A total of 8 759 people were evicted from farms around the country in the five-year period from 2002 to 2006, according to Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana. In written reply to a question in the National Assembly by the Freedom Front Plus’s Pieter Groenewald on Monday, she said of these 4 674 were illegal and 4 085 legal evictions.
Author and women’s rights activist Mmatshilo Motsei launched her new book, The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court: Reflections on the Jacob Zuma Trial, this week. She spoke to the Mail & Guardian‘s Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya, about the book and the feminist movement in South Africa.
British scientists are developing a force-field to protect astronauts and spacecraft from hazards on future missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. Although the shield is unlikely to withstand a full-on assault from the Klingons, it is designed to act as a “virtual umbrella” to shelter astronauts and sensitive electronics from the violent blasts of radiation that erupt from the sun.
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. ”They were sick and some were dying,” she says. ”Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable ‘looking from the side’.”
The gap might be closing but, on the eve of the first round of France’s presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy is still the clear frontrunner. The candidate of ”the France that wakes up early in the morning”, Sarkozy is hailed by the Economist magazine as ”France’s chance”, the man to bring about Thatcherite economic reforms.
Few things seem to excite car designers more than the concept cars they wheel out at international motor shows. Each year, gleaming displays of futuristic styling grace the circuit, revealing ever sleeker lines and tantalising technology that promises to do away with the car’s deadly addiction to carbon-based fuel.
Fortuitously, the ANC’s succession debacle has stimulated debate on the selection of presidential aspirants, and the type of people desired. This has now become an urgent necessity in the context of the African Peer Review Mechanism, to which South Africa was subjected last year.
Rotting corpses lay in the open and explosions shook Mogadishu on Sunday for a fifth day of battles between insurgents and allied Somali-Ethiopian troops that have killed at least 230 people, locals said. In an ever-growing exodus, hundreds more Somalis trudged out of Mogadishu on Sunday.
French voters flocked to choose a new president on Sunday in an election dominated by right-wing front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Ségolène Royal, who hopes to be the first woman elected head of state. Sarkozy led Royal and the other 10 candidates in opinion polls throughout the long campaign.
Mamelodi Sundowns were crowned South African champions on Sunday without kicking a ball after Orlando Pirates were held to a goalless draw at home by Ajax Cape Town. Pirates still had an outside mathematical chance of catching the defending champions but needed to win all their remaining five matches and hope Sundowns lost their last five.