SERIES: Some light reading for a Friday: 10 interesting numbers from current affairs and politics that tell a story. Did you know the Free State Government is spending some R15 million in 2012 to upgrade Free State premier Ace Magashule’s house? For this fact and a range of other curious numbers, read on. Below the graphic is the full list of numbers and, in each case, the source from where they originate.
FEATURE: Yet another round of South African journalism awards has just passed. Did you know there are some 82 of them? That’s an awards ceremony every four and a half days. Is South African journalism really such a worthy recipient of so much self-reflecting praise? Look at the Fourth Estate more closely and it seems rife with problems. But it would be you alone looking, certainly the mainstream media, despite so many protestations about its import and the value of self-regulation, is the last institution to cast a critical gaze over its own condition. But with so many awards on offer, why would it? Not when it can rather remind itself every few days just how excellent it truly is.
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