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/ 9 February 2007
January is mango season in Hoedspruit, in the Limpopo province, and casual fruit pickers, mostly women, flood the area’s farms in search of work. Conditions on the farms already make them a potential breeding ground for HIV infection. Workers usually live in overcrowded compounds away from their families and isolated from HIV and Aids interventions.
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/ 9 February 2007
It took just 35 laboratory tests to bring more than seven years and millions of dollars of research to a shocking halt last week — and to dampen the hopes of protecting millions of women against HIV infection. The Ushercell microbicide trial was stopped prematurely after the independent safety oversight committee discovered that more women using the anti-HIV gel.
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/ 9 February 2007
The relentless heat is made more unbearable by the strong smell of dried fish hanging on the fence at the KwaPuza border post between northern KwaZulu-Natal and Mozambique. A handful of soldiers and policemen on the South African side watch without interest from the shade as people move through a gap in the fence at “Gate Six”.
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/ 9 February 2007
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) squandered hundreds of thousands of rands pursuing disciplinary charges against CEO Jackie Manche — in defiance of advice from its own lawyer. A legal opinion drawn up for the regulator by advocate V Soni makes it clear that Icasa was advised as far back as last July to accept Manche’s settlement offer.
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/ 9 February 2007
At 11.22am, as the needle drew back from 19-year-old Thabo’s arm in a room in Soweto, applause rang out. South Africa’s largest anti-HIV vaccine trial had begun. Researchers hope the MRKAd5 multivalent HIV vaccine will prevent at least 30% of new infections, and may slow the progression of HIV to Aids.
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/ 9 February 2007
Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has backtracked on the sale of one of Cape Town’s crown jewels, the Somerset Hospital site. At a media conference recently, Rasool announced that the provincial Cabinet had decided after a two-and-half-hour special sitting to lease the land for 99 years.
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/ 9 February 2007
China’s recent pledge to pump millions of dollars into copper-rich Zambia has turned the spotlight on the quality of jobs and investment offered by the erstwhile investors in the Southern African country. On his two-day stop in Zambia recently, Chinese President Hu Jintao launched an “Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone” to be based in the mineral rich Copperbelt region.
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/ 9 February 2007
Birth, death, love and taxes are said to be the only constants in life, but one more thing could be added: a Robert Mugabe Cabinet. One would like to think that Stan Made — a man who has presided over the near-death of Zimbabwe’s agriculture sector since the start of the land invasions — would be relieved of his duties and packed off to a place where he has nothing at all to do with anything.
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/ 9 February 2007
“You whites will never understand anything about living in the sand in a hok big enough for a dog. And you will never understand crime. What’s crime? Am I a criminal because I eat with robbed money? I don’t want to know how my two sons earn the R20, R30 or R100 they bring home most evenings.
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/ 9 February 2007
First National Bank’s abortive attempt to run a hastily conceived anti-crime campaign has placed crime firmly on the public agenda and led to one of the biggest public splits in the business community in the post-apartheid era. FNB had planned to place 1,5-million posters in national newspapers, writes Jocelyn Newmarch.