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/ 19 January 2007
South Africans are increasingly pessimistic about the government’s ability to tackle the country’s crippling crime rates, a survey released on Thursday showed. The biannual Government Performance Barometer report showed 40% of South Africans believed the government was doing enough to fight crime, down from 50% last year.
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/ 19 January 2007
Myanmar, formerly Burma, is a wretched place. In 1962, a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government. Since then, armed forces have maintained a chokehold on power. In 1991, the military organised a democratic election and then refused to relinquish power to the party that was elected, the National League for Democracy.
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/ 19 January 2007
President Thabo Mbeki is like British Prime Minister Tony Blair and not only because of their similar approaches to modern social democrat politics. Both do fine ostrich impersonations when it comes to arms deals. Blair is risking his legacy by trying to douse the British Serious Fraud Office’s probe of BAE’s global slush funds in arms deals.
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/ 19 January 2007
Government deserves recognition for trying to balance economic growth prerequisites with a fairly ambitious programme of social engineering in the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Codes of Good Practice. The soon-to-be-gazetted codes will give certainty to business on what government wants businesses to do about BEE.
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/ 19 January 2007
Without internal political reconciliation, a troop deployment would be a dangerous exercise of dubious value, writes Richard Cromwell. "No clear political outcome suggests itself that could act as a prospective base upon which international peacekeepers might be deployed," he writes. Also read Garth le Pere’s argument for sending troops to Somalia.
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/ 19 January 2007
The moon was high, the stars were bright, and the gentle swell of the @lantic — a spring tide of discarded ANC flags, gently surging up the concrete incline of the stadium — murmured its lullaby to the night. “I need time,” sighed Thabiso, letting her head drop at last on to Jacob’s shoulder as they danced barefoot in the papery shallows. “I need -”
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/ 19 January 2007
Pressure from the international community, NGOs and civil society led to the acquittal recently of five alleged coup plotters imprisoned in Burundi in August this year. The men were arrested and charged with plotting to overthrow the government, but the accusations were widely believed to have been fabricated by elements in the government.
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/ 19 January 2007
The <i>Mail & Gurdian</i>’s Percy Zvomuya spoke to Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka in Accra about the situation in the Niger Delta where there are ongoing clashes between the Nigerian army, local armed groups and the communities over the exploitation and management of oil resources, democracy in Nigeria and the situation in Zimbabwe.
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/ 19 January 2007
Sandwiched between temperate Europe and African heat, Italy is on the front line of climate change and is witnessing a rise in tropical diseases such as malaria and tick-borne encephalitis, a new report says. Italy was declared free of malaria in 1970, but it is making a comeback, said the Italian environmental organisation Legambiente.
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/ 19 January 2007
Gift vouchers are safe havens for the indecisive, the unimaginative and the practical gift-giver who simply cannot figure out what to get the hard-to-please recipient. They are also a safe haven for retailers, with between 10 and 20% of gift vouchers never redeemed.