Zimbabwe may stop publishing inflation data for one year, an effort economists say is aimed at shielding the government from embarrassment over its failure to rein in soaring prices in the economically depressed nation. President Robert Mugabe’s government has failed to release inflation figures for May and June.
The leadership of South Africa’s communist party has signalled it wants to stay allied to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) rather than contest elections independently. A proposal to run a separate slate of candidates in the 2009 elections was put forth at the South African Communist Party national congress this week, but was quickly sidelined.
<i>Mail & Guardian</i> writers look at the best of the real-life dramas on show at the Encounters South African Documentary Festival.
The Triangle Project said on Friday they were outraged by recent killings of two lesbian women in Soweto. ”We demand justice and immediate police action to incarcerate the monsters who killed these women,” said Vista Kalipa, spokesperson for Triangle Project — a Cape Town-based gay and lesbian advocacy organisation.
A motivational essay by Sharon Farr gives the filmmaker’s reasons for making a documentary about Bram Fischer. Here is an extract.
Icelandic pop princess and noise terrorist Björk is dancing to a tribal beat, writes Lloyd Gedye.
A new exhibition documents the lives of people in polluted environments, writes Niren Tolsi.
Employers must not cut worker salaries but should, instead, review them upwards despite the ongoing reduction of prices of goods and services, said the Zimbabwe chairperson of the Cabinet taskforce on price monitoring and stabilisation, Obert Mpofu. He said the government would assist companies that are facing viability problems.
Nigerian kidnappers have demanded 10-million naira (Â 600) for a three-year-old boy they snatched on his way to school in the lawless Niger Delta, relatives of the toddler said on Friday. The boy’s abduction on Thursday came just four days after a British girl of the same age was released by her kidnappers in the same area.
After a months-long delay, the latest Somali peace conference is due to start in Mogadishu on Sunday but hopes of a breakthrough remain low amid raging violence and a boycott by key players. The conference was called by the transitional federal government after it defeated an Islamist movement with the help of Ethiopia in January.