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/ 12 September 2007
One thousand days before the most popular show on earth rolls into Africa for the first time, the 2010 Soccer World Cup hosts face a mammoth task in organising the extravaganza and silencing party-poopers. Delays to stadium construction, questions over transport and nervousness over safety have left South Africa constantly having to reassure that all will be right.
The drive towards forging a United States of Africa was running out of steam on Wednesday as leaders filed away from a summit without agreeing on a timeline for creating a new government for the continent. The three-day African Union summit in Ghana was devoted to a grand debate on a union government with burning issues such as Darfur barely getting a look in.
Leaders of the African Union begin a three-day summit in Accra, Ghana, on Sunday focused on plans to forge a confederation of states that can help the world’s poorest continent exercise greater clout on the world stage. Police and soldiers lined the streets as the heads of state began arriving on Saturday.
A devastating strike and looming policy conference are finally prodding the shadowy contest for the leadership of South Africa’s governing party into the open, even if no candidate wants to admit it. The next African National Congress president will be formally elected in December at a party conference.
Thousands of people fled their homes in Maputo on Friday, fearing fresh explosions from the smoking wreckage of Mozambique’s largest armoury as emergency workers stockpiled bodies and missile shells. Ninety-six people died in the explosions on Thursday evening and about 400 were injured.
The South African government was set on Saturday to take possession of the first farm to be expropriated in a move designed to silence criticism that it is dragging its feet over land reform. Land commission agents, along with chief claims commissioner Thozi Gwanya, will descend on Pniel Farm near the diamond mining town of Kimberley to meet with the outgoing owners.
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/ 29 January 2007
Heads of state were gathering in Addis Ababa for an African Union summit set to be overshadowed by a row over Sudan’s bid to become president of the 53-member organisation. Armed police and soldiers were out in force on the eve of the two-day gathering in the Ethiopian capital, lining the streets from the airport to the city centre.
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/ 5 November 2006
The generous tributes paid by the first two black presidents of South Africa to one-time arch foe PW Botha have left many compatriots bemused and warning against a rewrite of apartheid’s history. Botha, regarded as an international pariah during his 11-year leadership of a whites-only government, died last week.
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/ 19 October 2006
Their prose did much to expose the moral bankruptcy of apartheid to the outside world but the literary elite of white South Africa has now turned ferociously on the rainbow nation’s new rulers. Following the departure of Nobel laureate JM Coetzee to Australia, authors such as André Brink, Rian Malan and Christopher Hope have delivered searing indictments of the state of the nation.
For years it was regarded as a backwater and the poor relation to its southern neighbour, but the spiralling crisis in Zimbabwe has led to a massive upsurge in Zambia’s tourism industry. A total of 650Â 000 foreign visitors travelled to Zambia last year, a rise of nearly half a million on the year 2000, bringing in vital revenue to one of the poorest countries in Africa.