S. Africa may make academics work to 80
(AFP) – 15 hours ago
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa is considering increasing the retirement age for university professors from 60 to 80, in a move welcomed by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) on Friday.
Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said Thursday it was counter-productive to let university professors and lecturers retire at 60 when they could still help train desperately needed skilled professionals.
“We welcome the suggestion, we think it would play a remarkable role in retaining skilled academics,” NTEU President Norman Kemp told AFP on Friday.
“Universities are currently struggling to attract the right people, younger people are not interested in joining academia. They prefer working for the private sector.”
Sixty is the national retirement age for academics, though universities can extend professors’ tenure on a case-by-case basis.
“The average age of a South African academic as of 2012 is 59, so we are looking at this within the broader scheme of revitalising the academic profession,” Nzimande told a press conference.
“Some professors at 80 are as sharp as anything,” he added. “At some universities in South Africa they retire at 60.”
The proposal came as the government this year announced plans to build two new universities to help meet increased demand for higher education in the face of a 23.9-percent unemployment rate.
Nzimande said South Africa would recruit academics from major trading partners such as Brazil, China, India and Russia to staff the new universities.
The country currently has 17 public universities, all built by the apartheid government before 1994, and six institutes of technology.
The number of students enrolled in public higher education rose from 578,000 in 2000 to nearly 900,000 in 2010, with 46,579 professors and lecturers, according to the ministry.
Higher education, which was almost completely off-limits to blacks under apartheid, has proved to be one of democratic South Africa’s biggest challenges.
South Africa has one engineer per 3,166 people, for example, compared to 227 in Brazil and 543 in Malaysia, two other emerging economies.

What is Death?
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without affect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.

All is well.
~ Henry Scott Holland

Killer condolences on the death of your mother again. On behalf of Nature and Downsound..They dedicate this song to you

Fugitive held in 2009 Coral Springs attempted murder, kidnapping case

Marlon Horace Watson, 29, is accused of being the gunman in the kidnapping… (Broward Sheriff’s Office.)
February 17, 2012|By Juan Ortega, Staff writer
FORT LAUDERDALE — A fugitive recently extradited from Jamaica to South Florida has been charged in the abduction and shooting of a woman in Broward County in 2009, authorities said.

Marlon Horace Watson, 29, is accused of being the gunman in the kidnapping and attempted murder of Nicola Brown, then 22, of Lauderhill, police said.