Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s brag about a bumper harvest this season received a major jolt this week as a report from the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) said 2,3-million people will need food aid this year. Mugabe’s government maintains the country will produce 2,4-million tonnes of maize, against 1,2-million tonnes forecast by aid agencies.
A KwaZulu-Natal primary school that draws its learners from poverty-stricken households is taking the government to court for refusing to grant it access to the national school feeding scheme because the area is not considered "disadvantaged". The majority of the learners at Clareville Primary School come from informal settlements where unemployment is high.
Seven months after gunmen on horseback drove Mohammed Ishaq’s family from their village in West Darfur, hunger is about to claim the life of his baby son. The shortage of food that has wasted nine-month-old Zohar’s limbs is widespread in Mornay refugee camp, where one child in five is suffering acute malnutrition.
Insurgents in Iraq signalled their determination to provoke havoc ahead of next week’s handover of power by killing as many as 100 people in simultaneous attacks in five cities on Thursday. The attacks appeared to be coordinated and showed a new level of planning and sophistication.
Biologists are about to enter a lost world deep in the greatest tract of unexplored territory on the planet. They plan to probe under the Arctic ice into the Canada basin, a steep-sided submarine hole the size of Alaska thought to have been isolated from the surrounding ocean for millions of years.
Police arrested two directors of the Bush Bucks soccer club in East London on Thursday night in connection with alleged match fixing. The men, aged 45 and 40, were arrested at the club’s offices on Thursday afternoon by a team of about 10 policemen from Johannesburg.
For the second time in a week, the liberals of New York stood in line for their cultural sustenance. On Monday night they waited to snatch the first autographed copies of the memoirs of the former Democratic president Bill Clinton. On Wednesday they went to watch Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, a film aimed, at least in part, at ending the incumbency of the current Republican president, George Bush.
"Apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd is probably turning in his grave, but at the end of the day it is love that matters. Jeri [Ngomane] is a great husband and a fantastic father to our kids." Sanet de Klerk’s gushing paean to marriage appeared in an article in <i>Drum</i> magazine’s September 2002 edition, under the headline "Jeri, the rainbow man".
"The hippo was invisible as we entered the reeds with our canoes. It watched us silently as we approached, unaware of the big lump hiding beneath the tranquil Pongola river. Just as we were about to glide right over the animal, he wiggled his head and gave a splurt of disgust. We froze and then started a slow but urgent U-turn." <i>Escape</i> enjoys a close encounter at Mvubu Game Lodge.
The weka is an odd bird. With spindly legs, tubby body and a narrow, bobbing head, it picks its way through the New Zealand bush. It is famously shy, but such is the tranquillity of the Queen Charlotte track that the odd, disconcerted weka may be the only creature you meet. Even at the height of New Zealand’s tourist season, you’ll be lucky to cross paths with half a dozen "trampers", as New Zealanders call them.