The first blow to Martha Netshiozwe's future came when her parents died of Aids. The second came when she ran out of money and had to drop out of a South African high school.

Netshiozwe, 23, is a product of the first post-apartheid generation who entered a new and aspiring education system which aimed to heal the economic divisions created by the white-minority government. But like many, she left without the skills to qualify for anything other than manual labour.

Despite pouring billions of dollars into education, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has little to show for its money except for public primary schools regarded as among the worst in the world and millions of students destined for a life in the underclass.

"If you don't have an education, you don't have a chance in life," said Netshiozwe, who is unemployed with little prospect of finding regular work. She and her HIV-infected aunt live together and scrape by on about $100 (R800) a month in welfare benefits.

Nearly half of South Africa's 18 to 24 year olds – the first generation educated after apartheid ended in 1994 – are not in the education system and do not have a job, according to government data.

Academics have called this group the "lost generation" and worry it will grow larger unless the government fixes a system riddled with failing schools, unskilled educators and corruption that stops funding from reaching its intended destinations.

"This is an appalling waste of human potential and a potential source of serious social instability," the Ministry of Higher Education said this month when it unveiled sweeping plans for boosting university enrollment and improving vocational colleges.

The deployment of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in the recent festive season policing operations has led to concerns being raised from various quarters. The first problems emerged withThe Star newspaper reports of a policing operation in Johannesburg where the military and police were carrying out a joint operation targeting informal shops to seize counterfeit products. Photographs were taken of a soldier beating a shop owner with the butt of his R4 rifle. Police members, including members of the police’s Tactical Response Team (TRT), were also alleged to have used unnecessary and excessive violence against shop owners and bystanders. A week later, the Cape Times reported on two SANDF armoured vehicles and a number of armed soldiers that were seen monitoring a protest of less than fifty people at the Khayelitsha District Hospital in the Cape Town Metropolitan area. SABC news more recently broadcast soldiers taking part in an operation to burn a plantation of marijuana that had been discovered in Soweto.   

These incidents prompted a debate on military deployment in support of the police and to what extent constitutional and other legislative prerequisites were met during these deployments. For example, on 16 January, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Cape Town, Pierre de Vos argued that it is of ‘utmost importance’, in a constitutional democracy, to keep the roles of the police and the military separate. He acknowledges that the Constitution provides for the ‘employment’ of the military ‘in cooperation with the police service’, but questions whether in this instance the correct procedures for such ‘employment’ were followed.

When Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, he said nothing about nationalisation. At the time, Venezuela was moving in the opposite direction, riding a wave of privatisation that had brought improvements in telephone services, steel production, and oil profits. Once he came to power, however, Chavez changed his mind. He realised that nationalising the private sector is neither about economics nor about improving the lot of citizens. Instead, it is about limiting and hobbling the private sector, and about increasing government power.

Since about 2003, Hugo Chavez has gone on a nationalisation spree that has extended across all sectors of the economy, from land, to milk production, to cement factories and to entire buildings. One enterprise after another has been brought under government control. The result? Just like everywhere else in the world where there has been nationalisation, Chavez' policies have harmed firms and caused the country's economy to suffer. 

Venezuela today produces less cement. Agricultural production has declined precipitously and there are regular shortages of staples such as flour and milk. And the production of the country's most significant export, oil, has fallen year after year since Chavez took control of that industry. 

It is worth noting that although oil was already in the hands of the government before Chavez came to power, his administration not only fired the top 20,000 oil workers in 2003 for striking, but also nationalised the heavy oil crude projects. These projects had required huge investments in the 1990s. When the country simply did not have the money to continue investing, foreign oil companies were invited to form partnerships with government; but now they also have been nationalised. These cases are in arbitration and, given the increase in the price of oil, represent a huge liability for the country if large awards are given to those whose property was nationalised without compensation.

The ongoing spat between the Zuma cabinet and the Provincial Executive Council of the ANC in Limpopo has factional political dimensions which have hogged the news headlines. The crisis in governance in the province, which neighbours Zimbabwe in more than one way, is a matter for legal, rather than political analysis.

The system of government chosen by the South African people has been called a "quasi-federal" one. This is an outcome of a compromise reached when our re-unified country emerged from the negotiations for a new dispensation to replace the balkanisation policy of choice under apartheid in which quasi-independent "homelands" were scattered about the landscape.

The "quasi-federal" accommodation was reached because there was no consensus on the federal system favoured by the National Party (and the IFP) and the unitary state which the ANC envisaged when it came to the table to negotiate an end to the armed struggle.

The nine provinces of the new SA have certain competencies parcelled out to them in the Constitution itself. Schedule 4 to the Constitution lists "Functional Areas of Concurrent National and Provincial Legislative Competence" while Schedule 5 lists "Functional Areas of Exclusive Provincial Legislative Competence"

When it comes to actually running provinces the buck stops with the Premiers and their provincial cabinets, they are "accountable individually and collectively to the legislature for the exercise of their powers and the performance of their functions".

They may not undertake any other paid work, act in a way that is inconsistent with their office, expose themselves to the risk of a conflict of interests or use their position or any information entrusted to them to enrich themselves or improperly benefit any other person.