With the latest attracts on foreigners, particularly traders, and threats or danger of widespread xenophobic violence perpetrated by South Africans against other Africans from various nationalities, a new word - makwerekwere -  is increasingly finding its way into our collective vocabulary across indigenous language barriers. We can, in broad terms, fairly accurately describe the meaning of the word. Its origins, however, are more obscure.

A trade agreement currently under negotiation between India and the European Union poses a threat to affordable essential medicine still under patents and antiretrovirals (ARVs) for HIV/Aids victims in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. It could include treatment for conditions such as cancer, diabetes (a huge problem in Africa), tuberculosis or even a future epidemic.

Harvard professor and prolific author Niall Ferguson opened the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival on 12 July with a stark warning about the increasing prospect of the American “empire” suddenly collapsing due to the country’s rising debt levels, writes Brent Gardner-Smith of the Aspen Daily News.

The reintroduction of the Protection of Information Bill to parliament is to certain older news hounds like a replay of a nightmare of some of the darkest days of apartheid when, under the guise of state security, the government of the day held full control over certain elements of the flow of information via the media to the public. In some instances, relatively junior civil servants could decide what the public would or would not read.

“The introduction and implementation of new, revolutionary (alternative) energy sources will change the course of man everywhere on the planet. This power source will rank with fire, the wheel, and the internal combustion engine as a shaper of man’s destiny,” a recent report on the subject declares as we, in our third article on the series on the epoch in which we live, take a look at the joint impact of the convergence of pressure on traditional fossil fuel energy sources and climate change.

“A manager's only responsibility was to pursue the long-term profitability of a business and if that was done, then executives should be rewarded,” according to a South African labour market analyst in the face of and to justify the latest remuneration statistics indicating that average executive pay packets in the country are in the order of 250 to 300 times that of the average employee at the bottom end of the scale.

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The African Union (AU) Summit that began in Kampala, Uganda on 19 July will arguably be one of the organisation’s most important meetings in a long time and will probably set the future AU action in trying to settle conflicts in Africa as the continued political turmoil in Somalia is threatening to spread out across the continent and wider.

Worth a read is not your ordinary book review; it is a meta-review providing an overview of the opinions contained in a variety of book reviews published in the media at large. This week, we take a look at My Friend the Mercenary by James Brabazon, released in South Africa in July this year.

International analysts and investors are increasingly viewing South Africa’s once world-leading mining sector – already suffering from a variety of serious pressures – in negative terms. The latest is a suggestion by Bank of America Merrill Lynch that Anglo American plc should split its international assets from its South African operation and thereby up its value by as much as 17%. Renewed talk about nationalisation is the last thing this sector needs, as the country’s largest employer.

Alain Rolland is currently public enemy number one of anyone displaying any form of Springbok memorabilia. But perhaps the Sydney Morning Herald came close to the truth by begging South African fans not to "shoot the pianist", as he is doing his best.