Percy Zvomuya speaks to Tsitsi Dangarembga about fact, fiction and the cross-currents of storytelling.
Bob Marley’s wife ‘might have the name, but she doesn’t have his philosophy’, write Kwanele Sosibo and Percy Zvomuya.
It’s always encouraging when, over a weekend, youths leave wining, dining and other pleasures for debates on political policy matters. The upshot of such debate, convened by the ANC Youth League last weekend, was a crucial resolution that could lead to the lowering of the voting age.
What would happen if Portsmouth’s Benjani Mwaruwaru was to score a goal and dedicate it to the hundreds of opposition activists who are in detention now, to the thousands of people who are dying of Aids because they have no access to ARVs and the millions who have been forced to flee from their homes because of the crisis in Zimbabwe?
Africa’s ills would vanish if the West and other partners poured billions of aid money into its coffers, conventional wisdom goes. But what this view overlooks is the inability of many African governments to implement projects designed, as the cliché goes, to make poverty history.
Although an uneasy peace holds in the strife-torn Somali capital of Mogadishu, a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding. Aid agencies are unable to distribute humanitarian aid as armed bandits pillage, loot and rape the defenceless refugees who are fleeing the capital
Just for argument’s sake, say I am trying to save R200 a month for the next 12 months. My first stop was FNB, which has a 32-day account that does not levy any charges at all. The bank escalates the interest from 4,35% for the first R200, which rises in the fifth month to 5,85%. What this means is that after 12 months I will have R2 463,75 — almost R64 of this money being interest.
Charismatic Pentecostal churches like AFM Shekinah have sprung up all over the country, their brand of worship attracting a growing number of people. Savious Kwinika attends services at a Nigerian church, Mountain of Fire. He says he goes there because they “cast out demons” — church-speak for exorcism — and they also “speak in other tongues”.
BEE poster-woman Danisa Baloyi is likely to step aside or resign from her position as a director of Absa on Friday. The bank has been embarrassed by Baloyi’s links with the Fidentia scandal. While it cannot ask for her resignation, bank executives have expressed concerns.
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/ 9 February 2007
No matter how well Botswana, Mauritius and other sparsely populated countries perform economically, African economic growth rates will continue to lag behind the rest of the world until the more populous countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia start pulling their weight, saya a new report.