So there’s no need for a further rate hike? The latest economic data show that consumers are suffering and a further rate hike would just be flogging a dead horse while having a negative impact on a corporate sector already dealing with power shocks, reports Maya Fisher-French.
”We worked together in the past in a coalition government. If Nelson Mandela could work with FW de Klerk, I don’t see why Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki cannot work in a government.” Stephanie Wolters spoke to the Kenyan Orange Democratic Movement’s Raila Odinga about the challenges that lie ahead.
Even by the standards of Latin American regional politics it is a twisted tale, involving clandestine cross-border raids, drug-peddling guerrillas and eye-catching claims of plans for a radioactive ”dirty bomb”. It is also fast turning into a military stand-off with apparent potential for calamity.
As the new Director General of Arts and Culture, Themba Wakashe has to face a backlog of mismanagement and lack of skills development. Kwanele Sosibo spoke to him about his vision. Wakashe spoke frankly, albeit in broad strokes, perhaps an indication of the freshness of his appointment and his diplomacy.
African National Congress president Jacob Zuma will get a last chance next week to convince a court that potentially damaging evidence seized from him and his lawyer in 2005 should not form part of his corruption trial. Adriaan Basson and Sam Sole present a bluffer’s guide to Zuma’s latest court antics.
Nine-year-old Ida Fraende, who likes to play with Lego bricks, is not so unusual in Scandinavia — but globally speaking she is not typical. Jorgen V Knudstorp hopes to change that. The chief executive of Europe’s largest toymaker has already brought the once-troubled group back to profit.
The attempt by Western politicians and media to present this week’s carnage in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate act of Israeli self-defence — or at best the latest phase of a wearisome conflict between two somehow equivalent sides — has reached Alice-in-Wonderland proportions, writes Seumas Milne.
Dumiso Dabengwa, the senior Zanu-PF member who has rebelled against President Robert Mugabe to back Simba Makoni, says the ruling party needs reform to save Zimbabwe from ”falling into the wrong hands”. ”This is a rescue operation,” Dabengwa said after appearing with Makoni in public for the first time.
Mishehe Kalohua opens his asylum-seeker permit tenderly. The tattered page, held together by sticky-tape, has been opened and refolded so often that it has become as flimsy as cheap toilet paper. He has been waiting for well over a year for a response to his application for refugee status in the country.
Long considered the oil capital of Norway, the small south-western town of Stavanger has begun hunting for a new image that will keep the money flowing in even after the oil wells dry up. In recent years, Norway, which once ranked third among oil exporters, has slipped to fifth place.