We in the media hold ourselves up as guardians of the greater good and as supplicants to the Constitution. A preliminary study focusing the camera on the state of women in the industry shows how far we still have to go. The survey’s portrayal is not flattering. One male editor assessed a woman trainee by asking whether she was "man enough" for the job, write Ferial Haffajee.
In a move to slash bandwidth prices, the government has instructed the communications regulator to nationalise the landing station for the undersea SAT-3 submarine cable and to declare it an essential facility. At present, as SAT-3’s largest investor, Telkom has monopoly rights on access to and pricing of international bandwidth on the undersea cable.
At an age when most people are enjoying a quiet retirement, Reshoketswe Mabulelong has started not just a new career but one which finds her wading across muddy building sites in a hard hat, shouting orders at men. "No, no, you can’t ask my age, just say I am a senior citizen," says Mabulelong sternly.
It has been described at once as "historic," "symbolic" and an incident to be handled with caution. But what should really be made of the meeting of opposition leaders that saw rivals Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara hugging and pledging to work together?
A scrum to get through passport control and luggage collection, no parking available for anyone who has come to meet you and little chance of making it to the domestic terminal in time for a connecting flight. That’s the typical Johannesburg International airport experience. Fortunately, OR Tambo International airport will be much better.
The bright yellow Honda dirt bike roars down the vacant Baghdad parking lot before popping a wheelie and continuing another dozen metres on its back wheel alone. The rider then spins the bike to a halt in a swirl of pungent exhaust fumes, burnt rubber tyre tracks and a burst of applause from young men and boys who have gathered to watch Iraq’s impromptu motorcycle club.
In a culture where one-night stands, reality porn and Playboy logos on kids’ stationery have all become shrug worthily normal, it takes quite a leap of imagination to be sexually subversive. Take up pole dancing? No, that’s so commonplace that women organise group lessons for hen parties. Threesomes? No longer noteworthy. Faux-lesbianism? Yawn
Arnie drives a Hummer. And not just one. At one time the governor had a fleet of eight of the brutes to ferry him from photo op to photo op. He also has a private jet, which can be seen whooshing over the beach at Santa Monica as it takes him from his Los Angeles home to his office in Sacramento, 650km to the north.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the public face of fiscal rectitude and good governance in Nigeria has been axed as chair of the Nigeria Economic Intelligence Team, while on a trip to the United Kingdom to get further debt relief. Nigeria’s president Olusegun Obasanjo has appointed Minister of Finance Esther Nedadi Usman in her place.
The familiar bearded face gazes out from a billboard over a sunlit old Havana beside the reassuring slogan Vamos bien. Close by, another poster wishes the world’s longest-serving leader a happy birthday and calls for ”another 80” years.
Now, however, for the first time since he led his rebel army into Havana in 1959, the man who epitomises Cuba has stepped down, albeit temporarily.