President Thabo Mbeki has failed to provide leadership and should be recalled from the presidency to make way for early elections, the South African Communist Party (SACP) said on Sunday. The SACP blamed Mbeki for a recent wave of violence against foreigners in which 62 people have been killed.
The leader of a rebel faction of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change became the most senior opposition politician to be arrested when he was held on Sunday over a written attack on President Robert Mugabe. Arthur Mutambara was picked up at his home in Harare, his party and lawyer said.
Kwanele Sosibo asks Thando Mama about how his work is received and the commercial viability of video art.
Anton Krueger assesses <i>Do South Africans Exist? Nationalism, Democracy and the Identity of ‘the People'</i> by Ivor Chipkin (Wits University Press).
Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) president Chakib Khelil reiterated on Saturday that Opec would not make a decision on output policy before its next scheduled meeting in September, and said oil-market fundamentals were not responsible for high oil prices.
At least three people were wounded in a shooting in an ethnic Albanian area of the Macedonian capital, Skopje, during the country’s parliamentary election on Sunday, police and party officials said. ”We were attacked,” said Izet Mexhiti, a senior official of the ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integration party.
Twenty-nine people, mostly children, were killed and 35 wounded in weekend flash floods in the eastern Ethiopian city of Jijiga, officials said. ”We have recovered 29 bodies so far from early Friday’s floods in Cheraketo [district]. A majority of those were children,” regional president Abdullahi Hassan said.
Jamaica’s Usain Bolt clocked a 100m world record of 9,72 seconds on Saturday to electrify the Reebok Grand Prix athletics meeting. The 21-year-old broke the previous record of 9,74 set by compatriot Asafa Powell in Rieti, Italy, on September 9 2007. Bolt finished ahead of 100m and 200m World Champion Tyson Gay of the United States (9,85) and American Darvis Patton (10,07).
Scientists say they may have discovered ice on Mars. They have reported that when soil was blown away as Nasa’s Phoenix robot spacecraft descended and landed on the Red Planet last Sunday, it may have exposed an outcrop of ice according to images taken near one of the probe’s footpads.
BBC insiders have accused the corporation of sexism after it emerged that the number of reports by women journalists on its flagship 10pm news bulletin has fallen dramatically in the past year. Senior female correspondents are unhappy about being overlooked by the programme, which was revamped at the start of the year.