Karl Rove’s departure from the White House to spend more time with his family and to write his memoirs marks the end of the dominant political partnership of the past decade in United States politics. Rove took George Bush under his wing when he was no more than the figurehead of a Texan baseball team.
The Mpumalanga man who decapitated his Siberian Husky puppy with a chainsaw earlier this year has died in a car accident, according to newspaper reports. Phillip Matthysen (31) was thrown from his black Toyota Land Cruiser when it rolled several times on the R50 to Delmas in the early hours on Sunday.
Karl Rove, President George Bush’s closest political friend for the last 34 years and the man behind his two presidential election victories, announced his resignation from the White House on Monday. Rove (56) is the latest and most important in a long line of confidants who formed the original Bush team to have left.
Southern African leaders will probably not be able to find a solution to the meltdown in Zimbabwe at their summit meeting in Zambia later this week, and will probably dabble only in diplomatic matters, analysts predict. Few expect concrete results from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of state gathering that starts in Lusaka on Thursday.
Jacques Kallis has resigned as South Africa’s vice-captain following his omission from the country’s Twenty20 world championship squad. He also said on Monday he was considering his playing future in the wake of his non-selection. Selection convenor Joubert Strydom said Kallis was being rested for the tournament, which will be played in South Africa in September.
Mzamo Xala disavows the term ”black diamond” — conferred on members of South Africa’s booming black middle class who now hold nearly a third of the country’s buying power. The expression implies superiority, he protested, which offends the collective-mindedness of his cultural background.
"Wherever I go, I make friends," says Thoko Mokgosi-Mwantembe, chief executive of Hewlett-Packard’s South Africa operations, and I can’t help but believe her. I’ve just witnessed her charming a waitress with such effortless sincerity that I ask if they know each other. "You’ve got to do what makes you content. I love what I do. I thrive on it," she says.
On the west coast of Madagascar there is a breathtakingly beautiful place that people from all over the world travel to see. They take long plane rides from Japan and France and the United States, suffer spine-jarring trips over bad roads and endure extreme heat and humidity to see this natural wonder. And then they take photos and go home.
Two progress reports on BEE in the past week appear to come to startingly different conclusions. Is the empowerment glass half-full or almost empty? Still, it is encouraging that a start has been made on measurement. Recently, <i>Business Report</i> quoted the Presidential Black Business Working Group, which met President Thabo Mbeki last Friday, as finding established companies’ BEE performance wanting.
Iraq’s politics, as opposed to Iraq’s grim daily ground-floor reality, increasingly resembles a game of illusions which those involved conspire to maintain or prolong. It is an Alice in Wonderland world — except there are no white rabbits disappearing down holes, let alone being pulled from hats.