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A group of scientists doing field work in Lesotho have stumbled onto something huge, quite literally: the tracks of a massive dinosaur, far bigger than any other ever found in southern Africa. Lara Sciscio explains the significance of the find and how it rewrites our understanding of dinosaur size on the continent during the Early Jurassic period.
South Africa’s finance minister Malusi Gigaba delivered his first medium term budget speech yesterday. Sean Muller warns that the country’s fiscal decline – driven by rising debt levels and declining revenues - is reaching alarming levels and raises the possibility of another credit rating downgrade. And while the minister made it clear that the government recognizes the mess the economy is in, Roger Southall points out that he was very light on detail about how to clear it up while Steven Friedman outlines the intriguing possibility that there is another way of looking at the speech - many of the negatives can be seen as potential economic game changers.
Oliver Reginald Tambo was president of South Africa’s African National Congress during an exile that lasted 30 years. OR, as he was affectionately called, steered the organisation through some of its most tumultuous years when leaders such as Nelson Mandela were incarcerated on Robben Island. Luli Callinicos looks back at his legacy a century after his birth.
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Kayentapus ambrokholohali footprints belong to an animal of about 26 feet long, dwarfing all the life around it.
Theropod image adapted by Lara Sciscio, with permission, from an illustration by Scott Hartman
Lara Sciscio, University of Cape Town
Until this discovery, theropod dinosaurs were thought to be considerably smaller, at three to five metres in body length, during the Early Jurassic.
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Business + Economy
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Seán Mfundza Muller, University of Johannesburg
South Africa's 2017 medium term budget reveals a growing gap between revenue and expenditure which places the country in a highly vulnerable financial state.
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Steven Friedman, University of Johannesburg
South Africa's finance minister's medium term budget speech offered hope of potential economic game changes. But will he be bold enough to make them?
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Roger Southall, University of the Witwatersrand
South Africa's finance minister was honest about the problems facing the country. But he made no real suggestions that the government will start doing things differently.
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Politics + Society
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Luli Callinicos, University of the Witwatersrand
Factions within South Africa’s ANC nostalgically point to the example of Oliver Reginald Tambo whose seen as an exemplar of integrity, personifying an ideal leader who served the party selflessly.
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Health + Medicine
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Andrew Githeko, Kenya Medical Research Institute; Ednah Ototo, Kenya Medical Research Institute
Malaria is a major public health problem that affects 106 countries globally. A rigorous and systematic approach to predict and control malaria transmission is needed.
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Education
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Michael E. Rose, University of Cape Town
The low share of women revealed in this data is problematic for two reasons: a lack of diversity, and what it shows about women's participation in the social network of informal collaboration.
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From our international editions
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Lino Camprubi, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Devoting all energies to fight over an imaginary border deflects attention from the real issues.
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James Ryan, Cardiff University
Four empires fell, a world was shaken, a new order arose – and the long 20th century really began.
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Claudine van Hensbergen, Northumbria University, Newcastle
Women's voices have been seen as unwanted or untruthful, but the snowballing sexual assault revelations from the #MeToo campaign show that women must find their voices.
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