A significant proportion of the planned R180-billion in South African government and parastatal spending on infrastructure projects over the next five years is destined to go overseas due to the lack of workers qualified to implement these projects, according to Frater Asset Management analyst Matthew Kreeve.
President Thabo Mbeki’s office was unmoved on Wednesday by assertions that he is to abandon what has been labelled as his approach of quiet diplomacy toward Zimbabwe. ”We have never classified our diplomacy as quiet or loud or whatever,” presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo said in Pretoria.
South Africa and Guatemala played to a 1-1 tie in one of the final first-round games of Gold Cup play at Reliant Stadium on Wednesday night. Mexico played Jamaica in the late match. South Africa, playing its second straight tie after a 3-3 stalemate against Jamaica on Sunday, finished first-round play with a 1-0-2 record. Guatemala ended the first round with an 0-2-1 record.
British police have identified the man thought to be the mastermind behind last week’s bombings in London in which at least 52 people died, a report said on Thursday. Security sources believe the mastermind was involved in previous terror operations and has links with followers of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda group.
At least 32 children were killed and up to 31 wounded on Wednesday when a car packed with explosives targeted a convoy of United States soldiers on a community relations mission in a Shia area of east Baghdad. The explosion left one US soldier dead and three injured as nearby buildings were enveloped by a fireball.
Elisabeth Anderson is passionate about books and reading, which is perhaps no more than one would expect from the head of Cape Town’s Centre for the Book. But she also burns with an almost missionary zeal to infuse this passion into others. And if there is for this champion of the written word a force of darkness that has to be beaten back, it is South Africa’s massive illiteracy rate.
Hollywood actor Wesley Snipes is an ”undesirable person” and his fake South African passport has been confiscated, the Department of Home Affairs said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Nkosana Sibuyi said Snipes slipped into the country undetected on May 23 through the Johannesburg International airport.
About 161 people were injured when two Metrorail trains collided in Soweto on Wednesday evening, Johannesburg Emergency Services spokesperson Malcolm Midgley said. A train ploughed into a stationary train at Merafe station in Naledi following a power failure.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, on Wednesday ordered ”a relentless attack” on the leadership of Islamic Jihad following Tuesday’s suicide bombing in the Israeli seaside town of Netanya, which killed two women and two teenage girls.
Bernard Ebbers, the former chief executive of WorldCom, was sentenced on Wednesday to 25 years in prison for his role in the -billion fraud that drove the once high-flying American company into the largest bankruptcy in corporate history.