Why is it that the public gets so silly and hysterical when the issue of language in education is raised? Suddenly there’s an unholy tizz played out in the media, shrieks of incoherent distress that you’d expect only when the cockroaches finally take over the world.
This week South Africa was caught in the maelstrom of its gravest post-apartheid political crisis. It is a defining moment — what we do now will determine what kind of country future generations of South Africans inhabit. As it grappled with what to do about Deputy President Jacob Zuma, the African National Congress was more publicly split than on any other issue it has faced in government.
A total of 25 183 businesses came into being during the financial year ended February 28 2005, says Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel. The minister said that during the same period — March 1 2004 to February 28 this year — 3 449 businesses were liquidated.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown was on Wednesday finalising the details of a new deal to wipe out the multilateral debts of Africa’s poorest countries after British Prime Minister Tony Blair won agreement in principle from United States President George W Bush on Tuesday in Washington.
By the slow-moving Tapajos River, monkeys murmur in the forest and Munduruku Indians with bows and arrows tiptoe along the riverbank, hunting turtles. Two boys fish for the family lunch, not even bothering with bait. To attract the piranha, they simply bang on the side of their boat.
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Three weeks after Zimbabwe launched an unpopular urban clean-up drive that has drawn widespread criticism and made thousands homeless and destitute in the height of winter, authorities on Wednesday widened the crackdown to previously white-owned farms now in the hands of blacks.
United States President George Bush is meeting with the leaders of several African nations later this month to celebrate elections held last year in each and hold them up as models of democratic progress on the troubled continent. The presidents of Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique, Namibia and Niger are meeting Bush.
Describing corruption as a ”pervasive and insidious evil”, Durban High Court Judge Hillary Squires sentenced businessman Schabir Shaik to an effective 15-year jail term for fraud and corruption on Wednesday.
Claims by the Congress of South African Trade Unions that the strike by Metrorail workers is predominantly white were rejected by the Federation of Unions of South Africa on Wednesday. Meanwhile, negotiations between unions and Metrorail management were under way in Johannesburg.