This is the week when Grahamstown’s Grocott’s Mail newspaper finalises legal papers to protest against an advertising boycott by the local city council. The case concerns the actions of four officials, who will now be diverting scarce municipal resources to defend the impending action.
Clashes between separatists and police sent to impose order in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s western Bas-Congo flared again on Tuesday, the official death toll rising to 22. Police began battling members of the Bundu dia Kongo movement in the town of Luozi, 200km west of Kinshasa on Friday.
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From ”uninspired and boring” to ”down to earth” and ”confident” were some of the varying opinions about African National Congress president Jacob Zuma expressed by members of the Jewish community on Tuesday night. Zuma was invited to speak at a forum on South Africa’s future, hosted by Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein.
African National Congress treasurer general Mathews Phosa has called for an improvement in the country’s black economic empowerment (BEE) policy and urged the legal profession to consider whether the current BEE "framework" is "functional" and whether it is assisting emerging black entrepreneur.
The council of the University of the Free State must ”go” because they do not want to transform, the African National Congress chairperson in the province, Ace Magashule, said on Tuesday. ”I cannot agree with those people who want to say everything at the University of the Free State was still fine,” Magashule said.
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A German man was released unharmed late on Tuesday in the Niger Delta in Nigeria, about 12 hours after he was seized by unknown gunmen who killed a driver and two soldiers, a source at his company said on Wednesday. The source at Julius Berger, a German-Nigerian construction group, said no ransom was paid for the German hostage.
Australia all-rounder Andrew Symonds will face no action after he knocked over a streaker in his side’s nine-run one-day international loss to India in Brisbane on Tuesday. Robert Murray David Ogilvie stormed the field and ran towards Symonds, who shoulder-charged him to the ground.
Actor and popular Soweto pub owner Shimmy Mofokeng was shot dead by hijackers while approaching his driveway in Leonard Lane in Mulbarton, Johannesburg police said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Captain Julia Claassen said Mofokeng (53) was shot in his upper body as he was about to drive into his yard in his white Kia kombi on Monday.
South Africa’s Standard Bank Group said on Wednesday full-year headline earnings per share rose 23,4% to R1 033,4 cents, but it warned it would take a short-term hit from its deal to sell a 20% stake to China’s biggest lender ICBC. Africa’s biggest bank by assets said normalised headline earnings per share rose 20,6%, and normalised return on equity was 24,8%.
The Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, according to a study by an Israeli psychology professor. Benny Shanon said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.