As hirings and firings go, you couldn’t get a much greater contrast than the two that happened in South African rugby this week. The Griqualand West Rugby Union passed a vote of no confidence in its president, Baby Richards, accusing him of failing to vote in the manner instructed by his union.
Strike action by staff of beauty and pharmacy retailer Clicks who are members of the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union was under way across the country on Friday, although most stores were open, both the union and New Clicks said.
The chairperson of Skandia Insurance, Bernt Magnusson, has decided to resign from the company’s board due to differences of opinion with fellow board members about Old Mutual’s bid for the firm, AFX reported from Stockholm on Friday. The board of the Swedish insurer was split over the R38-billion bid from Old Mutual.
”In one-day cricket, adequate contributions in all disciplines are considered more valuable than high-class specialisations: a utilitarian, faintly Marxist outlook, suited to a game designed for uncritical consumption by the masses. Usually it works well enough,” writes Tom Eaton.
World Cup week, and it’s a question of frontmen: Puff Diddy or Biggie Smalls. Sven-Goran Eriksson takes his bruised and battered England into battle against Austria at Old Trafford on Saturday without the suspended Wayne Rooney. Uncomfortable options remain for the icy Swede before a game England dare not lose.
So, Roy Keane is in his last season as a Manchester United player. Given that he is 35 next birthday, that hardly counts as a surprise and, given that he has his heart set on a career in management, it will be no great surprise either if he turns up on the Old Trafford payroll again at some date in the future.
If ever there was doubt that 2005 marked a watershed in South African football, some newspaper stories doing the rounds ahead of this weekend’s qualifier, served as confirmation of how times have changed. In normal times, the words ”World Cup” would have preceded ”qualifier” when referring to the match against the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Hundreds of Britons and South Africans living in the United Kingdom joined international dignitaries, including Annie Lennox, former UK Cabinet minister Chris Smith and author Gillian Slovo, in central London on Wednesday night to show their support for the Treatment Action Campaign.
The 2005 Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to the United Nations’s International Atomic Energy Agency and its Egyptian director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, for their efforts against nuclear-weapons proliferation, the Nobel committee said.
The Israeli high court on Thursday ruled that the army’s long-standing practice of using Palestinian civilians as human shields in combat is illegal under international law. It said the military’s claim to have amended the procedure to allow civilians to ”volunteer” to work with the army was still unacceptable because it was unlikely anyone would freely do so.