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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) expressed support on Monday for a countrywide strike by more than 200 000 municipal workers to take place on Tuesday. The two unions representing municipal workers were right to reject their employer’s wage offer, Cosatu said in a statement.
South Africa backs Iran’s stance on the right of a country to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Monday in Pretoria on the first day of the second session of the South Africa-Iran Deputy Ministerial Working Group’s meeting.
A United Nations envoy who investigated Zimbabwe’s razing of townships will report to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in about two weeks, a spokesperson said on Monday. On Monday, police moved into Harare’s plush suburbs where they ordered the demolition of staff quarters, garages and other outbuildings built without approval.