<b>CD OF THE WEEK:</b> A new Red Hot Chili Peppers’ album is certainly an alluring event, especially after a four-year hiatus, writes Riaan Wolmarans.
Shaun de Waal experiences the buzz at the highly successful first Cape Town Book Fair.
Agustin Delgado might have spent more than two years in the Premiership, but few in the current England squad are likely to remember him. Except, perhaps, for Sol Campbell. The Arsenal defender suffered an afternoon to forget during one of just two league matches the Ecuador striker started at St Mary’s.
The British Culture Minister, Tessa Jowell, this week called for the abolition of the pay differences between men and women players at the Wimbledon championship. In a letter sent the week before the competition starts the secretary of state for culture, media and sport expressed ”deep concern” over the gender disparity in prize money at the tournament.
Somalis, weary of failed attempts to restore peace, expressed scepticism on Friday that the deal signed between the government and Islamic courts would end fighting for good in the shattered African nation. Although the hastily clinched deal signed on Thursday fell short of addressing the nitty gritty of power-sharing, it managed to extract a pledge to end clashes.
South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) chief executive Dali Mpofu on Thursday announced an official inquiry into whether certain commentators had been banned from the airwaves. Speaking on SAfm, Mpofu pledged that ”if we find that they have been arbitrarily banned, we will come back to the public [to inform them]”.
Despite public contempt for counterfeit goods, Chinese wholesalers at Dragon City on the western outskirts of Johannesburg advertise an ”Oriental Price Extravaganza” that is nothing like the real thing. Dragon City is the springboard from which huge shipments of cheap Chinese-imported goods make their way to the pavements and fleamarkets of South African cities.
Crucial charities dependent on the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund for money have been hard hit by an extraordinary delay in the allocation of grants applied for last year. The Mail & Guardian spoke to six charities that bemoaned the fund’s silence on their applications.
This week the bloodstained three-month security guards’ strike was finally settled on an effective automatic pay rise of R232, or 19,89% for the lowest paid workers and annual increments for the next three years of 9,25%, 7,25% and 7,25% respectively. Nerine Kahn, director of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, walks the Mail & Guardian down the long road to mediation.
It must be an unsettling experience: the phone rings and some upstart journalist wants comment on that particular piece of dirty washing that you’d hoped nobody knew about. The call proves that far from being well hidden, your little secret is about to be displayed to the world. And you have far too little time to develop some kind of defence.