<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=soccer_world_cup_2006"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/272488/icon_focuson_wc3.gif" align=left border=0></a>Furry, orange stick-on sideburns, a hat shaped like a piece of Gouda cheese, clogs … Dutch soccer fans huddled together in Lapamanzi Pub Africa in Johannesburg on Sunday as their national team took on Serbia and Montenegro for their first game in the 2006 World Cup.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) was asked on Monday to investigate the disappearance from South Africa of Pakistani national Khalid Mahmood Rashid. Rashid’s lawyer, Zehir Omar, has spoken with and subsequently sent a fax to the ICC office of prosecutors in The Hague asking it to investigate the ”enforced disappearance” of Rashid.
At least three people were killed and about 75 more injured on Monday when a train collided with a truck stuck on the line at a rail junction near the Israeli coastal city of Netanya. Four carriages, including the driver’s cabin, were forced off the rails by the impact of the collision.
A large number of striking security guards gathered at Beyers Naude Square in central Johannesburg on Monday to hear how wage talks with their employers were progressing. South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) members said employers have offered them an improved 9,25% wage increase.
Composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution and gained fame for his opera <i>Le Grand Macabre</i> and his work on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>, died on Monday. He was 83. Ligeti was celebrated as one of the world’s leading 20th-century musical pioneers.
Black farmers on Monday called for unity among all farmers to address challenges facing the sector. ”Without this unity we shall continue to fight about land from a political stance instead of solving the problem from a social and economic sustainability perspective,” the president of the National African Farmers’ Union of South Africa said.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has dismissed several government officials in a bid to fight corruption, press reports said on Monday. In her inaugural speech last January, Johnson-Sirleaf had pledged to ”make corruption the number-one enemy” of her government.
The European Union gave the green light on Monday to deploy a 2 000-strong force to help secure the first multiparty elections in four decades in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) later this month. About 25-million Congolese voters will go to the polls on July 30.
The presidents of Sudan and Eritrea met on Monday for the first time in five years, setting the stage for landmark peace talks aimed at ending the simmering civil conflict in eastern Sudan. Eritrean President Assaias Afeworki and his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Beshir were expected to hold extensive talks in Khartoum.
An African woman recently asked me why I didn’t just call a local, supposedly black company, with feminist credentials to boot, to do what the traditional removal companies — Stuttafords, stuff like that — would charge me a fortune to do when I had to move house. So I did.