Asian and European stock markets plunged on Thursday as investor sentiment was hammered by resurgent credit concerns, the plunging dollar and record high oil prices, dealers said. Global financial markets were also roiled after a troubled fund backed by United States private equity giant Carlyle said it expected its creditors to seize its remaining assets.
"I have interviewed African National Congress deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe seven times between 1999 and 2008, and I have watched him change. Yes, he has been buffeted by the winds of neo-liberalism, but in my last interview with him, I see a far more forthright socialist emerging," writes Ebrahim Harvey.
The Mail & Guardian takes a look at vehicles launched recently in South Africa: the Saab 9-3 (sensible and Swedish), the Peugeot 308 with its cool new features, the Renault Navigator (one of three new models newly introduced) and the Tata Xenon, which, as a double-cab lifestyle bakkie, is still quite a basic vehicle.
The heavy toll of HIV on the 14- to 25-year-old age group haunts us all. One possible remedy is to provide a higher quality education to enable learners to step into a future that offers some promise. But we know that is not enough.
Ke Go Jetse Eng by Peter Tseole
Amathonzi Abanzi by NM Ndlovu
It’s madness. School’s out and the kids are hanging around the house. You can’t afford a proper holiday, but you can’t handle another day of couch potatoes laying in front of the telly.
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The state’s attempts to obtain documents from Mauritius infringed African National Congress president Jacob Zuma’s right to a fair trial, the Constitutional Court heard on Wednesday. Zuma’s advocate said that allowing the documents from Mauritius to be ”imported” would ”negate” the Zuma legal team’s ability to challenge the documents in court.
The government will table draft legislation intended to regulate the private health sector within two months, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Wednesday. ”It is clear that we cannot sustain unregulated private healthcare service delivery in this country and at the same time regulate the medical-schemes industry,” she said.
A former comrade-in-arms of Charles Taylor on Wednesday told judges at the former Liberian president’s war-crimes trial that Taylor ordered him to take arms to Sierra Leone rebels and exchange them for diamonds. Joseph Marzah told the court that in the early 1990s he went to Sierra Leone about 40 times with transports carrying rifles and rockets.