The last miner among about 3Â 200 trapped two kilometres underground for over 30 hours at Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand mine near Carletonville was rescued on Thursday night. He was welcomed by Harmony chairperson Patrice Motsepe and by Minerals and Energy Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica.
Congress of South African Trade Unions president Willie Madisha has offered to step aside for a month while an independent commission of inquiry probes the R500 000 donation controversy. The commission of inquiry would consist of independent labour experts and was expected to report back in November.
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A Rugby World Cup featuring upset results pleases many, but not the International Rugby Board (IRB). The IRB likes to hide behind the profitability of the Rugby World Cup, stating that the funds raised from it go towards helping to grow the game globally. What they don’t like to see is any sign of the boat rocking.
A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change ”mega disaster”, the United Nation’s emergency relief coordinator, John Holmes, has warned. Holmes said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true.
Presidential hopeful Tokyo Sexwale’s last-minute campaign in the succession race is gaining momentum and is said to be rattling both the Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma camps, which are preparing to barter with Sexwale. With the formal nomination process that opened this week, all three candidates are seeing shifts in their support. Mbeki’s support in the ANC has dwindled, say sources in the Sexwale camp.
China’s recent announcement of a $5-billion loan to the Democratic Republic of Congo to develop national infrastructure and mining interests seems to have taken the world by surprise. International mining companies and institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and African Development Bank have been scrambling to find out more details of the Chinese deal that might have severe repercussions on their own activities in the country.
The December national conference of the ANC is an event of central significance for all South Africans. The ANC played the leading role in South Africa’s transition to democracy and has been the massively dominant player in our first decade of freedom. Conference delegates will therefore be making decisions that touch and indeed shape the lives of the nearly 50-million citizens of our country.
University authorities in Colorado are to decide the fate of a student editor who published a huge "Fuck Bush" headline. David McSwane (20) is facing the sack over an incident that has grown from a campus row into a national debate about free speech. The board of student communications will decide at the hearing whether he violated the paper’s ethics code that states that "profane and vulgar words are not acceptable for opinion writing".
Early users of Facebook.com are responding with mixed reactions to the social network website’s attempts to mass market itself. As Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, a commentary on the collapse and revival of the American community, once lamented: "Do I want to be friends with my uncle?" The garlic and crucifix initially keeping the commercial monsters at bay was the ".edu" domain, which allowed only students and faculty members on the network.
South Africa’s health system is hurtling from crisis to crisis. The country has a minister of health who deftly sidesteps accusations of incompetence, flatly denies drinking at hospitals and fires her competent deputy, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge. But the problems are not just concentrated at the top. They are more basic and affect the lives of children.