a plethora of uniforms.
When sexual violence - whether against men, women or children - takes place in United Nations peacekeeping missions worldwide, the world body has been quick to single out the perpetrators and expel them back to their home countries.
South Africa’s eThekwini municipality may have come under fire from residents from proposing to purify wastewater so it can be used for drinking, but this municipality’s pragmatic approach to water management has made it one of the most progressive in Africa.
To curb greenhouse gas emissions, South Africa wants to put a tax on carbon emissions from big polluters.
Democratic governance offers a viable option for developing countries to achieve economic growth and inclusion, yet this doesn’t need to follow the Western model, new research released here this week suggests.
On Tuesday international ratings agency, Moody’s, rated South Africa a credit positive, saying that the results of last week’s general election ensured a continuity of the country’s macroeconomic policy. But the success of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) tells a different story of the country’s economic inequalities.
Despite an increase in diagnosis times, South Africa is facing a growing drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) burden as nationally there remains a large gap between the number of patients diagnosed with multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and those who start treatment.
Margaret Feke* got off a taxi in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town, South Africa, carrying a package of new clothes for her son who was due to leave for his traditional initiation into manhood in the Transkei the following day.
When Phumzile Khoza* came to the central Johannesburg antenatal clinic on a chilly day in August 2013, she was feeling on edge. Not about the medical procedures – she already had two children – but about talking to the nurse.
“Every day I live in fear that I will be raped,” said Thembela*, one of thousands of lesbians across South Africa being terrorised by the scourge of “corrective rape”.
The South African government’s earnest rush to provide water to millions of people post-apartheid may have jeopardised its attempts to provide services to the country in the long run.
On a family farm tucked between the rolling hills of Masopane, 40 km outside of South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, 35-year-old Sophie Mabhena is dreaming big about her crop of genetically modified (GM) maize.
As South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, was laid to rest at his childhood home of Qunu in the Eastern Cape, Malawi’s President Joyce Banda told mourners that it was Mandela who taught her how to forgive those who tried to keep her from becoming southern Africa’s first female head of state.
Paul Anley, chief executive officer of Pharma Dynamics, one of South Africa’s leading generic drug companies, wants to sell a cheaper version of popular birth control pill Yasmin. But he legally cannot because German multinational Bayer has patent protection on the drug in South Africa, even though its initial patent expired in 2010.
When the white apartheid regime in South Africa kept the overwhelming majority of blacks under military repression, the country's security forces were armed with weapons originating mostly from a highly-developed domestic armaments industry.
Perhaps it’s a false contradiction. But today there are many who stress the pacifist message with which South Africa’s Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) emerged from prison in 1990, while few put an emphasis on his rebellion against apartheid, including armed rebellion, which landed him in prison.