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Stuff from Johannesburg

Gauteng to invest in security measures to curb public property damage

The Gauteng Health Department has vowed to prioritise its infrastructure by tightening security measures to mitigate against loss and damage to public property.

Speaking at the Citizens’ Forum on Tuesday in Pretoria, the provincial Head of Department, Dr Nomonde Nolutshungu, said as part of its six-month plan, the department will also streamline its supply chain management.

According to Nolutshungu, this move will help cut logistical costs and existing bottlenecks that hinder the management of the flow of goods and services.

“We have started implementing the plan and various areas of improvement have been observed. We are also strengthening our objectives regarding ethical conduct to address the issue of moral integrity amongst our public service officials.”

Through this strategy, the HOD believes that the department is laying a solid foundation to turn the tide of the public health system.

“We are acutely aware of the fact that the government can never achieve those goals without the support of everyone in the room today,” she stressed.

The Public Service Commission (PSC) in partnership with her department and medical universities in Gauteng hosted the forum.

The Citizens’ Forum enables stakeholders including community members to engage with the authorities in charge of the delivery of healthcare services. The attendees included members of the public, medical universities, non-governmental organisations, hospital boards, labour unions and healthcare professionals.

The forum’s focus on strengthening governance will assist the department to work smarter, develop a shared vision and goals, and be accountable to the citizens.

She also hopes that her department will leverage the wealth of knowledge and maximise the production of a well-trained health workforce in the province.

“This should improve our planning and budgeting processes and enhance implementation of our programmes, to place us at the better path of reaching expectation of our citizens.”

The meeting will also assist the department to secure consensus on how best to govern the relationship between the development of human capital for health and knowledge development.

The HOD told delegates that the department has prioritised improving the delivery of healthcare services and addressing the essential needs of citizens for the purposes of building and restoring trust in government services.

“It is critically important to ensure and support the predictable, equitable and sustainable production of adequately trained healthcare workers and as well as high standard knowledge production whilst providing a health service meeting at least the minimum prescribed national standards and quality,” she said.

“There is no reason for this province not to be the hub of knowledge development in the field of health sciences.” – SAnews.gov.za

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Top Star Drive-In: Destroyed by What Created it

However, the very thing that created the Top Star eventually destroyed it. Because the early miners had used crude methods, the Ferreira Dump—and dozens of others like it—still contained significant traces of gold. As the price of gold rose and new chemical extraction technologies (like the carbon-in-pulp process) made it profitable to “mine the waste,” the ground beneath the Top Star became more valuable than the cinema itself. In 2006, despite fierce opposition from heritage groups who argued that the dump and the drive-in were culturally significant landmarks, the projectors were turned off for the last time.

The reclamation of the dump was a staggering industrial feat. Starting in 2008, mining giant DRDGold used high-pressure water cannons to “monitor” the dump, turning 5 million tons of solid earth back into a liquid slurry. This slurry was then piped 40 kilometers across the province to a processing plant in Brakpan. By 2011, the “mountain” had completely vanished. The 50-meter-high plateau that had dominated the southern skyline for a century was reduced to a flat, dusty crater.

The disappearance of the Top Star is a poignant symbol of Johannesburg’s “extractive” nature. It is a city that consumes itself to stay alive; even its historical landmarks are subject to the fluctuating price of minerals on the London and New York stock exchanges. Today, if you drive along the M2, there is an empty space in the sky where the Top Star used to be. While the reclamation removed a source of toxic dust and “acid mine drainage,” it also erased a piece of the city’s collective memory. The land where the gold-flecked mountain once stood is now being rehabilitated for light industrial use, proving that in eGoli, even the horizon is for sale if there’s enough gold hidden inside it.