SOUTH Africa’s largest trade union body, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), has pooh-poohed official statistics which suggest that the unemployment rate stands at 22.5% – saying the real figure is closer to 40%. The government’s statistics service, Statistics SA (Stats SA), said about one in five members of the workforce were without […]
NAMIBIA?S President Sam Nujoma has called on police to arrest, deport and imprison gays and lesbians, saying homosexual behaviour was not permitted despite the country’s liberal constitution. “The Republic of Namibia does not allow homosexuality, lesbianism here. Police are ordered to arrest you, and deport you and imprison you,” Nujoma told students in a speech […]
HUMAN rights abuses, especially racism and xenophobia, are on the increase worldwide, says UN human rights chief Mary Robinson, who attacks Europe for becoming a “fortress”. Globalisation has made the world smaller but discrimination has increased, Robinson said at a luncheon attended by senior government officials, including Sipho Pityana, South Africa’s director general of foreign […]
THE British-based charity Christian Aid has launched damning allegations of atrocities by Sudanese government forces and sponsored militias, who they say are mounting a systematic ?scorched earth? strategy in and around the oilfields where foreign companies operate. Christian Aid called on oil companies to suspend operations, saying tens of thousands of civilians have been killed […]
THE Mpumalanga farmer who has become the first person in the country to have his land seized for redistribution has vowed to exhaust all legal avenues in fighting the government’s attempts to expropriate his land. Willem Pretorius, who has been notified that he must either reach a settlement with government on the price of 1 […]
THE World Health Organisation (WHO) has slammed major tobacco companies for continuing to market cigarettes to the world’s youth. Speaking at an All Africa meeting on tobacco control in Pretoria, Derek Yach, WHO’s executive director for noncommunicable diseases and mental health, said companies regularly hired market researchers to ask adolescents about their buying and leisure […]
A SOUTH African-born Presbyterian missionary who accused the Zimbabwean government of involvement in the killings of two white parishioners has left the country after authorities revoked his permit to work in the country and ordered his deportation. The Rev Paul Andrianatos entered South Africa safely after a campaign of threats and intimidation from state security […]
MOZAMBIQUE?S disastrous floods are an alarm call on climate change, the environment group Greenpeace said this week as it urged European countries to take the lead in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. “The current extraordinary and tragic flood in Mozambique, only one year after the last such ‘unusual’ event in that country, demonstrates […]
ZIMBABWE?S official daily newspaper says British gay activist Peter Tatchell, who was beaten by security guards while trying to ”arrest” President Robert Mugabe in Belgium, was lucky not to have been ”shot like a dog”. The Herald said Tatchell of the British gay rights group Outrage, who was knocked to the ground by the president’s […]
NAMIBIA, an ally of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is to follow the lead of Uganda and Rwanda and begin withdrawing its troops from the country, says a foreign ministry source. “The boys are coming back,” said the official, but gave no indication of when Namibian soldiers could be expected to withdraw from the […]