The pressure on Robert Mugabe is gathering force following last week’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit with Thabo Mbeki’s appointed team of officials, from the presidency and foreign affairs, who are talking to the main protagonists in the Zimbabwean crisis.
The late 1960s spawned contextual and black theology to ensure that the teachings of the dominant religion — Christianity — were responsive to the lives of black people during the era of apartheid. With apartheid officially dead, there is a vacuum in the lives of the faithful waiting to be filled.
The Constitutional Court has ordered Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille and journalist Charlene Smith to pay damages to three women whose HIV-positive status they revealed in a book without the women’s consent. The three women, identified as NM, SM and LH, were named as having HIV in Smith’s biography of De Lille, published in March 2002.
”As Muslims we are taught that Allah is closer to us than our jugular vein. Our relationship with him is very intense as there is no intermediary between Allah and us. Praying is a one-on-one with God. Constant remembrance of Allah protects us from worshipping modern-day idols like materialism,” says Shabnam Mayet.
The government has announced a proposal for a contributory earnings-based social security system that will provide for retirement, disability and death. This will complement the existing social security system, which has 11,8-million beneficiaries who will receive R89,4-billion in the current fiscal year, writes Thuthula Balfour-Kaipa.
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South Africa does not think of the poor. The poorest of the country are the majority, but we are kept voiceless. The poorest I am talking about are the shack dwellers, the street traders, the street kids, the flat dwellers who can’t afford the rent, and the unemployed from Cape Town to Musina and from Richards Bay to Alexander Bay, writes M’du Hlongwa.
As Jews and South Africans, we have noted with deep concern the report of John Dugard, the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967. The report, published on January 29 2007, is currently under discussion within the United Nations Human Rights Council. It reveals substantial rights abuses by the Israeli government that we find abhorrent.
About 1 500 workers will join the strike at Premier Foods Blue Ribbon Bakeries, the Food and Allied Workers’ Union (Fawu) said on Wednesday. Fawu general secretary Katishi Masemola said the strike will be stepped up next Wednesday, following an unsuccessful meeting with Premier Foods in Cape Town on Tuesday.
Democrat Barack Obama raked in -million for his United States presidential bid in the first three months of 2007, placing him on a par with front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and dashing her image as the party’s inevitable nominee. The donations came from an impressive 100 000 donors, the campaign said on Wednesday.