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/ 17 January 2008
South African President Thabo Mbeki travels to Zimbabwe on Thursday to meet officials of the ruling Zanu-PF and main opposition parties after reports that a deal to end a political crisis was imminent. Mbeki has been mediating talks between Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s government and the Movement for Democratic Change for nearly a year.
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/ 17 January 2008
Power cuts are set to continue on Thursday, the Tshwane municipality said. ”Once again, load-shedding is due to Eskom generation constraints,” said municipal spokesperson Console Tleane. He said there was a slim chance that load-shedding would not be as ”intense” on Friday.
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/ 17 January 2008
Sri Lanka’s military said on Thursday most of the 27 people killed in a bus ambush were shot by rebels as the passengers tried to flee rather than in the blast that struck the vehicle. Wednesday’s attack came as a six-year truce between the state and rebels formally ended.
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/ 17 January 2008
The diplomatic stand-off with Russia entered a dangerous new phase on Wednesday as British officials denounced ”a pattern of intimidation” by Russia’s security services against British Council staff. The Foreign Office complained of unacceptable behaviour, after Russians working at British Council offices were called in for questioning by the FSB.
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/ 17 January 2008
The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is expected to hike interest rates by a further 50 basis points at the end of January, Absa’s economic research unit said on Wednesday. This was in spite of retail trade sales data released earlier by Statistics South Africa showing that consumer spending continued to buckle.
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/ 17 January 2008
President Thabo Mbeki’s disingenuous handling of the charges against police commissioner Jackie Selebi provides a perfect illustration of why ordinary ANC members no longer want him as their leader. He does not talk straight and consistently fails to take South Africa into his confidence. In his management of a slew of controversies in the past nine years he has forfeited the nation’s trust, too.
Disgraced police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi owes his dizzying rise after 1990 to his close personal bond with President Thabo Mbeki.
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/ 17 January 2008
Presidential biographer Ronald Suresh Roberts was asked by Essop Pahad, the Minister in the Presidency, to make a series of cuts softening criticism of the Oppenheimer family in his 2007 book, Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki. In 10 out of 11 cases Roberts complied.
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/ 17 January 2008
The ANC elected its new 80-member national executive committee (NEC) at December’s Polokwane conference. The Mail & Guardian opened the ruling party’s closet and scary skeletons came tumbling out, including those of seven criminals elected to the party’s second-highest decision-making structure.
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/ 17 January 2008
It was one of Europe’s grimmest maritime oil spills, suffocating hundreds of kilometres of France’s Atlantic coastline with a tide of toxic heavy fuel and killing or injuring 300 000 sea birds. On Wednesday a Paris court held that the oil giant Total was responsible for the 1999 sinking of the oil tanker Erika.