United States talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey is to open on Friday an innovative, environment-friendly school she has funded with the South African government to create a model state education facility. This comes as authorities at the exclusive private academy for poor girls that Winfrey opened in January dismissed complaints it is too strict.
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=cwc_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/300732/Icon_CWC.gif" align=left border=0></a>That is what hosting the 2003 Cricket World Cup taught us. Forearmed with this charitable knowledge, those insomniacs who watched Sunday night’s jubilation in Montego Bay would have forgiven the West Indian organisers, and elected to believe the reports of those who were actually there who said that it was quite a shindig.
If God wills, even a broomstick will shoot. That is an old Yiddish adage. One could add now: If God wills, even Ehud Olmert can sometimes tell the truth. The truth, according to the Israeli prime minister’s testimony before the Winograd commission of inquiry into the war in Lebanon, which was leaked to the media recently, is that this was not a spontaneous reaction to the capture of the two Israeli soldiers, but a war planned a long time ago.
The similarities between Iraq and Darfur are remarkable. The estimate of the number of civilians killed over the past three years is roughly similar. The killers are mostly paramilitaries, closely linked to the official military, which is said to be their main source of arms. The victims, too, are by and large identified as members of groups, rather than targeted as individuals.
Can it be that black economic empowerment (BEE), coupled with affirmative action, is retarding African entrepreneurship — and ironically spurring white people to take the plunge into running their own businesses? Let’s be clear that entrepreneurship here entails innovation and risk-taking and contributes to economic development rather than being simply the art of spotting a gap, writes Reg Rumney.
The world’s third- and sixth-largest beer producers nudged one another recently, the immediate fallout being that Amstel drinkers may have to switch brands, at least for a couple of months. SABMiller has been brewing Amstel for 40 years, but the brewery announced recently that it has stopped production of the premium beer brand.
I was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1990. I’ve been taking antiretrovirals for nearly eight years. I survived TB meningitis in 2002. I feel healthier now than I did 20 years ago. Maybe that history should make me fear a new, unstoppable killer within the TB and HIV pandemics. But newspaper stories on XDR-TB (extensively drug-resistant TB) do not leave me quaking with fear of this new illness, writes Judy Seidman.
A broadband price war has finally begun in earnest. It is being led by the country’s cellphone operators sticking it to Telkom in a bid to capture more subscribers. The latest to join the fray is mobile operator Vodacom, which announced this week that from April 1 2007 its data rates will be decreased by as much as 61%, making it the cheapest and fastest broadband offering available.
Five broadband internet providers are competing for a share of the South African market, but the benefits of the price war are cold comfort for consumers who still face an uphill battle in deciphering the different broadband options on offer. Even when you find the option that suits you best, you might just be buying a lemon.
The SABC may have reached a turning point in its attitude to gay content on the airwaves. This is the message from commissioning editors, who told the audience at the Out in Africa gay and lesbian film festival how gay and lesbian issues are being increasingly positively portrayed on the broadcaster, and have arrived on widely watched programmes.