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Stuff from Johannesburg

No money for 983 community service nurses to get posts in Gauteng hospitals

Dear Johannesburg

983 nurses at Gauteng public hospitals who completed their community service at the end of last year have not been appointed as promised to permanent posts this year because of budget cuts.

This shocking information was disclosed today at a meeting of the Gauteng Legislature’s Health Committee.

According to a Gauteng Health Department official, the provincial budget was cut by R4 billion last year, and R1.2 billion in this year’s budget. He said that the Department is now engaging with Provincial Treasury to try and get the funds to employ the nurses.

I am appalled that these nurses are not being employed immediately as they are desperately needed to treat the surge of Covid-19 patients that are overwhelming our hospitals.

There is no excuse for this poor planning and irrational budget cut as community service nurses are supposed to be given posts once they complete their service.

Gauteng Premier David Makhura needs to intervene urgently to ensure that funds are found to employ these nurses.

Regards

Jack Bloom MPL
DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Health

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Top Star Drive-In: The Cinema on the Mountain of Gold

The Ferreira Dump began growing in the late 1800s, composed of the crushed rock and chemical residue left over after early, inefficient mining processes had extracted as much gold as the technology of the time allowed. By the 1960s, it was a flat-topped, man-made mesa overlooking the city. In a stroke of entrepreneurial genius, the surface was tarred and the Top Star Drive-In was opened. It quickly became a South African institution. Its appeal was not just the movies, but the unparalleled view: as the sun set, the massive white screen would flicker to life against a backdrop of the glowing skyscrapers of the Central Business District, separated from the viewer only by the elevated M2 highway.

In the decades before television arrived in South Africa (1976), the Top Star was a primary social hub. It was a democratic space in an undemocratic time; while the city below was strictly segregated, the “car” served as a private bubble that allowed a degree of social freedom not found in traditional theaters. For many Johannesburgers, the Top Star was a site of nostalgic rites of passage—first dates, family outings where children were piled into the back of station wagons with blankets and flasks of tea, and the Saturday “car market” where the parking lot transformed into a sprawling hub for buying and selling second-hand vehicles.