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/ 22 October 2007
The British government has thrown its backing behind an ambitious Afghan strategy to split the Taliban by securing the defection of senior members of the militant group and large numbers of their followers. The strategy, spearheaded by the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, reflects a significant shift in British policy, and is showing initial signs of success.
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/ 22 October 2007
India and South Africa have become close allies in the past decade — but it was not always so. Mahatma Gandhi’s brushes with South African racism are well known, and independent India was an early and vocal critic of apartheid. “Our links with South Africa may stretch back several centuries,” writes the Indian high commissioner to South Africa, Rajiv Bhatia.
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/ 22 October 2007
In typical he-man style, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, ignored an alleged assassination plot and went ahead with a visit to Tehran recently. Iran says the plot story was propaganda fabricated by its enemies, which may well be true. Historically speaking, Russians need no outside help doing away with their leaders. They manage perfectly well by themselves.
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/ 22 October 2007
The measure of devastation wrought by HIV/Aids may be impossible to quantify in human and financial terms but, using tools such as the Household Vulnerability Index, it is possible to begin measuring the effects of the epidemic on households and communities.
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/ 22 October 2007
President Hu Jintao on Tuesday spoke like Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister of the 1950s, who famously told his people that they had never had it so good. Under Hu’s leadership in the past five years, he said, ”China’s overall strength grew considerably and people enjoyed more tangible benefits. China’s international standing and influence rose notably.”
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/ 22 October 2007
Niren Tolsi’s report about President Thabo Mbeki’s recent KwaZulu-Natal imbizo (Mbeki’s day out, October 12) reminds one of Chinua Achebe’s 1977 comment on Marco Polo’s 13th-century forays to the Far East: ”Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves,” writes Mukoni Ratshitanga.
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/ 22 October 2007
A KwaZulu-Natal golf course is offering a R5 000 reward leading to the arrest of the culprits who stole grass from the club’s 15th green, a news report said. Confirming the theft, Empangeni Golf Club greenkeeper Andre Rautenbach said that the grass had been dug out from the putting green on the 15th hole.
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/ 22 October 2007
The new geography of trade is the basis for the cooperation between India, Brazil and South Africa, says the Brazilian ambassador, Lucio Pires de Amorim. ”The similarities between the three countries make it mutually beneficial for them to work with one another on key areas that include trade and development. They are three countries with large populations.”
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/ 22 October 2007
In 1976 Sindiswa Nunu, then a pupil at Gugulethu’s Isaac Mkhize Secondary, was shot in both legs by the police during the wave of student uprisings that swept the country. She could not walk for three months. Eight years later, while pursuing her diploma in teaching, she was teargassed and detained when Nyanga Bush, a squatter camp near Crossroads in Cape Town.
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/ 21 October 2007
Indeed, ”varsities are not islands of privilege” as Wits University vice-chancellor Loyiso Nongxa tells us (October 12). However, the ”success stories” of both Wits and the professor himself have prominently proved the contrary. This does not cease to amuse those who have been closely observing the university’s desperate search for vindication where there is none to be found, writes Motsoakgomo Nkoli.