A corruption-busting deputy mayor, who was assassinated outside her home in Mpumalanga, is believed to have been killed while investigating suspected housing irregularities. The execution of Thandi Mtsweni is just the latest in a string of violent incidents linked to corruption in the Govan Mbeki municipality in Secunda in the past five years.
Even amid Zimbabwe’s increasing instability, life in suburban Harare has remained more or less predictable. Which is why Sunday morning shoppers at a suburban shopping mall, popular with young professionals and the well-heeled, stood stunned as they watched the store manager of a branch of one of the country’s largest retail chains being dragged out of his store by the back of his collar.
The ANC Women League’s proposal of a special women’s ministry has run into flak from the ANC and from women’s activists who feel it could “ghettoise” women’s issues. The league insists the ANC policy conference last week had agreed to set up a special ministry for women’s affairs.
Hamas has good reason to celebrate the release of the BBC’s Gaza corrrespondent Alan Johnston, for its success demonstrates to the Palestinians and to the wider international community that it can run the show in the Gaza Strip, less than three weeks since taking it over. Jubilant spokesmen wasted no time in making the connection between the BBC man’s freedom and their own wider political ambitions.
President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina will not seek a second consecutive term in office in order to let his wife, Cristina, run as the ruling party’s candidate in an election later this year, it was announced this week. Cristina Kirchner (54), a senator and veteran politician, is favoured to win the October poll and become one of the most powerful women in Latin America.
You cannot change your past, but what if you could alter the way you remember it? What if you could even delete some memories entirely? Many people who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder seek psychological help to do just that. In North America, scientists are going further, looking for ways to alter memories neurochemically.
In most supermarkets in the sprawling township of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, empty shelves and butcheries with no meat in the cold rooms tell of a desperate reality. Even chickens are hard to come by. The government’s crack price monitoring teams will soon have no jobs, because “there will be nothing to monitor as all commodities have disappeared from shelves”, says Mercy Tiripo (32) of Mabvuku township, about 20km east of Harare.
It was going to be a trip down memory lane. At least that’s what I thought as I prepared to try out the vaunted Soweto Business Express. Soon after arriving at Ikhwezi station in Mofolo, I discovered that the world had changed a bit since igado/ibomba was the transport of choice, writes Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya .
In the article "Landowners haul miners over the coals" (22 June) Mr Koos Pretorius is quoted as saying that the Department of Water Affairs ordered Xstrata’s Onverdacht Colliery to stop operating as it did not have the necessary permits or a water license. This statement is factually incorrect. Xstrata has a valid mining licence for its mining activities at Onverdacht Colliery.
Last week’s ANC policy conference brought to mind a traditional proclamation: The king is dead. Long live the king! However one interprets the minutiae of ANC pronouncements on the next leadership selection, three things can be said. First, Thabo Mbeki will not be South Africa’s president come 2009; second, the internecine war for the presidency of the ANC will continue right up to the last moment.