"We were about 150m into the tunnel when a bomb went off in our carriage. I definitely knew a bomb had gone off. There was a lot of soot and dust in the tunnel," says South African Jason Rennie, who was on the London Tube when a bomb exploded in his carriage, one of the four bombs that killed about 50 people in last Thursday’s terror attacks.
For thousands of years, girls in the area that is now the tiny African country of Djibouti have been subjected to pharaonic circumcision. Djibouti’s health ministry estimates that 98% of all Djiboutian women are circumcised — the highest rate of any country in the world. Now activists are starting to refuse to follow this age-old tradition.
Over the past decade there have been 1 127 publicly announced black economic empowerment deals worth R232,6-billion, according to Ernst & Young. At the end of May, the JSE Securities Exchange had a market capitalisation of R2 800-billion. The black equity in the above companies is 0,36% of the market total. It can safely be assumed that the total is less than 1% of the JSE’s market capitalisation.
What began as the "insane adventure" of "a boy from the Cape who loves rugby and boerewors" has transformed into a plea for Africa and its people. And as Blair and Bush and Bono debate the salvation of the continent from war, famine, debt and disease, Riaan Manser (30) has some advice for them: "Africa needs tough love."
There are many elements to success in business. But some, like hard work, attention to clients’ needs and sheer drive, are universally applicable. Ciko Thomas, one of four directors of the first 100% black-owned BMW dealership, attributes the success of their 18-month-old business to these and an extra ingredient — naïvety.
To the Tibetans and their supporters across the globe, Tibet remains the world’s largest colony under Chinese occupation. Conversely, Beijing sees Tibet as an inalienable ”part of China”. Today the question is no longer one of mere politics: for the People’s Republic of China, the focus centres on maintaining and increasing Chinese economic dominance in Tibet.
Should anyone really have been surprised to read newspaper headlines a few weeks ago bewailing the fact that South Africa’s gold production had fallen to levels not seen since 1931? Well, not really. Gold’s decline has been in place since the early 1970s when it peaked at fractionally more than 1 000 tonnes. It has fallen by almost 70% in the past 30-odd years.
An estimated 2 500 jobs are on the verge of disappearing from an impoverished part of Mpumalanga as private sawmills prepare to shut down in the face of an abrupt decision by state-owned Komatiland Forests to stop supplying them with timber. Eleven small to medium-sized mills have seen the delivery of logs from KLF’s sprawling plantations dry up completely.
Africa will dominate the United Nations Security Council agenda in July. The 15-nation body, under the presidency of Greek ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis, will discuss the Ethiopia and Eritrea boundary deadlock. Later in the month it will hear oral evidence on the Democratic Republic of Congo and address the relocation woes of the Somali government.
It gave birth to the nuclear bomb, was home to Yeats and Dickens and withstood the Blitz. But from now on a London street that begins at the Strand and ends in Hampstead, will evoke the image of a mangled number 30 bus. John Lanchester says the bombers will not hijack the memories of his favourite street.