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.
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.
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.
A new ANC faction has emerged in North West which plans to oust leaders of the dominant grouping from ANC party structures and government positions in the province. Nicknamed the “Potch mafia”, the grouping is allegedly led by Ndleleni Duma, provincial deputy secretary of the ANC and sports, arts and culture provincial minister.
Two very different South Africans have grabbed the headlines in Britain this week. One is at the peak of his career, enjoying his first goal in England and is responsible for unfashionable Blackburn Rovers becoming the first side into the last four of the FA Cup. The second admits to old legs and ”feeling like a grandad”.
Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool faces a crisis after his own party, the ANC, supported a Democratic Alliance call for an investigation into whether he lied to the Western Cape legislature. ANC national spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama told the Mail & Guardian that President Thabo Mbeki was as surprised as Rasool by the ANC’s support of the motion.