A new report documenting violence in the 21-year-long conflict between Ugandan government forces and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army indicates that as many as 38 000 children and 37 000 adults have been abducted and forced to join the insurgents. “Many of these children and adults are still unaccounted for, and more work is needed to identify the whereabouts of those still missing,” said Patrick Vinck, who led the study conducted by two American universities.
There were irregularities in the tender process to sell a prime tract of Cape Town land, African National Congress provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha concedes, but he blames the office of Premier Ebrahim Rasool rather than his own conduct as provincial minister of transport and public works.
The fabled world of a mystical brotherhood comes alive at a Jo’burg gallery, writes Matthew Krouse.
Commentators have often called for Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri to go, meaning that she should exit her position as Minister of Communications. It hasn’t happened. Instead, she’s got going in a different way. Her Department of Communications is now trotting along at a respectable pace that can only be good news for the internet and associated media growth in South Africa.
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The government and public unions met for all of 10 minutes on Wednesday night before deciding to postpone wage talks to Friday to give unions more time to canvass their members. A government-imposed deadline for unions to accept a wage settlement offer came and went at 6pm without the parties meeting.
The African National Congress (ANC) was the party demonstrating the most positive growth trend going into the 2009 national elections, the South African Institute of Race Relations said on Wednesday. It is ”the ANC and not the Democratic Alliance that is attracting growing popular support”, spokesperson Frans Cronje said at the launch of a report.
The government lacks efficient policies for land reform and redistribution, South African Council of Churches (SACC) secretary general Eddie Makue said on Wednesday. As far as he knows, they don’t exist, he said at the opening of a three-day SACC national land-reform conference in Kempton Park.
Forty-eight people were arrested while protesting about service delivery in Mamelodi East, near Pretoria, on Wednesday, police said. Spokesperson Captain Julia Claasen said the crowd dispersed peacefully after they had barricaded roads and burned tyres from the early hours of the morning.