A renewed push for the voting age to be lowered to 16 will be made at the African National Congress (ANC) policy conference this year, the ANC Youth League said on Friday. ”We … intend to place this position firmly on the agenda of the ANC’s policy conference,” league president Fikile Mbalula said in Johannesburg.
Zimbabwe’s central bank chief , Gideon Gono, is no longer in charge of exchange-rate policy and will not devalue the sliding local currency when he makes a statement this month, it was reported on Friday. Zimbabwe’s dollar has been on a vertiginous slide on the parallel market for foreign currency for months now.
Post Office boss Khutso Mampeule won the first legal round in his battle to keep his job on Friday. The Pretoria High Court ruled that he was entitled to receive a copy of a report into governance problems at the Post Office. The report was compiled by an auditing firm after Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri suspended Mampeule.
More members of the African National Congress (ANC) in the Free State are planning to take on the leadership of provincial party leader Ace Magashule in court, the Volksblad reported on Friday. Members of four more ANC regions are expected to apply for court interdicts to stop ANC ward meetings.
Calls for Christian holidays to be renamed amount to a minority of non-Christians seeking to enforce their will on the majority, the Afrikanerbond said on Friday. Managing director Jan Bosman was reacting to comments by the Commission for the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities.
Peter Moores will succeed Duncan Fletcher as England’s permanent coach, the England and Wales Cricket Board said on Friday. Fletcher’s resignation was announced on Thursday after England were dumped out of the World Cup following some dismal performances. He will stand down after Saturday’s final World Cup Super Eights match with hosts West Indies.
Embattled World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz pledged on Friday to abide by recommendations of the lender’s executive board investigating a pay scandal, but left his future course of action unclear. In a brief statement issued after a late-night announcement by directors, the embattled World Bank chief said he "welcomes the decision of the board …".
The ACT Brumbies kept their Super 14 hopes alive with a last-minute penalty from winger Mark Gerrard to sneak past Perth-based Western Force 14-12 on Friday. The win, their fourth in a row, moves the Brumbies into fourth place on the Super 14 table.
Sporadic shelling and gunfire shook Mogadishu on Friday, but Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf downplayed this week’s violence, which residents say has killed at least 30 people and wounded scores more. Bloodied patients screamed and doctors struggled to tend to the wounded crammed into Mogadishu’s Madina Hospital after four days of clashes.
A group of about 150 people barricaded Marlboro Drive near Alexandra on Friday in protest against their eviction from an industrial site, Gauteng police said. ”They said they had nowhere to go since they had been evicted from an industrial site building,” Superintendent Lungelo Dlamini said.