Within hours of arriving in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s capital, visitors are likely to be followed by informers, stopped by the army and arrested by police, who will strip the film from their cameras, follow them to their hotel, question their motives for being there, and interrogate anyone they have talked to. John Vidal recently visited Equatorial Guinea, one of the few Western journalists to do so in recent years.
The South African Communist Party will from next month pressure both the government and commercial agriculture to accelerate land and agrarian reform. The announcement coincides with Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza’s appointment this week of a panel of experts to study the extent and impact of foreign land ownership in the country.
Tensions in the government are sharpening over controversial plans to mine one of the country’s most ecologically valuable areas. Conflicting plans for developing Pondoland in the Eastern Cape will be challenged next week at the Johannesburg +2 Conference, called on the second anniversary of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
New details of the Public Service Commission probe of Marion Sparg, CEO in the National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka’s office, have emerged, raising further and substantial conflict-of-interest questions about Sparg. The Mail & Guardian last week reported that Sparg, a former Umkhonto weSizwe guerrilla, is being probed by the commission over an alleged jobs-for-pals scam.
Sir Mark Thatcher has accumulated a £60-million (about R720-million) fortune through his ”business” activities — but Britain’s most tenacious journalists have failed to uncover precisely what these activities entail. On one aspect, however, they agree: Thatcher’s financial career took off after his mother, Margaret Thatcher, became Britain’s prime minister in 1979 and he traded on her position to clinch various deals, mostly in the arms trade.
While there isn’t much gold associated with the arts, if gold medals were being dished out, then Gcina Mhlope, storyteller extraordinaire, would be at the front of the queue. Mike van Graan pays tribute.
Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was distressed to learn her son Mark had been arrested in South Africa and charged with funding a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea but was confident he would be found innocent, her spokesperson said on Thursday.
Five MPs from three political parties erred on the side of caution and declared travel paid by Parliament, according to the 2004 Register of Members’ Interests. Such official trips are not required to be disclosed. Among the gifts and benefits over R350 logged in the register are discounts on cars, a R20 000 interest-free loan, gifts of cellphones, some sheep and cows, and scented bath salts and soaps.
Grassroots membership of the African National Congress Youth League last week forced its leadership to withdraw comments that the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general strike against privatisation was an act of insubordination aimed at overthrowing the government.
At the other end of the spectrum, some African families living in Johannesburg are luring unskilled young black women to work for them, at salaries way below the legal minimum wage. Many are from rural areas, or from Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Mozambique and reside illegally in the South Africa.