The residents of Cape Town claim to have found an effective new weapon in South Africa’s battle against crime. Crime levels have reportedly tumbled in two neighbourhoods where residents go on patrol armed with nothing more than filthy looks. The groups stop and stare in silence at suspected prostitutes and drug dealers.
There is probably no firm on Earth more sensitive to allegations of putting profit before compassion and trampling on the rights of indigenous peoples, but on Tuesday Benetton’s chairperson was forced to defend himself against these and worse charges, levelled at him by an Argentine Nobel Prize-winner.
Three children were on Tuesday hailed for their strength and courage after surviving for six days in a treacherous, shark-infested sea following the capsize of their family’s boat in heavy weather. The children had been travelling to a birthday party on Thursday Island with their parents when disaster struck last Tuesday.
The United States was on Tuesday accused by France of blackmailing developing countries into giving up their right to produce cheap drugs for Aids victims. The French president said favourable trade deals are being dangled before poor nations in return for those countries halting production of life-saving generic drugs.
Police say they are certain that Leigh Matthews, who disappeared on Friday after being held to ransom, has not left the country. It is five days since her family last heard from her, when on Friday afternoon her captors allowed her to speak on the telephone. "We are looking into every single lead," Investigating officer Gabriel Hall said.
"You may not like what he does, but are you prepared to give up his right to do it?" That is the tag line on Milos Forman’s 1996 movie <i>The People vs Larry Flynt</i>, which tells the story of how the bellicose founder of <i>Hustler</i> magazine defended his first amendment rights in courts across the US. If they made a movie about local porn king Joe Theron, the tag line wouldn’t be much different.
Three years ago John Assimwe knew almost nothing about Africa’s insect life. Like most Ugandans, he was more preoccupied with the tall task of making a living in spite of the country’s crushing poverty and sparse employment opportunities. But then he stumbled upon a dream money-spinner: collecting rare insects from the country’s lush tropical forests, pickling them and exporting them to wealthy private collectors.
"I heard about Paul Hart’s Drakenstein Lion Park from a friend and I wondered whether he was dreaming. A lion park in the heart of the Cape winelands?" Johan Liebenberg is an active member of Cape Town’s café society. When he heard about lions roaring in the winelands, he decided to investigate — and made some startling discoveries.
In the arid mountain ranges of the Little Karoo in the Western Cape, a remarkable vision is quickly becoming reality. In an area where the last big game was wiped out more than 150 years ago, a dedicated team of conservationists is reintroducing animals that once ranged across the vast plains in great numbers. <i>Earthyear</i> reports on an ambitious rehabilitation project with a big vision.
The intermittent debate around the role of black intellectuals, especially academics — whether they are absent from public debates and hence have minimal impact on critical policy issues — is apt and needs to be urgently addressed. Though these accusations are partly grounded in fact, there are gaps in the analyses that need to be confronted.