Those who have suffered through recent power failures, courtesy of Eskom, may want to buy a copy of the new CD by the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), which rails against privatisation of basic services. It is a compilation of music to toyi-toyi to, capturing the songs chanted during APF marches over the years.
My best friend is sick. Well, he was, but he is recovering. When he was really down he called me and said he was tired, could hardly walk, was throwing up and thirsty as hell. After a week of battling the odds, he did a superhuman thing: got out of bed and walked from his room in Joubert Park to the Park Station Medical and Dental Centre in Braamfontein, writes the Mail & Guardian‘s Matthew Krouse .
China has attempted to head off a looming trade war with the United States by announcing a hat trick of measures designed to slow down the world’s fastest-growing, developing economy. Last weekend Beijing raised interest rates, tightened controls on credit and widened the band in which the yuan can trade against the dollar in a move carefully designed to coincide with two international gatherings over the coming days.
Afghanistan’s Parliament is on the brink of passing a law that could damage the independence of the country’s media. Under the new proposals, private and state media will come under greater government control. Proposed changes include an oversight committee that will scrutinise media content.
The swearing-in of Nicolas Sarkozy as French president on May 18 may mark, as he claims, a dramatic break with France’s political past; but less heralded was the equally stark break with the conventions of Catholic France as his family arrived on the red carpet. The five offspring in France’s first family make a fascinating line-up.
In the middle of the road into the Naher al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon a woman lay shot, her body convulsing, unreachable by the army and Red Cross as snipers continued to fire over her. Inside the devastated camp, residents waited without water or electricity for a ceasefire to come into effect.
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language that goes to his heart,” intones the voice at the end of the marketing DVD for umAfrika newspaper. It is a quote from former president Nelson Mandela, which has resonated with the literate isiZulu population in KwaZulu-Natal: this is reflected in the state of robust health of isiZulu language newspapers in the province.
SADC countries are proposing the reopening of ivory trade to countries certified as trading partners by the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (Cites). But a conservation group warned this week that the region does not have its own house in order, as domestic sales of ivory continue to thrive.
Two’s company. Three’s a crowd. And whoever they are, I don’t trust them. Yes, in the ever expanding list of things I don’t ”get”, the most crippling entry has to be people. I don’t get people. What’s their appeal, precisely? They waddle around with their haircuts on, cluttering the pavement like gormless, farting skittles. They’re awful.
Old Middle East hands like to quote the adage: ”If you think you understand Lebanon, you haven’t been properly briefed.” The country’s sheer complexity, with its mosaic of religions, sects and allegiances and links to competing foreign powers, can make it fiendishly difficult to understand.