The African National Congress (ANC) will have to ”look after” Jacob Zuma as long as he remains its deputy president, ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said on Sunday. Zuma lost his salary of about R800Â 000 and perks when President Thabo Mbeki sacked him as the country’s deputy president on Tuesday.
Members of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are turning Johannesburg into a bloody battlefield as they jostle for positions in the party’s structures, City Press newspaper reported on Sunday. This has prompted the MDC to send a ”high-powered” delegation to South Africa to try and defuse the situation, the newspaper said.
His loyal fans were there along with his mother and his brother. Even one of the jurors who last week cleared him of child molestation charges had turned up. In fact the only person missing from the celebration of thanks for Michael Jackson’s acquittal was Michael Jackson.
New Zealander Michael Campbell held off a charging Tiger Woods to win the 105th US Open on Sunday. The 36-year-old Kiwi finished level par 70 for the day and level par 280 for the championship to beat Woods by two strokes. It was a stunning showing by Campbell, who began the day four shots back of third-round leader and defending champion Retief Goosen.
Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher emerged with the victory in a United States Grand Prix that fell little short of farce on on Sunday after the withdrawal of 14 Formula One cars running on suspect Michelin tyres left only six cars in the race. All seven of the teams supplied by Michelin formed up on the grid, but were back in the pits at the end of the warm-up lap.
Paul Wolfowitz, the new head of the World Bank and close ally of United States President George Bush, said on Sunday he was returning from a week-long trip to Africa to urge the Bush administration to help fund a big aid push for the continent, saying he regarded it as being on the move and full of real partners with whom the west could work.
South Africa’s richly plural civil society was forged in the struggle for liberation, but over the past five years its impact on policy and legislation has become less effective than it should be. The African National Congress has made the shift from liberation movement to governing party, but civil society has not quite figured out how to move beyond its old, oppositional role, writes Yasmin Sooka of the Black Sash.
The government is set to climb down on black economic empowerment (BEE) funding requirements when it unveils the final draft of the BEE Codes of Good Practice this week. A source privy to the drafting process said that the contentious requirements will be loosened. The Codes of Good Practice were unveiled in December, and have since been through an intensive consultation process.
The wheels have definitely come off this thing. This week I have had to report to a bunch of youth-like characters who have temporarily taken over the editorship of this newspaper – all in the name of Youth Day. I suppose things could have been worse. And I guess you have to remember that we were all youths once, sometime way back in the mists of time.
Burundians had bigger things to think about this week than their peace
broker Jacob Zuma getting the sack. With parliamentary elections less than three weeks away, Burundians are preoccupied with herding the last rebel group still at arms into the peace fold. They are also dealing with the human rights implications of maintaining good relations with their tough Rwandan neighbour.