Two Eastern Cape government ministers, sacked from office this week, have left unanswered questions about alleged abuse of state resources and financial mismanagement amounting to millions of rands in one of the country’s poorest provinces. Premier Nosimo Balindlela fired health minister Bevan Gogqwana and tourism and economic affairs minister, André de Wet, with immediate effect on Monday.
The Jacob Zuma trial, which has topped the national agenda since March 6, is set for its denouement. A lot is at stake: the next president, the battle against HIV and Aids, the role of women in society … With not only matters of state but also of life and death at stake, it’s no wonder then that the former deputy president’s supporters have since the beginning of the trial sought the intercession of the ancestors and God to help their man.
So Cape Town city manager Wallace Mqoqi has been fired. Though the Mother City’s new mayor, Helen Zille, may disguise her rationale in the techno-speak of contract law, she wants her own manager in place. And preferably one who talks DA. Zille fired Mqoqi because he toyi-toyi’d with the then ruling African National Congress ahead of the election.
Caroline* from Harare comes to Jo’burg twice a month to shop. She does not like the place, but needs to come here to support her family. "I buy things here, so I can sell them in Zimbabwe," says Caroline, who buys mostly industrial goods, such as rubber, for making couches. There are thousands of so-called cross-border shoppers like Caroline who come to Jo’burg every year.
A fetus lies scrunched inside a jar near the dissected corpse of a woman and an array of human organs. All are from China and all feature in an exhibition that is causing a stir in London. The organisers of <i>Bodies … The Exhibition</i> say the use of real specimens provides a unique opportunity for people to learn more about the human anatomy.
A place of passage: that is what the newly opened Origins Centre at Wits University could well be called. It’s a place where urbanites go to understand how our ancestors empowered themselves — not through work but through religious trance. But this site, has been a place of passage for some decades.
Like other government institutions that were neglected during years of civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the justice system is in dire need of reform. Since 2002, the country’s judicial officials have produced reports on ways to reform the justice system. However, these reforms have not been implemented because the government has been focused on efforts to move beyond the turmoil of civil conflict.
What I can say with assurance is that the journey has defined my life choices. I’ve lived a life eager and expecting to encounter God. I’ve been willing to go anywhere, do anything and open ever more deeply to that experience, and to assist others to do the same, writes Mary Ovenstone.
Basking in its two-year-old rapprochement with the West, Libya boasts that this year its commemorations of Washington’s deadly 1986 air strikes on its main cities will be joined by Western stars. Veteran United States soul singer Lionel Ritchie and Spanish tenor Jose Carreras are among the acts that Libya says will be performing in the capital.
African traditional religion does not discriminate against women. But you’d never know this because current study perpetuates the biases implicit in Judaeo-Christian analysis, and many scholars — including African feminist scholars — do not study ATR from direct experience. Their starting point is always the arrival of missionaries in South Africa.