When Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour rolled into this dusty village and bellowed ”How many people want a bed net?”, hundreds of hands shot up into the air. Amid the din of drums and the cries of excitement, Jeffrey Sachs, a special adviser to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan who was also on the scene, said: ”I want Guereo to be the first village in Africa where everyone sleeps under bed nets.”
Personally speaking, being rebranded from half-caste to mixed race came as welcome relief. Yet, try as we might to change our image, we tragic ”mulatresses” remain as doggedly woeful as the salivating madwoman in Mr Rochester’s attic.
Confused, miserable and in perpetual limbo, we are now apparently abundant in the world of celebrity.
Amid a government campaign to persuade the nation’s children and their parents that they must stay fit and slim, a new British study shows that girls as young as five are unhappy with their bodies and want to be thinner. According to a recent study of girls aged between five and eight, nearly half (46,9%) wanted to be thinner. Just 11 of these girls (14%) were actually overweight.
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Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova survived without injury on Tuesday when a roadside bomb exploded as he rode to meet visiting European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, police said. An explosive device planted in a garbage can on the street was detonated as Rugova’s convoy passed on its way to the meeting.
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President Robert Mugabe’s government said on Tuesday that it will not let Zimbabwe’s main trade union federation monitor crucial elections this month, charging that it is an agent of former colonial ruler Britain and that it has ”biased and preconceived ideas about the outcome of the elections”.
Universities have a key role to play in raising the quality of life of all South African citizens, President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday. ”Education is the key to unlocking each person’s potential and improving the quality of life in general,” he said on opening the University of Pretoria’s new law-faculty building.
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With about two weeks to go before key elections in Zimbabwe, some rights groups and the police say the campaign thus far has been largely spared of the political violence that marred the 2000 and 2002 polls. The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, however, maintains that a campaign of intimidation continues unabated.
A boy attacked by lions at a nature reserve near Krugersdorp on Sunday would have been dead but for his courage and respect for the animals, a curator said. The manager of the reserve said the boy was attacked while showing his girlfriend the lions, ”which the curator refused [to allow] without being … present himself”.