South Africa’s telecommunication industry is so poorly structured that an industry worth several billion has sprung up in its shadows, offering cut-price calls. The LCR or least-cost routing industry is saving businesses up to 40%, through implementing savings on the cellphone portion of their Telkom bill.
Long-awaited legislation to allow schools cheaper access to the Internet has been approved — more than four years after the Department of Education and the Department of Communications introduced the idea in a policy document. A bungle involving the departments and telephony parastatal Telkom has delayed the introduction of an e-rate, a discounted rate for Internet services.
Felix Moncada Suarez and his family had prepared themselves to board the flight from Roissy airport near Paris for the Ecuador capital Quito on the evening of May 19. It was not a flight they wanted to take. At the very last minute, the ministry of the interior reversed its ruling to expel the family from France.
Most people have never heard of Nagmeldin Abdallah. It is impossible to reach him in the eastern Sudanese prison where he waits for word on an appeal that may save his life. But Abdallah has achieved minor notoriety in activist circles. Sudan’s complex death penalty statutes may never have gained international attention were it not for Abdallah.
Jacob Zuma emerges from the Johannesburg High Court after being roundly cleared of rape, and makes just two points to the crowd of admirers: he thanks them, and he hits at the media. Echoing comments by Judge Willem van der Merwe, he accuses the media of having found him guilty before all the evidence was in.
I may as well state the facts up front. This article is not about the Jacob Zuma rape trial. It is best to be clear about this to avoid the passionate disquisitions and name-calling of ”bjective”intellectuals and ”biased” partisans alike. I find it strange that in all the buzz about South Africa’s transformation — particularly the transformation of the judiciary — one subject has not been broached.
As soon as Sayc Pler Paw saw her brother’s body, she knew that everyone in her village would have to abandon their homes and flee to the relative safety of the surrounding jungle-covered hills. ”I found him in the family’s vegetable plot,” she said. ”He had been shot in the bottom, the navel, badly beaten in the back of the neck and forehead and then shot in the face.”
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Former champions Gaston Gaudio and Juan Carlos Ferrero, two of a host of men praying that Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal lose their way at Roland Garros, reached the second round at the French Open on Monday. Argentinian 10th seed Gaudio, the 2004 champion, breezed past Croatian qualifier Roko Karanusic 6-2, 6-2, 6-2.
The notorious information scandal of the 1970s was never sufficiently probed, according to a report into corruption under the apartheid government released on Monday. The information scandal, which rocked the Nationalist government between 1977 and 1979, was the result of secret funding by then prime minister BJ Vorster to ”wage propaganda wars at home and abroad”.