A variety of ailments can affect people with albinism, an inherited genetic condition characterised by the absence of melanin in skin, eyes and hair. But the challenges confronting albinos do not end there: all too often, they are also shunned and discriminated against, in Southern Africa and elsewhere.
Fed up with England’s weather and traffic, the new CEO for Virgin Mobile in South Africa, Sajeed Sacranie, decided three years ago to return to the continent of his birth. Not to Malawi where he was born, but to Johannesburg. Sacranie says help is on the way for consumers who are fed up with South Africa’s existing cellphone operators.
The Nigerian government’s handover of the hotly contested Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon two weeks ago concludes a quarrelsome chapter in the region’s history. The handover, brokered by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, followed a World Court ruling in favour of the territory being returned to Cameroon.
Measured by the South African Advertising Research Foundation’s readership figures, <i>Getaway</i> magazine is the biggest title in the outdoor travel niche with a 480 000 All Media Product Services reading. But, measured by circulation, <i>Weg</i> — Naspers’s Afrikaans imitator — has just under 100 000 sales, beating <i>Getaway</i> by more than 15 000.
Leaders in Lesotho have embarked on a revolutionary strategy to reduce the spread and the impact of the HIV/Aids epidemic: test everyone for the virus. It is hoped this will counter the widespread human tendency to consider HIV to be someone else’s problem — confirmed by a South African survey released last year.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rails against ”the privileged” in a staccato voice that softens as he turns to the virtues of ”the poor” and a cheeky grin accompanies the thumbs up to go with his latest slogan: ”Smile, we are going to win.” Depending on who you talk to, the presidential candidate is the great hope of the downtrodden, a messianic danger to stability, or a crafty pragmatist.
Many great armies have rolled through Maiwand. Over the centuries Persians, Moghuls and Russians have traversed the ramshackle hamlet on the sun-baked plains of western Kandahar. But nobody has forgotten the British. ”Even a child knows the history,” snorted 85-year-old Muhammad Amman, recalling a battle 126 years ago.
A simple house and its inhabitants in Butovo, on the southern outskirts of Moscow, have become a cause célèbre throughout Russia. The Prokofyev family who live in it are the talisman of local residents struggling to protect their homes from demolition by the city’s government.
Iraqi assassins are being asked to take aim at hundreds of intellectuals whose names appear on a hit list circulating in the country by an unknown group, according to media reports. The list’s existence suggests that the ongoing assassination of Iraqi academics is more organised and systematic than previously thought.
Many of the the slew of alleged atrocities committed by the United States military in Iraq have produced their own investigation and, inevitably, their own version of shock and bore among the American public. Amazement that US soldiers could be involved in such despicable actions is soon followed by a lack of interest in the consequences.