Political parties need money to operate. The question is how much and at what level should disclosure be required. Richard Calland draws attention to the number of left-of-centre parties that cosy up to big business and lose sight of their ideological heritage.
With apartheid South Africa it was crystal clear. There was a transnational, cross sector, multi-class, multi-race, solidarity against the regime and for the people of South Africa. Not, however, in the case of Zimbabwe now — decidedly and distinctively not.
New Labour’s obsession with form over content has become a cancer at the heart of the Blair administration.
You know that the election campaign has begun when the Democratic Alliance mounts its first assault upon the lamp-posts of the nation.
I cannot believe it. That was the reaction of many people when I told them of the appointment of Chris Stals as one of the six eminent persons who will oversee the crucial African Peer Review Mechanism.
A bookshop’s windows are boarded up. You can’t see inside. Then, happily, the shutters are removed and suddenly you can see through the windows. The bookshop is now transparent. But is it open?
American values are at stake. Really, what values? That is the response of many; contempt for the United States has never been higher. Asked, as I was last week, by a group of Americans how the world sees their country, one is forced to reply: you are detested.
Many Zimbabweans feel betrayed by South Africa’s response to the crisis in their country. A group of about 50 leading Zimbabwean human rights and democracy activists heard a representative of the government speak with impeccable clarity about South Africa’s approach to its northern neighbour at a conference facilitated by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa.
There is another world leader out there who is like Saddam Hussein. He has been in material breach of United Nations Security Council resolutions for years. He flagrantly disregards the Geneva Convention. He has ordered the death and destruction of an ethnic group within his nation-state domain
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/ 18 February 2003
Frene Ginwala wants to move the media out of the precincts of Parliament. Not out of Parliament, it must be emphasised, just out of the precincts. They are to be rehoused across Plein Street in an admittedly ghastly building. But moving the press away from Parliament will have dire consequences.