Zimbabwe’s tobacco farmers are this year expected to produce just 55-million kilogrammes of tobacco, the lowest output for years, state radio reported on Tuesday. Tobacco production has been in steep decline since President Robert Mugabe’s government launched a controversial programme of seizing white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to new black farmers.
The Independent Democrats has still not made a decision on the Democratic Alliance offer of a share in the government of the city of Cape Town, ID spokesperson Mervyn Cirota said on Tuesday night. He said ID and DA negotiators met on Monday, and on Tuesday reported back to their principals on ”issues”.
When student demonstrators in France wore trash bags to protests, their message was: ”We’re not disposable.” Officially, they are angry about a new government job plan that makes it easier for employers to hire and fire them. But that was just the tipping point.
KwaZulu-Natal arts, culture and tourism provincial minister Narend Singh resigned on Tuesday amid a scandal over a DVD allegedly depicting sex between him and a married Durban socialite. ”Continued negative exposure in the media in recent days has put me under a strain that in my opinion goes beyond the call of duty,” he said.
The dominance of the Apple iPod hit its first European stumbling block on Tuesday when French MPs voted to force companies to allow music downloads to be played on all types of digital players, not just their own. Apple’s online music store, iTunes, dominates the global online music market, selling about three million songs a day for 99 cents each.
For generations, African farmers have relied on local knowledge to manage and conserve water. Whether this knowledge should be recognised and promoted by the government is a matter of some debate in the Southern African region, however. The issue is also in the spotlight on Wednesday, which marks World Water Day.
Warning for landlords: beware of diminutive tenants wearing purple jumpsuits, you never know what they’re going to do to your property. American basketball player Carlos Boozer should really have had his wits about him when he let his ,9-m Hollywood home to a 47-year-old Minneapolis man with no surname.
United States President George Bush on Tuesday raised the vision of an American troop presence in Iraq that would extend for the next three years, an admission that a US withdrawal was unlikely during his term in the White House. He said: ”I’m optimistic we’ll succeed. If not, I’d pull our troops out.”
Millions of people could have to wait years for clean water as some of the world’s largest companies pull out of developing countries because of growing doubts about privatisation projects, a United Nations report reveals on Wednesday.
The events of the past month serve to remind us that the path to economic prosperity is a precarious one, filled with all manner of shocks and disruptions. The events also show, according to Merrill Lynch economist Nazmeera Moolla, how a strong rand contributes to unbalanced growth.