The death of Aids-infected Nozipho Bhengu was unnecessary and premature, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said on Wednesday. ”It is highly likely that she would still be alive and well today if she had chosen to take anti-retroviral treatment when she developed Aids,” the TAC said in a statement.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has described his Nigerian counterpart Olusegun Obasanjo’s acceptance of the scrapping of a plan to extend his tenure as an outstanding act of statesmanship, an official statement said on Tuesday. Obasanjo (69) must step down in May 2007 after serving two four-year terms.
China’s ambassador portrayed his country on Tuesday as a benign force in Africa that dispatches doctors and teachers to the continent, opens trade opportunities and steers clear of political interference. Zhao Wenzhong said China-Africa trade leaped from -billion in 2000 to -billion last year.
The United Nations holds the key to solving an economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe, President Thabo Mbeki told a British newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday. South Africa’s leader threw his weight behind a planned visit to Zimbabwe by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Tow-truck companies are bribing police officers to ensure they are first at accident scenes, according to a report commissioned by Ekurhuleni’s police chief, Robert McBride. The report discovered, among other things, that some companies offer police free cellphones as an incentive to tip them off.
United States President George Bush urged Israel on Tuesday to resume direct talks with the Palestinian president and put on hold plans to withdraw unilaterally from the West Bank. In his first official visit to Washington, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received little support for immediate movement on his plan to redraw Israel’s borders.
The government has done what it can for a group of protesting former miners from the Eastern Cape, and urged them to go back home. ”We are not resisting to pay the claims; we are willing to, especially when it comes to the elderly,” Boas Seruwe, acting Unemployment Insurance Fund commissioner, said on Tuesday.
Aids activists have questioned the government’s boasts that it has the largest anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment programme in the world. Recently, Cabinet spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe said 134 473 people were on ARV treatment in the public health sector at the end of March, and an estimated additional 80 000 were on treatment provided by the private and NGO sectors.
From technology, to transformation to tabloids, there is no doubting that South Africa’s dailies have evolved in the past ten years. Carol Campbell looks at how the industry has changed and what lies ahead.
For a gay man with little knowledge of — or if truth be told, interest in — the vagina, the recent international conference on microbicides in Cape Town represented a personal turning point. To be honest, my knowledge of the "rectal compartment" — as the arse is euphemistically referred to in scientific circles — was hardly any better.