Since the news of her firing on Wednesday night went public, many voices, including the ANC Women’s League in the Northern Cape, Cosatu, the SACP, the Treatment Action Campaign, Independent Democrat leader Patricia de Lillie, the DA and private individuals have come out supporting her, querying the motives for her dismissal.
His office is in a dark and musty basement, the shelves laden with religious and legal texts and boxes of files. Two white shirts are slung over hangers in the corner and Yoelish Krausz is sitting at his desk. Here he works as the operations officer of his deeply religious, ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, the Neturei Karta.
It was bound to happen. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission might have promised enough reconciliation to facilitate the transition to democracy, but it hardly produced enough truth to bury the memory of apartheid in history. The public needs to discover the role of those who ran the apartheid state and who authorised the violence.
The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgement of a president. But it has also condemned the judgement of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion. Many of us believed, as an Iraqi exile friend told me the night the war started, that it was the only chance the members of his generation would have to live in freedom in their own country.
As Thabo Mbeki heads into the twilight of his presidency, his legacy as a feminist is one he holds dear. That much is clear from his speeches and writings. Mbeki talks a great deal about women’s empowerment and he has walked the numerical talk. The deputy presidency, and more than half the premierships and cabinet posts, are occupied by women.
President Hugo Chávez has launched an intensive tour of South America to shore up Venezuela’s influence over the region and to loosen the grip of Western creditors. The socialist leader promised to buy up to -billion of Argentinian bonds and to help fund a -million gas plant, bolstering his reputation as a benefactor of Buenos Aires’s economic recovery.
Chelsea opened their Premier League title bid with a record-breaking 3-2 win over Birmingham City while London rivals Arsenal snatched a late 2-1 victory over Fulham on Sunday. Chelsea, looking to wrest the title back from Manchester United, took the points with a second-half strike from Ghana midfielder Michael Essien.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is consulting her lawyers over a Sunday Times article alleging she demanded alcohol while she was being treated at the Cape Town Medi-Clinic in 2005. In a brief statement released on Sunday the ministry labelled the article ”false”.
Fifty-one bus drivers were arrested for overcharging this weekend in Harare as riot police were brought in to control crowds of desperate travellers, official media reported on Sunday. Thousands of would-be travellers were stranded at Harare’s main railway station, unable to catch trains for the holiday weekend, according to the Sunday Mail.
More than 70 000 members of a hard-line Muslim group held a rally in Indonesia that heard calls for a caliphate — or Islamic rule — to govern the world. The supporters of the Hizbut Tahrir group filled up most of an 80 000-seat sports stadium in the capital, Jakarta, waving flags as they heard fiery speeches saying it was ”time for the caliphate to reign”.