In the idyllic setting of the Beijing countryside a short drive north of the Great Wall, a secret slaughter is taking place. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of cows have been killed in Dabailou village since the start of the month in a frantic attempt to stem one of China’s worst foot and mouth disease scares.
The businessman at the centre of the Nelson Mandela art furore said this week that he hoped the matter can be settled out of court. Mandela, in court papers, has accused his ex-lawyer Ismail Ayob and Ayob’s business associate Ross Calder of stabbing him in the back.
The African National Congress’s new discussion document is just that: a statement of ideas as a basis for contestation. As such, it provides a welcome opening for discussion of development strategies across the democratic movement. Unfortunately, the business press in particular has rushed to welcome selected proposals as a done deal.
A group of 14 centrist senators from the Republican and Democratic parties on Monday night struck an 11th-hour deal aimed at averting a political crisis over United States President George Bush’s judicial nominations. Under the deal, some of the judges selected by the White House for high federal positions will go before the full Senate for a straight vote.
The Office of the Rights of the Child in the Presidency is three years late in submitting a progress report on children’s rights to the United Nations — tainting South Africa’s image as a human rights champion. Child rights activists have slammed the office for failing to submit the report, which was due in 2002 as part of South Africa’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
It was a simple question to a senior Cabinet member and head of the South African observer mission to the Zimbabwean election: "Why are you ignoring the custom of addressing whether elections were free and fair by only pronouncing on the freeness and being silent on the fairness of the election?"
South Africa will commemorate World Press Freedom Day by focusing on community media, explains Professor Tawana Kupe, because it can be the strongest voice speaking truth to power.
Transubstantiation has always been a difficult concept to come to grips with. Even many of Jesus’s first listeners left in disbelief upon hearing the words: ”He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”
Deputy Minister of Finance Jabu Moleketi played a central role in drafting discussion documents that argue that the ANC should consider an economic strategy premised on changes to laws that push up the cost of employment even as they protect worker rights. He spoke to the Mail & Guardian about the job-creating potential of two-tier labour markets.
Helping organisations with a broad base of shareholders or beneficiaries buy into a company, with a dollop of employee-share ownership has been very much in favour. It has seemed to be the best riposte to the idea that black economic empowerment is a plot to create a buffer class of rich, black capitalists between white capital and the poor.