It has been described at once as "historic," "symbolic" and an incident to be handled with caution. But what should really be made of the meeting of opposition leaders that saw rivals Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara hugging and pledging to work together?
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the public face of fiscal rectitude and good governance in Nigeria has been axed as chair of the Nigeria Economic Intelligence Team, while on a trip to the United Kingdom to get further debt relief. Nigeria’s president Olusegun Obasanjo has appointed Minister of Finance Esther Nedadi Usman in her place.
”The anointing has stopped the camera from working,” a burly man in sunglasses, a dark pinstriped suit and driving a white BMW X5 told Mail & Guardian photographer Oupa Nkosi. In fact, the ”anointing” — the Pentecostal movement’s buzzword for God’s enabling power — had to be supplemented by mechanical and human muscle.
South Africa accounts for about half of the carbon emissions on the continent, says Richard Worthington of Earthlife Africa. He said the country has an "energy-intensive economy that produces among the highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions globally". For instance, South Africa produced 6,91 tonnes per person of fuel combustion carbon dioxide compared to Africa’s average of 0,86 tonnes per person.
Bongani Nxumalo ”stole” a firearm from a relative to carry out the robbery that put him in jail for five years. Another firearm, from a friend, was only a call away. ”Guns are easy to get,” he said in an interview recently. Soft-spoken Nxumalo was recently paroled from the Emthonjeni juvenile section of Pretoria’s Baviaanspoort Correctional Centre.
A growing army of ragga lovers is pushing the music into the mainstream, writes Percy Zvomuya.
One of the catchy slogans from Zimbabwe’s former information minister Jonathan Moyo’s propaganda factory was "Zimbabwe shall never be a colony again". The wheel he set in motion continues to turn with the amendment of a section of the Witchcraft Suppression Act from 1899 that said witchcraft does not exist.
The Nigerian government’s handover of the hotly contested Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon two weeks ago concludes a quarrelsome chapter in the region’s history. The handover, brokered by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, followed a World Court ruling in favour of the territory being returned to Cameroon.
Wits University’s new policy of imposing a 10% levy on the income earned by academics for private work could benefit them, said Aubrey Blecher of the Wits Academic Staff Association this week. Blecher said having a large institution such as Wits at their side, rather than trying to negotiate as individuals with the corporate world, could work to the advantage of academics.
Nothing could have conjured the images of a riven country more eloquently than the Zimbabwe national day of prayer. An event meant to unite a country was marked by a slanging match that would not have looked out of place before a heavyweight boxing match.