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.
Affirmative action is dead in many respects, says Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin. Beeld newspaper reported him on Friday as saying the policy was not being applied in South Africa because of skills shortages. Erwin was defending the government’s affirmative action policy on Thursday at the South African Business Club in London.
<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 new exhibition documents the lives of people in polluted environments, writes Niren Tolsi.
Icelandic pop princess and noise terrorist Björk is dancing to a tribal beat, writes Lloyd Gedye.
A motivational essay by Sharon Farr gives the filmmaker’s reasons for making a documentary about Bram Fischer. Here is an extract.
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.