A couple of old actors are sitting around in their local coffee shop, checking the obituaries to see if any of their contemporaries has died.
Congress of South African Trade Unions Western Cape secretary Tony Ehrenreich came out with guns blazing on Wednesday against the African National Congress and the Minister of Housing, Lindiwe Sisulu, accusing her of sabotaging a major land and housing deal struck between landowners and squatters in Hout Bay.
Independent producers contracted to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) have complained that their problems with the public broadcaster have reached crisis point, with potentially grave repercussions for the production industry and broadcasters. The Independent Producers’ Organisation and the Producers’ Alliance set out their grievances in a five-page document.
For the first time, researchers have sequenced proteins from the long-extinct Tyrannosaurus rex, the mightiest of dinosaurs, leading them to the discovery that many of the molecules show a remarkable similarity to those of the humble chicken. The research provides the first molecular evidence for the theory that birds are the modern-day descendants of dinosaurs.
The most powerful voting bloc at the ANC’s national conferences, the Eastern Cape, has launched an all-out campaign for President Thabo Mbeki to serve another term as ANC president. The Mail & Guardian has learnt that the Eastern Cape is lobbying other provinces, urging them to throw their weight behind him in the ruling party’s bitter succession battle.
Jacob Zuma sought this week to put a more refined spin on his reputation for crudely mobilising Zulu support, arguing that South Africa needs a leader who “understands the issues” of ethnicity. Speaking to the Cape Town Press Club, he attempted to counter the perception that he is exploiting the prejudices of poor and less-educated constituencies.
In a bid to promote Jacob Zuma, his key backers in KwaZulu-Natal have sparked a potentially counter-productive war with members of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and its leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Ironically, the move could dilute Zuma’s support in rural KwaZulu-Natal, and among IFP members who sympathise with his battle for the African National Congress presidency.
President Thabo Mbeki’s bid to broker a political settlement in Zimbabwe could be an uphill battle, given this week’s insistence by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF that there can be no talks before the opposition changes its ways. An official in the Zanu-PF’s information department said the thinking in the party is that ”elections are around the corner and people will do their talking through the ballot”.
Africa’s ills would vanish if the West and other partners poured billions of aid money into its coffers, conventional wisdom goes. But what this view overlooks is the inability of many African governments to implement projects designed, as the cliché goes, to make poverty history.
When the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approved its latest report on global warming two weeks ago, questions about political arm-twisting were immediately asked. In a last-minute wrangling, scientists were left with no option but to remove what some deemed critical parts of the report. Critics then accused the panel of toning down some of the real effects of climate change.