The government, sponsors and the World Cup local organising committee (LOC) are willing to pay the salary of a top foreign coach to ensure South Africa does well when it hosts the 2010 showpiece. A senior official at the South African Football Association (Safa), who did not want to be named, said the LOC and the government wanted to have a big say in the rebuilding of Bafana Bafana.
The smugglers’ trail crosses salt-encrusted plains, scrabbly farmland and hundreds of blossoming poppy fields. Suddenly a fortress-like structure looms. The high-walled mansion belongs to Haji Adam, an opium smuggler, locals say. Tales of his wealth are legion.
After being reviled for more than 2 000 years as the embodiment of treachery, Judas Iscariot’s side of the story was finally published on Thursday. Thanks to a newly discovered gospel in Judas’s name, we now know what his excuse was: Jesus made me do it.
Beijing plans to make full use of its authoritarian powers during the Olympics in 2008 by banning more than two million cars to ensure that one of the world’s most polluted cities will have clear skies for at least the two weeks of the games. Billions of dollars are being spent on Olympic venues, new roads and the world’s biggest airport terminal.
The environment group Greenpeace on Thursday launched a campaign against McDonald’s, accusing the United States restaurant chain of abetting the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest by buying meat raised from Amazonian soya. Greenpeace protestors staged colourful but peaceful demonstrations at several McDonald’s restaurants in Britain and Germany.
A ruling to dismiss the Mangaung municipality’s top two officials last Friday has highlighted how a group of senior councillors and officials ran an "organised corruption syndicate" that allegedly looted tens of millions of rands from the local authority. The Mangaung Local Municipality ranks among the country’s top 10 biggest councils, with a budget of R1,5-billion.
The charge sheet implicating five businessmen in a R213-million pension-fund fraud details an elaborate scheme aimed at profiteering from surplus money generated by the funds. Four businessmen were arrested last month in a criminal case relating to that being brought against Australian Peter Ghavalas, who was arrested in September last year.
While the government has been putting a lot of energy into tackling import parity pricing as part of its broad-based attack on excessive pricing, there is one major industry in the country — sugar — that continues to use import parity as one of its cornerstones. The industry is finally starting to feel the winds of change … or are they just breezes?
Botswana is struggling to control a diarrhoea epidemic that has claimed the lives of 470 children since January. "A few adult cases have been reported but mostly children are affected," Colo Boitshoko, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health said. "We had a lot of rain for this time of the year."
People getting eaten by wild animals is only one side of the picture in post-war Mozambique — the tourist boom is threatening a number of endangered marine species with local extinction. South African conservation organisations working in Mozambique are particularly worried about sea turtles and dugongs.