Haiti’s ousted leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide is to set up permanent home in South Africa, Jamaican officials said on Thursday. He would not go there until after the general election next month, because President Thabo Mbeki’s government believed it would be ”politically unsettling”, they added.
President George Bush sparked a political firestorm on Thursday after making what many judged a tasteless and ill-judged joke about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush made the joke at a black-tie event for radio and television journalists in Washington on Wednesday night.
Mohammed Suharto, Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Sese Seko ripped off up to -billion from the impoverished people of Indonesia, the Philippines and Zaire, a sum equivalent to the entire annual aid budget of the west, anti-bribery campaigners said on Thursday.
Michiel du Plooy must be a nervous man. The Free State businessman is expected to be a key witness in the next corruption case to be launched by the Lesotho prosecuting authority in connection with bribes paid by international construction firms to secure contracts in the $8-billion Lesotho Highlands Water Project.
I’m using my space this week to get a few whinges off my chest. Some commercial and social sins don’t deserve a full column. Let’s start with <i>National Geographic</i>. And then we’ll move onto a gripe about SABC, e.tv and M-Net, closing off with a swipe at DStv’s DMX.
Development plans currently being put into action at Cape Town International airport will enable it to meet projected passenger demand until 2050, the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) has said. Designed to accommodate 200 000 passengers a month, the domestic terminals are currently handling an average of 280 000 passengers.
"Welcome to our extreme conditions!" booms the mayor of Kemi. "We Finns have been making holes in the snow for hundreds of years!" Subtlety, understatement … such things are the preserve of balmier climes. Up here on the Arctic Circle in February, the temperature lurks around -20°C and you say it like it is, whether it’s about the weather or the holes or why you came here in the first place.
It’s been a confusing few months for world-weary observers of African elections, as they’ve sat and watched South Africa and waited for the smoke to rise. Where’s all the razor wire? This isn’t an election campaign, it’s a queue. And no one is cutting in. Frankly, this year’s election campaign has been decidedly dull.
The state-owned Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI) has come under the spotlight for a controversial sale of weapons of war to the 70 suspected mercenaries currently being held in Harare. During the initial remand hearing for the suspects on Tuesday ZDI was officially confirmed as the supplier of a large consignment of arms to the group.
The South African consumer’s sterling role in buffing up the country’s economic performance appears to be nearing its end, with appetite for credit showing a decline and implying a need for new sources of economic growth. This is according to the Reserve Bank’s Quarterly Bulletin released this week.