Years ago, the comedian Alexei Sayle used to entertain his audience with wondrous tales about holidays in Albania. Then it seemed an almost exotically remote place, isolated from the world by the communist government of Enver Hoxha, living in a parallel universe far removed from the West. Albania remains one of Europe’s most exotic and remote places. Get there before Club Med.
When you are stuck knee-deep in a crocodile-infested bog — your way lit only by the twinkling of the Milky Way and the black night filled with a cacophony of croaking, singing, snoring and bonking toads — it is easy to be swamped by three paradoxical impulses: lust, loathing and learning. <i>Escape</i> explores the murky world of toads on a trip to northern KwaZulu-Natal.
At 9am on a Monday morning, the used clothing vendors at Chiquelene Market in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, are still unpacking their wares. The sale of clothing donated to charities in Europe and North America has supported Angelina Arnaldo and her seven children for 17 years. On a good day, she takes home around $10. "It’s easier than selling food because it doesn’t go off," she explained.
"As you may or may not know, the world has been arbitrarily divided up into "zones" in which movies and DVDs are released. Each zone often has its own release dates, and on top of that, each local zone has a unique kind of "coding" done to all DVD players and media. Why? Very simply, it’s so that the entertainment industry can try to control what you see and when you see it." Ian Fraser investigates.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>Leading European Union (EU) officials have warned that the general election in Zimbabwe will be a "sham". They have warned that election proceedings in the southern African country have so far failed to conform to accepted standards and have indicated that the EU will take swift action against Mugabe’s government after the polls.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have had lunch. Indeed, to be in with even a cat-in-hell’s chance of mustering the waspish proportions of Kylie Minogue, pictured on stage recently twirling a heavily corseted waist, one would surely have to forgo eating, drinking and probably all breathing whatsoever. Not to mention a few ribs. If you’ve ever been stuck in a lift, you will have a hint of what it is like to be laced into a corset.
It is time for Nicholas and Jonathan Oppenheimer to establish their places in the pantheon of philanthropists. They should leave the management of De Beers to professionals who owe their positions to their skills, rather than to historic family connections. Unlike diamonds, the shelf-life of the Oppenheimers at the helm of De Beers should not be forever.
An African bishop has announced that he will not accept more than 000 of funding to help Aids victims in his area because it comes from an American diocese that supported the election of a gay bishop two years ago. In a statement released to an American conservative Episcopalian website, Nzerebende announced: ”South Rwenzori diocese upholds the Holy Scriptures as true word of God.”
At first it appears as though the seriously ill Zimbabwean is speaking about someone else’s ordeal at the hands of the notorious Central Intelligence Organisation. Propped up in a hospital bed in South Africa two weeks after her release from Chikurubi Maximum Prison, it becomes apparent that the woman who wants to be known only as ”Itaai” is expressing her own traumatic experience.
The murder of a Free State government official and ANC member should be solved as a matter of urgency, the ANC in the province said on Tuesday. Noby Ngombane, an official in the premier’s office, was shot dead at his home in Bloemfontein last week.