South Africa’s rugby bosses on Friday formally adopted a transformation charter designed to significantly increase the number of black people involved in the sport. South African Rugby Union (Saru) president Oregan Hoskins told a media briefing in Cape Town that Saru’s president’s council had given its blessing to the ”scientifically based” seven page document.
Peter van Heerden’s wild performances that include branding lend new meaning to the term historical angst. Alex Sudheim attends his current retrospective.
Colin Bower takes a broad swipe at Christianity in his new book, writes Drew Forrest.
The Northern Cape provincial minister for finance and economic affairs, Pakes Dikgetsi, appeared in court on Friday on domestic violence-related charges, police confirmed. Spokesperson Superintendent Mashay Gamieldien confirmed his arrest, also on Friday, and court appearance in Kimberley.
Six months after suspending aid to Ethiopia on democracy concerns, two of the impoverished nation’s top donors agreed on Friday to put much of that money to education and health projects. The World Bank and Britain said they had redirected a total of more than -million from suspended support to programmes to help the poorest in Ethiopia over the next two years.
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon on Friday questioned the wisdom of Lulu Xingwana’s appointment as Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister. ”As Deputy Minister of Minerals and Energy, Xingwana achieved little aside from her racist and xenophobic diatribes in Parliament, which were viewed with alarm by both local and foreign investors,” Leon said in his weekly newsletter.
Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai called on the United Nations on Friday to intervene in his homeland’s political and economic crises. The Zimbabwean government has rejected UN involvement, saying Secretary General Kofi Annan need not make a long-planned visit.
A Greek inquiry into a mid-air collision between Greek and Turkish fighter planes this week blamed Turkish pilot error, a Greek official said on Friday, as the country confirmed the death of its pilot. The Turkish plane ”rammed into the Greek aircraft overhead following a wrong manoeuvre by the Turkish pilot”, a top defence ministry official said.
Killing British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a suicide bombing would be morally justified as revenge for the war in Iraq, firebrand lawmaker George Galloway has said. In a magazine interview that was widely reported on Friday, the MP for the anti-war party, Respect, was asked if it would be justifiable for a suicide bomber to blow up Blair, provided there were no other casualties.
The Springboks have enlisted the services of a host of doctors and specialists in the build-up to their international season and as they prepare in Bloemfontein, medical reports have been flowing furiously. But perhaps the most important advice will come from another sort of professor in the form of scrum doctor Balie Swart.