President Thabo Mbeki should accept that Afrikaans place names are also African, civil rights initiative AfriForum said on Friday. Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, Mbeki had implied that Afrikaners and Afrikaans-speaking people were not Africans, but Europeans, according to AfriForum chief executive Kallie Kriel.
The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) is auditing its condom department after a manager at the bureau was accused of certifying defective condoms in exchange for cash. ”On the basis of the allegations, we did an immediate check and we are covering the other companies,” the bureau’s general manager for food and health, Mike McNerney, said on Friday.
A major IT company employed the Gauteng finance minister’s daughter as it awaited the outcome of two tenders from an agency answerable to him.
The African National Congress MPs who had pleaded guilty to Travelgate crimes should be dismissed, not demoted, says Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary leader Sandra Botha. ”They should not be allowed to remain in those positions of responsibility and trust at all,” she said on Friday.
Angola is planning to privatise many of its more than 250 state-owned firms, but there are fears that the process could be marked by cronyism and cement the oil-rich nation’s reputation as one of Africa’s most corrupt. In an interview with Reuters, Angola’s secretary of state for public enterprises said there were too many state-owned companies.
At least 10 civilians and one soldier were killed in northern Mali on Thursday when their vehicles hit landmines planted by suspected Tuareg rebels. The casualties in the north of the Sahel state followed three attacks this week by the Malian rebels in the desolate mountain region near the border with Algeria and Niger.
The Nelson Mandela Bay metropolitan area is grappling with an increasing number of tuberculosis (TB) cases, with about 250 new patients being admitted to the Livingstone and Dora Nginza hospitals each month. In addition to this, over 200 new multidrug-resistant TB patients are transported from throughout the province to the Jose Pearson Hospital in Bethelsdorp each month.
Eleven Premiership managers gathered at a football stadium in London last week to watch a friendly international match — and it was not England vs Germany. To a man, they rejected the New Wembley game in favour of a trip to the nether-end of south-east London to witness Ghana play Senegal at the Den, the forbidding home of Millwall FC.
United States President George Bush will outline reforms on Friday to help struggling subprime mortgage borrowers and his central bank chief will deliver a speech which will be pored over for hints of a looming rate cut. Federal Reserve chairperson Ben Bernanke speaks on ”Housing and Monetary Policy” at around 2pm GMT.
After a lavish ceremony to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Althea Gibson’s first United States title, Venus and Serena Williams, the two women who carry the hopes of the nation at this year’s US Open, played their first-round matches back-to-back in the Arthur Ashe Stadium.