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/ 28 January 2008
One of Botswana’s best-kept secrets is out: the Okavango’s “green season” in the rainy summer months is simply spectacular. As the delta’s floodplains and waterways fill up with fresh water and lush greenery, the area explodes with new life. Breeding herds of elephant with tiny calves, wobbly legged baby giraffe and boisterous zebra foals are enough to turn even the most cynical heart to mush.
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/ 24 January 2008
Tshwarelo Gakegane’s roots run deep in the melapo of the Okavango Delta. "My mother and father used to hunt buffalo and red lechwe here, and they taught me all about the animals and plants of this area." She is part of an exciting community-participation project that ensures that real benefits from ecotourism flow to the people who live on the land.
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/ 28 November 2007
Five minutes in the company of Rhodes Park library assistant Edith Mvelase is sufficient to dispel any residual images of librarians as people with pursed lips and dusty fingers. Not only does she have apple cheeks and laughing eyes, Mvelase is also quite likely to have muddy hands from digging in the library’s food garden.
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/ 7 September 2007
Nicole Johnston reviews Jeanette Winterson’s <i>Tanglewreck</i> and Michelle Paver’s <i>Soul Eater</i>.
Conquered the Comrades and triumphed in the Two Oceans? If you’re addicted to gruelling tests of endurance but feel a bit jaded and in need of a new challenge, look no further. The newest spot to test your marathon mettle is just a hop across the Mozambique channel in Madagascar.
In the flurry surrounding the police crime statistics, one might think crime is the exclusive property of the poor and powerless. Socioeconomic factors obviously play a role, but the picture is not that simple. Justice Albie Sachs famously remarked that patriarchy was South Africa’s only truly nonracial institution.
When United Nations Secretary GeneÂral Ban Ki-moon announced recently that sub-Saharan Africa will fail to meet the Millennium Development Goals, it came as no great surprise. The mid-term evaluation of progress made in reaching the objectives has been presaged by years of missed benchmarks, donors reneging on aid promises and the maintenance of crippling trade terms, which keep the developing world mired in poverty.
Nicole Johnston speaks to Mavis Cheek about her road to wisdom.
The religious right claims that the bulk of South Africans are God-fearing, devout believers, with 85% belonging to some kind of organised religion. If this is true, what are we to make of our world-beating statistics for child abuse, domestic violence, rape and murder?
Imagine that once every three years your home is washed away, all your possessions are destroyed and your children miss months of school. You have no insurance and you have to start your life from scratch. Until it happens again. Welcome to life in the Zambezi River valley. The rural areas of Zambezia province are Mozambique’s poorest and most densely populated.