WHAT WE FOUGHT FOR
WHAT WE GOT
WHAT WE NEED TO DO
Yesterday, March 21st, was Human Rights Day. A brief history is appropriate, the struggle for human rights in South Africa was long, painful and protracted. The struggle was worth it, we now have a bill of human rights that is the envy of the world.
But in recent times, the debate has shifted. Many South Africans are increasingly talking about, and writing about, what responsibilities should accompany those rights. It seems that worldwide the pendulum has swung in favour of rights, with a sense that there is little responsibility to exercise those rights responsibly.
In this newsletter I briefly cover our history, a summary of our Bill of Rights and a proposal in terms of a Bill of Responsibilities.
Steuart Pennington
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Thuma Mina 1
This monthly feature is our response to the President’s invitation: “Thuma Mina – Send Me”. It is a toolkit of ideas to help our readers respond to that call.
Connecting NGO’s
We have a dear friend and colleague by the name of Cindy McNally. Cindy lives in Durban. She is a wife, a busy mom to two little girls and a Chartered Accountant. She loves South Africa, social media and wine – not necessarily in that order.
Two years ago, Cindy decided to marry her passion for these three things with her desire to make a difference. One night whilst drinking a glass of wine and playing around on social media, she began to do some research. Were there groups on social media that connected the tens-of-thousands of NGO’s in our country, enabling them to collaborate? She discovered to her amazement that there wasn’t; that NGO’s in our country are largely very lonely, lone rangers.
SA NPO Network
So, without further ado, she started a Facebook group called SA NPO Network and quickly NGO’s all over the country began to connect.
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Celebrating Women’s Day Properly
Comment by Steuart Pennington
MASTERCARD INDEX have, consistent with Women’s Day, published an interesting infographic on Women Entrepreneurs – the Mastercard Index on Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE) comparing how we do against the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
It’s one of those “behind your back right in front of your eyes” statistics and it reveals the remarkable progress that we have made in respect of the advancement of Women.
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THIS WEEK'S FAST FACT
Disease
Up in smoke: The 17th World Conference on Tobacco or Health was held in Cape Town earlier this month, where the sixth edition of the Tobacco Atlas was launched. According to that report, more than 42,100 South Africans are killed by tobacco-caused disease every year. The economic cost of smoking in South Africa amounts to R59.12 billion rand. This includes direct costs related to healthcare expenditures and indirect costs related to lost productivity due to early mortality and morbidity. (Source: www.Eighty20.co.za)
