With more than 80% of the South African land surface still legally in the hands of whites, it is a puzzle that the land question does not feature prominently in current political and economic debates. However one looks at things, land inequality remains one of the main indicators of social differentiation — and, indeed, it is at the heart of the struggle for citizenship and against poverty.
President Thabo Mbeki will require evidence before considering media reports that Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was an alcoholic and had been convicted of theft, his office said on Sunday. The Sunday Times reported that chronic alcoholism was the real reason the minister had a liver transplant.
Twenty-two people have been killed in a smash involving a truck and a minibus taxi on the N4 near Komatipoort in Mpumalanga, radio news reported on Sunday. The minibus taxi apparently hit a truck from behind and caught fire. The passengers were trapped inside and burned to death.
A huge fire ripped through an abandoned skyscraper next to Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan on Saturday, killing two firefighters who were responding to the blaze. The former Deutsche Bank office building had been vacant since the September 11 terrorist attacks turned it into a toxic nightmare.
Health authorities in Peru on Sunday battled the spread of infectious diseases in the wake of a devastating earthquake as President Alan Garcia threatened a curfew to stop looting. Aftershocks continued to keep people on edge. Peru’s geophysical institute reported more than 400 tremors following the quake.
The party of President Nursultan Nazarbayev has won all seats in Kazakhstan’s new Parliament, according to preliminary results announced on Sunday by the Central Elections Commission. The results were quickly condemned by the country’s two largest opposition groupings, which said the figures were manipulated.
A Benoni woman, abandoned on the Bapsfontein Road by her drunk husband following an argument about speeding, hitched a lift only to find to herself passing the wreckage of his bakkie with their seriously injured toddler son inside, Ekurhuleni metro police said early on Sunday.
A joint mission of several United Nations agencies is conducting an emergency investigation into the shooting of endangered mountain gorillas in a Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) national park, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) said on Saturday.
Sierra Leone’s opposition All People’s Congress on Saturday kept its lead with more than 80% of the votes counted after last week’s elections, but fell short of absolute majority, an official tally showed. About 2,6-million people were eligible to choose a new president and a 112-seat Parliament.
Côte d’Ivoire’s government has paid out more than -million to about one-third of the people poisoned a year ago when toxic fumes swept across Abidjan, officials said on Saturday. But about 66 000 others are still waiting for their share of compensation.