The South African Municipal Workers’ Union warned on Wednesday that a strike by
about 8 000 workers on the East Rand was set to continue. This comes after Ekurhuleni mayor Duma Nkosi refused to accept a memorandum from protesters outside his office in Germiston on Tuesday, saying their strike action was illegal.
Nigeria will press for compensation from the South African government for its citizens who were victims of xenophobic attacks in the country, Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe said late on Tuesday in Abuja. The minister said that although no Nigerian has been killed in the wave of the attacks, many of them lost their properties while others had had their shops looted.
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan says in a new book that United States President George Bush ”veered terribly off course” and was not ”open and forthright on Iraq,” a media report said on Tuesday. In the memoir due out next week, McClellan also says Bush relied on ”propaganda” to sell the war.
The Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier, dubbed ”Bumbling Bernier” by his critics, resigned on Tuesday after admitting that he left sensitive government documents at the home of his former girlfriend. Bernier (45) has come under criticism in recent weeks after it emerged that the woman concerned, Julie Couillard, had been involved in relationships with men linked to the Hells Angels.
Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, met the former Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza at the start of a much-delayed United Nations investigation into the shelling by the Israeli military of a Palestinian house which killed 18 members of a single family in Beit Hanoun.
Africa’s future economic growth should happen through trade and not aid, said President Thabo Mbeki in Japan on Wednesday. ”Without discounting the importance of aid, improved terms of trade for Africa is critical to ensure its full integration into the global economy,” said Mbeki at the international conference on African development summit at Yokohama.
Andile Mngxitama’s critique of the HRC’s finding on blacks-only membership organisations has stirred up a hornet’s nest. Ferial Haffajee asked him why he is so angry.
Two weeks ago the Congolese national assembly cautiously approved a $9-billion deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and China, but warned that it would be watching closely to see that the country’s best interests are protected. Parliament’s decision comes after a week of political wrangling, during which the opposition strongly opposed the deal.
I wanted to live in the city. Well, the edge of the city. I’m not crazy. So I settled on a spot close enough to smell the danger, but not close enough to taste it. I was going to live like Jerry Seinfeld and Carrie Bradshaw. And, for the most part, you might be surprised to learn it’s just like it is on TV. Compared with suburbanites, city dwellers dress better, are funnier, and have more sex.
Malawi’s former president Bakili Muluzi on Tuesday laughed off accusations that he was trying to topple his successor as his lawyers launched a high court bid to end his house arrest. Muluzi has denied any knowledge of documents which purportedly linked him to a coup against President Bingu wa Mutharika.