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/ 3 September 2004
Rapid growth in expenditure on social grants is squeezing government spending on health, education and other essential services, forcing it to reconsider the way it is financing its major development programmes. Figures released by the National Treasury this week show provincial spending on social grants doubled between 2000/01 and 2003/04. And, government spending on grants is set to grow by another 50%.
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/ 3 September 2004
Outspoken Bulawayo Archbishop Pius Ncube secretly met Prince Charles and briefed him about Zimbabwe’s deepening economic and social crisis at the royal’s London home. Archbishop Ncube, a fierce critic of Mugabe, told Prince Charles that Mugabe was slowly joining the elite squad of tragi-comic African dictators.
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/ 3 September 2004
The doom-mongers may complain that commercial pressures and a growing reluctance to annoy the posh neighbours are stealing the soul of the Notting Hill Carnival. But though the weather was more autumnal than Caribbean, the crowds flocked back to the festival as it celebrated its 40th birthday from August 28 to 29. The event drew a crowd of an estimated one million people.
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/ 3 September 2004
<b>NOT THE MOVIE OF THE WEEK:</b> The poster slogan for <i>King Arthur</i> sells it as "The untold true story that inspired the legend". While there is some intellectual texture and moral fibre, as it were, to the story, much else is botched, writes Shaun de Waal.
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/ 3 September 2004
Madrid, Milan, Valencia, Porto, and Roma: you can’t beat Europe for the big football match atmosphere and one of sport’s greatest occasions. Now that footie season is upon us, <i>Escape</i> scouts the cities that will host the season’s glamour games.
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/ 3 September 2004
Three of the five drivers of the African rescue plan, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), had their work cut out this week dealing with conflict and crisis on the continent. President Thabo Mbeki took no fewer than seven of his Cabinet members to Kinshasa for the bi-national commission aimed at beefing up political and economic ties with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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/ 3 September 2004
Professor Bruce of the Philosophy Department at the University of Wallamalloo (Queensland), most famous for his theories on the drinking habits of Aristotle, would have succinctly described conditions in Athens last weekend, as the games came to a close, as: “It’s hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum.”
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/ 3 September 2004
Listening to Metropolitan Trading Company (MTC) CEO Keith Atkins, one might think the City of Johannesburg had brought its street traders under control.
British-born Atkins has inherited daunting challenges from Rory Robertshaw, the previous head of the council-owned MTC. After piloting the city’s first "modern" market in Yeoville’s Rockey Street for R5-million, Robertshaw called it quits.
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/ 3 September 2004
When Tokyo Sexwale sits down in the foyer of the Sandton Crowne Plaza hotel in Johannesburg to talk football, he lifts his right foot towards his chest and gesticulates while saying, "<i>Isoccer yimi</i> — I am soccer, <i>ngikhule ngiteka itennis</i> — I used to play with the tennis ball." Black business is taking corporate responsibility on to the soccer field.
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/ 3 September 2004
The number of Aids cases in Japan is slowly increasing, and the number of HIV-positive people in the country is estimated to be far higher than the number reported. In 2003 the government recorded 336 new Aids cases but only 640 new HIV cases, a number that was “far lower than expected.” Since Japan began tracking HIV/Aids cases in 1985, the government has recorded 2 892 Aids cases and 5 780 HIV cases.