”Does Thabo Mbeki want to be president for a third time? Does he?” shouted a furious Esther Lunga, a member of the crowd that gathered outside the Johannesburg High Court on Monday in solidarity with Jacob Zuma as his rape trial began. ”Well tell him we are sick of him, tell him that! Tell him we still believe JZ will be president!”
In the arid fields of southern Afghanistan, farmers in rags tend to green shoots pushing up through the brown earth: the precious crop is opium, illegal and considered against Islam. But, the men explain, they have no choice. ”Without opium, we wouldn’t be able to feed our families,” says one.
Swaziland’s oldest opposition group, the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress, will register as a political party to test the kingdom’s controversial new Constitution. The new basic law, endorsed by King Mswati III earlier this year, makes provision for freedom of assembly, but remains mum on whether it is legal for political parties to contest seats in Parliament.
The Pan-Africanist Congress has scuppered an opposition pact to control Cape Town involving seven smaller opposition parties and the Democratic Alliance — out of frustration over haggling for positions. On Thursday the DA was ready to table the opposition party deal at its top executive structure and prepare to trade its mayoral candidate Helen Zille for control of the city it lost in the October 2002 defection period.
Despite about 800 service delivery protests held across the country and an election boycott in Khutsong, the African National Congress has emerged from the municipal elections having consolidated its already firm hold on local government, with no stay-aways to speak of (other than Khutsong).
Environmentalists have accused Virgin Atlantic of double standards over an initiative to plant trees to compensate for the carbon dioxide emissions from limousines used to drive its customers to airports. Richard Branson’s airline this week said it was ”actively exploring” options such as Carbon Neutral — a controversial programme of planting trees to offset carbon emissions.
More than 20-million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk of famine, in conditions the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) described recently as the worst in his experience. James Morris, executive director of the WFP, has warned the international community that millions of people in Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Tanzania are now at risk because of drought.
Jacob Zuma is on trial for one of the most heinous crimes imaginable in our criminal code. Observing the histrionics in the environs of the Johannesburg High Court, one wouldn’t have thought so. Zuma the accused sweeps into court in expensive state-issue motor vehicles accompanied by besuited armed security — provided by the state.
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