Howard West draws up a marketing plan for the launch of a vehicle insurance company’s new call centre for southern Africa that will offer its services in 13 languages.
South Africa’s white and black workers are increasingly finding common ground, as shown by their joint participation in the public service and metal industries strikes. The Mail & Guardian‘s Matuma Letsoalo poses questions to Dirk Hermann, the deputy general secretary of the union Solidarity.
It is not the kind of militaristic statement expected of the peace-loving Canadians. In front of a choreographed line-up of 120 sailors in their summer whites at a naval base outside Victoria in British Columbia, the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, gave a warning to other nations with their eye on the potentially oil-rich Arctic.
Problems are piling up for Republicans as they seek a presidential election candidate with the strength and charisma to overcome the ”Bush deficit”. The choice on offer has failed so far to inspire the party’s base. And polls suggest adverse ideological and demographic shifts could confound any future nominee.
Attempts to claim guardianship of the ANC’s icons and traditions as a weapon in the party’s leadership battle appear to lie behind the postponement of celebrations commemorating the 40th anniversary of the death of former ANC president Albert Luthuli.
I read with incredulity Ferial Haffajee’s diatribe against the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) (Polokwane Briefing: "The state, revolution and rhetoric", June 30). While engaged in the struggle to discontinue private ownership of the means of production, the SACP also strives to build a coherent and united nation, and end patriarchy.
The road trip from Midrand to Polokwane may only be 284km, but the political round-trip seems far longer for the ANC — and perhaps for the country. The ruling party must move from its policy conference last month to its decision-making conference in December, then back to the halls of government.
Elder statesman Shimon Peres took office as Israel’s ninth president on Sunday at the age of 83, pledging to devote the full seven-year term to realising his lifelong dream of bringing peace to the Middle East, despite the limitations of the largely ceremonial post. He entered Parliament to military fanfares.
The South African government has dismissed as untrue a weekend report on the collapse of Southern African Development Community-led talks on Zimbabwe. ”Nothing is further from the truth,” Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said in a statement issued from India.
The South African Communist Party (SACP) is to investigate a number of ways of ”contesting state power in elections” and will convene a policy conference next year to look at the various avenues open to it. A resolution on the ”SACP and state power” was adopted on the final day of the party’s 12th national congress.