A recent headline in the Daily Maverick read as follows, “Child malnutrition in the Eastern Cape qualifies as a disaster” quoting from a South African Human Rights Commission report on child malnutrition in the Eastern Cape province. The article cited the fact that 25% of the provinces’s children have stunted growth and over the period of one year over 1000 children were diagnosed with severe malnutrition of whom 120 died. Juxtapose this with a more recent media headline in a Afrikaans National Sunday Newspaper which reads translated from the Afrikaans, “You cough up R24 000 per head so that Cyril’s (the State President) guests can feast while they fly”. The…
-
-
Accountability … is it a reality or a myth?
Reading various media reports about the actions of individuals, politicians, state entity and government representatives, I am struck by how often the word “accountability” is so easily and even glibly used. How often do we hear that a particular person must be held accountable for their actions and how often in the end does it appear that they were not? Accountability is simply defined as an “obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions”. It is the state of being accountable, that is being subject to giving account which implies being able to “explain or to be answerable for one’s actions”. In a political sense government…