South Africa has already signed a provisional memorandum of understanding with Zimbabwe for a R6,5-billion credit facility, Business Day reported on Friday. It said officials from the South African Reserve Bank and their Zimbabwean counterparts had agreed on a draft deal last week.
Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, which has produced a long line of geniuses from Sean O’Casey to Brian Friel, does not put on an annual Christmas pantomine. But if it did produce a raucous show of punch-ups, mishaps and double entendre, nothing could match the excruciating farce that continues to unfold backstage.
Three pensioners were in intensive care in a Grenoble hospital on Thursday after ordering a glass each of a popular local liqueur, génépi, and being mistakenly served caustic soda. The three, a man of 69, his wife, 68, and her 94-year-old mother, were still in a critical condition after drinking the highly corrosive and toxic cleaning fluid.
Not even a thousand years at the crossroads of an international trade route has given Lamu, off Kenya’s north-east coast, much sense of urgency. But it has left a rich blend of East African Swahili, Indian, Omani, Yemeni and some Portuguese influences. Lamu Town has been recognised by Unesco as the oldest and best-preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa.
The Sudanese government was forced to apologise to the United States secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, on Thursday after a series of scuffles between her entourage and Sudanese security. Officials and reporters travelling with Rice to Khartoum were initially prevented from entering the compound of the president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
The Iraqi government’s forces are nowhere near battle ready and only a small number are capable of fighting the insurgency on their own, according to a newly declassified Pentagon document. The assessment paints a stark picture of Iraqi military readiness that contrasts with the Pentagon’s upbeat official tone.
Police arrested 250 anti-disengagement protesters as a mass demonstration in Kefar Maymon came to an end on Thursday having failed to reach the Gaza Strip settlements. The protesters were arrested after slipping away from the main demonstration and trying to get past army lines into the settlements.
All South African Airways (SAA) flights leaving from Johannesburg and Cape Town International airports were grounded on Friday morning as the airline’s employees embarked on a nationwide strike, the United Association of South Africa (Uasa) said.
A tit-for-tat war of words is under way after race-based comments by the Cape Town mayor’s media adviser were exposed and criticised as ”harmful and undesirable speech” by the South African Human Rights Commission. In an editorial, Blackman Ngoro said that Africans are ”culturally superior” to coloureds, who, unless they underwent an ”ideological transformation”, would ”die a drunken death”.
Parliament secretary ZK Dingani wants sweeping changes to create a more efficient administrative base for the institution, and he is adamant that staff who are nervous about racial transformation and possible redeployment must get on the bus, or be left behind. Dingani says restructuring is crucial to address ”mindsets” that are not aligned with ”where this country is going”.