I inhabit the cultural environment polluted by Stephen Watson’s attack on Antjie Krog, and by the commentary that it has received in the press, including in the Mail & Guardian. I have cordial collegial relations with Watson; Krog has, in recent years, become a friend. I am disturbed at the damage this unsavoury business has […]
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Desperate Housewives‘s Felicity Huffman is a joy to behold in her role as a male-to-female transexual in Transamerica and surely deserved the Oscar that went to Reese Witherspoon, writes Shaun de Waal.
The recent election has shown politicians who desert their parties during the floor-crossing window periods invariably lose out, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday. Writing in his weekly newsletter on the DA’s website, Leon said the biggest losers of the recent municipal election were the floor-crossers.
The Zimbabwe government plans to push legislation through Parliament to permit it to monitor telephones and e-mail messages, local reports said on Friday. The Interception of Communications Bill is due to be debated by parliament soon, said the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper. Parliament is dominated by President Robert Mugabe’s party.
Italian coast guards intercepted about 250 would-be illegal immigrants off the coast of southern Italy on Thursday night, port officials said on Friday. A small motorised trawler was stopped about 20km off the island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, overnight, a Palerma port official told Agence France-Presse. It was carrying about 210 people.
Two runners training for the Comrades Marathon were killed and another airlifted to hospital in a critical condition after being run down by a car in Edenvale early on Friday morning. The two runners who were killed on impact were Richard Albrecht (36) and Joe Mendoza (39).
Her next stop could be the Union Buildings, incoming Tshwane Metropolitan City Mayor Gwen Ramokgopa said on Friday. Speaking to the National Press Club in Pretoria only hours before she was due to be elected new mayor of the capital city, Ramokgopa joked that she was ”very close to the Union Buildings”.
Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has formally asked Nigeria to hand over her exiled predecessor Charles Taylor, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Friday. Taylor, who has been accused of committing war crimes by international prosecutors in Sierra Leone, was given political asylum by Obasanjo in August 2003.
Johannesburg can look forward to accelerated business and leisure tourism in 2006 and beyond, according to Eddy Khosa, CEO of The Johannesburg Tourism Company (JTC), which is spearheading the drive for growth in both international and domestic tourism to the city.
Delegates began arriving in Harare on Friday for a weekend conference at which opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai appeared certain to retain his post as leader of his faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). At least 10 000 delegates are expected to attend the conference that will see elections for all major party positions, said MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa.