Africa’s ever-recurring armed conflicts and civil wars and the new waves of globalisation in the post-Cold War era have accentuated the marginalisation of a continent so severely that it is now at the periphery of the periphery of the world. The failure to deconstruct and reconstruct Africa’s inherited colonial economy has exacerbated centuries-old dependence and dispossession.
Next Wednesday is World Refugee Day. But unlike Youth Day or Women’s Day, this annual commemoration honours a group we would rather did not exist. For some, refugees are a painful reminder of the crises, conflicts and oppression that characterise far too much of our continent.
India is looking to increase its economic and diplomatic visibility in Africa and elsewhere once again – and the West, other Asian competitors and particularly African leadership, need to wake up and take stock of what this means. India’s non-oil trade with West Africa stands at more than $3-billion and is rising rapidly, accounting for 1,2% of India’s world trade.
While Americans prefer timber-frame houses, most South Africans still like brick-and-mortar homes. But the newly elected president of the Timber Frame Builders’ Association, Ian Michelsen, hopes to change that. He is determined to get South Africans to fall in love with timber-frame homes.
Everything we have been told about the Olympic legacy turns out to be bunkum. The games are supposed to encourage us to play sport; they are meant to produce resounding economic benefits and help the poor. It’s all untrue. As the evictions in London begin, a new report shows that the only certain Olympic legacy is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
What is President Robert Mugabe up to? Two events in the past fortnight lay bare the wily octogenarian’s strategy. On Monday he attempted to play the statesman. In an act of showmanship, he tried to give opposition leaders tractors and other equipment. In the same week his Cabinet authorised a raft of constitutional changes, which point to a far more sinister strategy.
Angry staff at Unisa have accused the university’s management of unilaterally downgrading their posts, with unclear implications both for their current earnings and future pay negotiations. They also say that although they have been given the choice of accepting or rejecting their new status, management has not spelt out what will happen if they reject it.
Gays are a guy’s best friend. Friendships between straight and gay men are increasingly common in the United Kingdom. Such celebrity couples include the stars of television comedy series Little Britain David Walliams and Matt Lucas, and Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins, presenters of Channel 4 television’s The Friday Night Project.
Alvaro de Soto is not the first experienced diplomat to have entered the Middle East a moderate and to have left it two years later angry at the role of Israel and the United States in subverting the search for peace. Nor will he be the last. In his confidential 53-page report, dated May 5 (just before De Soto stepped down as the United Nations’s Middle East envoy) the former Peruvian foreign minister describes the reality of diplomacy.
Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has flown in the face of a national marketing campaign for the 2010 Fifa World Cup by declaring that ”Cape Town must be the face of 2010” and that the city is the ”country’s strongest brand”. Rasool also said the province had to be the base for 2010 tourists, ”with people flying out to Gauteng for a match and then back again”.