”I’m very happy for what has happened in court, I’m proud that I was the first woman to stand up and fight for women’s right to wear what they want to wear. For many years in T-section in Umlazi, women were not allowed to wear pants, but for the first time now, they have the freedom to wear them without having anyone intimidate them.”
Like most heraldry, the global tour of the Olympic torch is a modern invention, stretching back no further in the mists of time than the last Games in Athens. After London, Paris and San Francisco, prising the torch from the phalanx of the Chinese robocops protecting it has become the latest Olympic sport.
The African National Congress (ANC) has admitted that the Scorpions’ prosecution of ANC president Jacob Zuma ”is not totally divorced” from the party’s attempts to get rid of the Scorpions, it emerged during a debate on Thursday at the Institute for Security Studies where ANC national executive committee member Siphiwe Nyanda spoke.
The state’s case against police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi could be a major casualty of the African National Congress’s drive to shut down the Scorpions. The Mail & Guardian has established that seven of the eight investigators working on the Selebi case have already resigned or are in the process of leaving the unit.
In late February, a diplomatic flurry in the regional trading firmament erupted. South Africa’s foreign affairs minister stated in Parliament that the European Union, out of fear over the Chinese trade ”threat”, was using economic partnership agreements with the EU to lock in old colonial trading relationships.
Fourteen years into democracy, South Africans are over the rainbow nation and growing up fast. And nowhere is our transition from ”colour-blind” children to sharp-tongued teenagers more evident than in the jingle of fruity, rooty names we’re using to describe ourselves and one another.
Law-and-order fears, mingled with blatant xenophobia, are providing the anti-immigrant league with lush electoral pastures in the flatlands west of Venice. And its showing here could have a decisive impact on the character of the government that emerges from Italy’s general election on Sunday and Monday.
Durban businessman Sifiso Zulu has, over the past two weeks, become the city’s Scarlet Pimpernel. But, unlike the Pimpernel, rumours circulating in the city suggest that Zulu may need the intervention of friendly political aristocrats, rather than the other way around.
The African National Congress Youth League spent a massive R17-million on its national conference in Mangaung in the Free State. After the conference was aborted inconclusively, this money is now wasted. Two league leaders have said the money came from donors including the ANC, Tokyo Sexwale and Patrice Motsepe.
Rapule Tabane says that, if confirmed as the new African National Congress Youth League president, Julius Malema is likely to continue predecessor Fikile Mbalula’s tradition of pompous, reckless and fiery bombast. The 27-year-old from Limpopo will be even more ”militant” than Mbalula.