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/ 18 October 2007
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With biltong, braais, beer and Bok shirts at the ready, rugby-mad South Africans are preparing to hunker down in style for Saturday’s World Cup final showdown with England. Even wedding plans are being redrawn to ensure that no one misses a minute of the action from the Stade de France in Paris.
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/ 11 October 2007
Aussie spin king Shane Warne is seen being smashed for a six by South Africa cricket captain Hansie Cronje as the crowd roars its approval at a rising star who would later shame the nation and the game. Five years after his death in a plane crash, a new biopic on Cronje, which has begun filming, will likely reignite the debate over the man who was once revered as a national hero but later became synonymous with the murky world of match-fixing.
President Robert Mugabe presides over a disaster in Zimbabwe but should still be entitled to attend a forthcoming Europe-Africa summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday. Summing up talks in Pretoria with President Thabo Mbeki, Merkel said she made clear her disquiet about the situation across South Africa’s northern border.
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/ 12 September 2007
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The inaugural Twenty20 World Championship is taking South Africa by storm, thrilling fans who are drawn to the exhilarating speed of the high-octane game where anything can happen. The dazzling opening of the 12-nation tournament in Johannesburg on Tuesday saw the 33Â 000 capacity Wanderers stadium overflowing as fans ”rocked the house, T20 style”.
Stretches of pristine beaches wind around Mozambique’s coast, a slice of paradise where trouble is brewing as foreigners cash in at the expense of locals from a boom in tourism. Practically destroyed during a 27-year civil war ending in 1994, tourism in the former Portuguese colony has skyrocketed in recent years, as holidaymakers are drawn to its white sands and crystal clear waters.
For Lesotho farmer Setsabo Mothibeli it has been too long since the rain came, as he stands desolately among dried maize stalks in the barren field he should have been harvesting. Like many subsistence farms in the small Southern African mountain kingdom, his fields would have fed about 15 people.
Abandoned in a bar as a baby and given just weeks to live by doctors seven years later, Tommy Jarvis is living proof Aids is no longer an automatic death sentence for youngsters in South Africa. Tommy, now a strapping 13-year-old who spends his spare time riding his bike and practising karate, makes light of the day that medics gave up on him.
Aids experts have called for a mass circumcision programme in South Africa, condemning a ”deafening silence” from policy makers since studies revealed it sharply cut infection rates. Delegates at South Africa’s national Aids conference this week called for the roll-out of such a programme.
The clock is ticking for Pretoria, whose mediation in Zimbabwe’s political crisis is off to a sluggish start as looming elections leave little time to bring about results, according to analysts. International hopes are pinned on President Thabo Mbeki’s ability to initiate talks between President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party and the opposition.
After struggling to find a voice in the post-apartheid era, South Africa’s Afrikaner population has latched onto an anthem about a long-dead general to express their identity. From Amersfoort to Zeerust, at bars and braais, Afrikaners from all walks of life are electrified when they hear the rousing: ”De La Rey, De La Rey, will you come lead the Boers?”