Yearly Archives: 2007

David Polovin, chairperson of the Green Point Common Association, and his committee represent probably the wealthiest ratepayers in Cape Town. Polovin and his 10-member volunteer committee took on the City of Cape Town, provincial government and the national government in an attempt to stop them from building a stadium for the 2010 Soccer World Cup on the Green Point Common.

The Democratic Alliance’s Eastern Cape leader, Athol Trollip, has entered the lists as the first formal contender for Tony Leon’s crown. And at a media conference in Cape Town recently to announce his candidacy, Trollip was careful to steer a course between the party’s liberal and conservative wings.

On a day of two inaugurations separated by 2 100km, a late flight and an ideological time warp, it was apt for one of the new presidents to quote Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chávez, was sworn in for a third consecutive term at a ceremony on Wednesday morning in the capital, Caracas, and several hours later, in Managua, Daniel Ortega was sworn in as President of Nicaragua.

The Mail & Guardian‘s Stephanie Wolters speaks to Richard Cornwell, senior research fellow of the African Security Analysis Programme at the Institute for Security Studies, about the evolving crisis in Somalia.

The former United States president Jimmy Carter was facing a revolt from some of his own supporters on Thursday after 14 members of the advisory board of his human rights organisation resigned in protest at his view on Israel and the Palestinians.

The United States, fearing a new Taliban had come to power in Somalia, recently did what many expected it would do: invade Somalia. Not directly though. In the final weeks of 2006, Ethiopian forces that were trained, financed and outfitted by the US pounded Somalia’s capital and port cities with air attacks, routing the poorly equipped militias of the Islamic leadership.