Professor Mosa al-Mosawe has lost 34 of his staff since 2003. And when he says “lost”, he doesn’t mean that they have resigned or retired, or simply moved on to pastures new. He means that they have been shot or kidnapped, never to be seen again. “Around 50 students have also gone missing,” he says, speaking on a cellphone from his office in Baghdad University.
My friend Sibi and I took a walk in the night through Kigali, 10 years after the end of the genocide and the Rwandan civil war. There was much to talk about. We hadn’t seen each other for more than 20 years, and here we were, meeting in a place that had gone through a holocaust since we’d last met.
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The developer of Stellenbosch’s upmarket De Zalze golf estate appeared briefly in Cape Town’s Bellville Regional Court on Monday in connection with fraud and theft charges involving bearer bonds worth over R11-million. Klaus Strauli, a Swiss national, had been formally arrested by the Scorpions at Cape Town International airport.
Residents of Lydenburg in Mpumalanga are to march this week against changing the name of their town, contending that correct procedures had not been followed. ”Proper procedures were not followed. We have all the proof of all the minutes of the name-change committee and the attendance registers,” said Democratic Alliance councillor Isabel Dickson.
The Department of Labour is providing R60-million to train urgently needed artisans, the Chemical Industries, Education and Training Authority (Chieta) said on Monday. ”We’ve just got the letter from the Department of Labour stating that we’ve got the money for this training,” said Chieta CEO Dr Raymond Patel.
Hundreds of Western Cape Grade 10 pupils — guinea pigs for the new curriculum — failed their June exams, the Cape Argus reported on Monday. Its website said some schools reported a failure rate of up to 60%. This year’s Grade 10 was the first to tackle the revised curriculum, referred to as the Further Education and Training Band, and will be followed by grades 11 and 12.
Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin praised Eskom on Monday for returning the Koeberg nuclear power plant back into service on time. He also thanked the people of the Western Cape for participating in an energy-saving campaign, ministerial spokesperson Gaynor Kast said in a statement.
President George Bush will meet with a leader of the Sudan Liberation Army, the main rebel group in the African nation’s troubled western region of Darfur, the White House announced on Monday. The focus of the discussion on Tuesday between Bush and Minni Minnawi ”will be on how to broaden support for the Darfur Peace Agreement”, the announcement said.
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The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in the Eastern Cape may strike if there are repeated delays in former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s fraud and corruption trial, Cosatu’s provincial secretary said on Monday. ”If there are perpetual postponements in the case, then we will have no option [other] than to take a stance,” said Xola Pakati.