Political parties should be funded equitably by the state and private companies, Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille said on Wednesday. ”Fifty percent of the funds should be allocated on an equal basis to all political parties,” De Lille said in a speech prepared for delivery at a meeting on party funding in Cape Town.
Metorex, the midtier multicommodity mining group, has taken advantage of the recent strength in the rand/dollar exchange rate. At the time of its acquisition of the Barberton gold operation, Metorex entered into forward gold sale contracts to provide security for the repayment of a six-year loan raised from a consortium of bankers.
The finalists of the 2004 Businesswoman of the Year Award were announced by the Businesswomen’s Association late on Wednesday night. This year’s candidates represent the hospitality, financial services, IT and advertising industries. The winner of the award will be announced on August 25.
From Thursday the public will no longer be able to stroll along the wharves at South Africa’s ports, but this sacrifice will help the country comply with international security standards. South Africa, as a signatory to the Ship and Port Security Code, was required to ”implement a security plan able to respond to government security alerts”.
Nelson Mandela’s birthplace in Mveso and the Egazini battlefield near Grahamstown could be proclaimed national heritage sites.
On Thursday morning, if all went to plan, Saturn gained a new moon. At the climax of a seven-year, 3,2bn-kilometre journey, a giant United States-European spacecraft named Cassini-Huygens sailed between two of the outer rings of Saturn, turned, fired its rocket engine for 96 minutes, and slowed down to become a prisoner of the planet’s gravitational field.
The United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said on Wednesday that the militias which have terrorised western Sudan ”must be broken”, and described conditions in the region as a ”humanitarian catastrophe”. After visiting a refugee camp in northern Darfur, Powell warned that the United Nations will take action if Sudan fails to disarm the Janjaweed militias.
In power, Saddam Hussein spoke of visions of his bloodied corpse being dragged from his palace and ripped down to the bone by a vengeful mob. It was a more decorous scene when the Iraqi authorities took legal control of him in a secret hearing on Wednesday.
How far it was from the triumphant departure of the much-hailed liberator, with young women blowing kisses and throwing flowers and children waving miniature American flags! A furtive ceremony behind acres of concrete, blade-wire and sandbags, and the liberator-in-chief hops into a helicopter and hot-tails it to safety. But of course it is not over — the Americans have not left Iraq, and real authority has not been transferred to the interim Iraqi government.
There is no torment of regret so fierce, no prostration abject enough, than those the moral columnist must undergo when he sees that his work has done cruelty to an entirely innocent party. Callous and cavalier, he has broken a true and honest heart, a heart that knew only love and hope before his cyanide paragraphs killed forever that irreplaceable spark of joy.