When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s combative president, provoked his latest controversy in New York this week by asserting that there were no homosexuals in his country, he may have been indulging in sophistry or just plain wishful thinking. While Ahmadinejad may want to believe that his Islamic society is exclusively non-gay, it is a belief undermined by the paradox that transsexuality and sex changes are tolerated and encouraged under Iran’s theocratic system.
Community and regional radio stations want to take advantage of the stalemate over the right to broadcast Premier Soccer League (PSL) games, but they do not have the cash or the personnel to do so should the league and the SABC not reach an agreement. Franklin Huizies, the chief executive of the National Community Radio Forum, said: “We have made a presentation to the league and we are waiting for them to come back to us.”
The earliest memory I have of interacting with a Homeless Talk vendor is one of fear-laced irritation. Rosebank’s snarled traffic was sufficiently irritating — I did not need this moral dilemma on my otherwise spotless conscience. All my years of “free Mandela” rallies and cups of vile coffee at leftist university seminars counted for naught in the face of this infernal person.
A wakening giant is threatening to turn South Africa’s private health industry upside down. The Government Employees Medical Scheme (Gems) has seen sensational growth, which has taken it from little more than a pipe dream to South Africa’s third-largest medical scheme in just three years.
It was a case of David meeting Goliath at the Land Claims Court in Cape Town’s High Court this week. The court sat to ratify a settlement agreement signed between the Richtersveld community and the government, one which Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin has called a breakthrough.
Going home … going home … am a-going home … The lovely words of Aaron Neville’s song ring in my head for a whole fortnight before my three-week vacation in Zimbabwe. Each day I wake up and pump up the volume. I am so excited, I can’t wait. I haven’t been home for more than five months. This is long overdue, writes Everjoice Win.
The Oprah Winfrey Show is about as compelling and gruesome as road kill: no matter how much it grosses you out, you just can’t help looking. A particularly bloody lump of matter recently made it on to our small screens, courtesy of the queen of talk shows, in the shape of a posse of smug self-help gurus whose brand of snake oil has seduced millions the world over. Yes, it’s The Secret.
The town of Pomfret will be razed to the ground by December despite a recent assessment by the national department of public works showing that it could be developed into a fully fledged local authority. Bob Namusi, a councillor at the Molopo Local Municipality, under which the town falls, says the national public works department had mistakenly given residents of Pomfret the impression that the asbestos-polluted town could be rehabilitated without its residents moving.
After several false starts, the SABC is finally going to broadcast Unauthorised: Thabo Mbeki, the documentary that it canned 16 months ago “for being incurably defamatory”. The screening, which according to the SABC’s online schedule, will be shown on SABC3 on October 3 at 9.30pm, comes after the documentary had been screened as part of several film festivals in the country.
Painting a swastika on a public building is a hate crime. But what happens when the building itself is the swastika? While appearing innocuous from the ground, the striking shape of a construction in San Diego, now on view to internet users accessing Google Earth, is unmistakable — it resembles the Nazi symbol.