South Africa on Friday marked the 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, one of the bloodiest chapters of apartheid, amid renewed debate over whether whites should own up to the atrocities of the former regime. Hundreds of black youths died at the hands of police in Soweto during protests against the enforced use of Afrikaans in schools that began on June 16 1976.
Of all the forms of doping in sports, perhaps none is more vampirish than athletes siphoning, storing and transfusing their own blood. A pint here, a pint there. Packed with red blood cells that carry oxygen to tired muscles, a back-alley transfusion can add a spring to the step of a World Cup soccer player or help a Tour de France cyclist ascend steep mountain passes.
When he was 11, Ben Bernanke, the spelling champ from South Carolina, was within a whisker of appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show. Back in 1965, this was a big deal; the Beatles had made their first barnstorming appearance in America on the show the previous year. But Bernanke couldn’t remember how many ”i”s there were in edelweiss and missed the televised national final by one mark.
For months, the rumour mill that churns on in the wake of the collapse of the Kebble empire has been spitting out two names: Charles Cornwall and Paul Main.
”Go to Plettenberg Bay and visit the polo estates,” said the tipsters, ”you’ll find answers there.” But until this week Cornwall and Main — members of Plett’s jet set and aficionados of the rich man’s sport — had managed to stay off the front pages.
Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, said on Thursday he would give up the daily running of Microsoft by July 2008 to concentrate on his foundation’s work tackling health and education problems. The Microsoft co-founder wanted a two-year transition "to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities", Microsoft said in a statement.
The current world economic volatility should be no cause for concern for emerging markets investors. That is according to Rejane Woodroffe, an economist at Metropolitan Asset Managers. Woodroffe spoke to the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> as markets endured their second rough week.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to a selection of African countries next week highlights the growing importance of resource-rich Africa to the world’s most voracious consumer of any commodity that can fuel industrialisation. His June 17 to 24 visit will take in Egypt, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.
So today we will again sing and dance and listen to speeches extolling the virtues of a generation, a township and an uprising. The young people in Bafana Bafana should not have been here; instead they should have been at the soccer World Cup in Germany. But that is beside the point.
Lord Browne, BP’s chief executive, held out the prospect of a big drop in crude oil prices to a barrel as he dismissed views that petroleum was running out very fast. His optimism came despite a 1c rise in the price of Brent crude for July delivery to ,49 a barrel in morning trading in London, as traders continued to fret about tensions in the Middle East.
Africa’s representation in the 2010 World Cup, to be staged in South Africa, looks endangered, with world governing body Fifa likely to reduce the number of the continent’s qualifying participants from five to four. Two years ago, Fifa’s executive committee concluded that future demands for more representation would be based on results, with the rule being “the worse the results, the fewer the participants”.