It is hard not to conclude that 2004 has been a wasted year. Little has changed – and certainly not for the better. Iraq continues to be a bloody mess – but George W Bush has been returned to power. Robert Mugabe still holds power in Zimbabwe. In South Africa, the future of the Deputy President Jacob Zuma remains clouded. Time passes, nothing changes, and the reality again seeps in.
Which four Southern Africa countries held elections this year? Who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize? Who provides the donkey’s voice in the film <i>Shrek</i>? Name the Jewish architect of Polish extraction who won the bid to design a memorial for New York’s Twin Towers. How many of the year’s events can you recall? Put yourself to the test …
"Luckily Christmas is over for this year, but it’s never too late to send Santa a letter telling him what you like. Be very, very afraid as you read the list of what online internet users have been asking Santa to give them. Yes, there’s a little bit of adult material lurking here. No, don’t thank me, it’s the least I could do, really." Ian Fraser goes the extra online mile.
It took just 10 minutes for Judge Wilfred Thring to rule that Mikro Primary’s school governing body (SGB) had the right to make its own decisions about language policy, and that the Western Cape minister of education, Cameron Dugmore, was wrong to force the school to accommodate English-speaking learners.
In Shona culture we believe that November is an inauspicious month. You don’t get married or brew beer for the ancestors during that month, otherwise you will be cursed. And indeed, bad things do happen in November. First Yasser Arafat died. Then Condoleezza Rice was named new United States Secretary of State. And just when we thought nothing worse could happen, Joyce Teurai Ropa Mujuru was made vice-president of Zanu-PF.
South Africa took the honours on the second day of the third Castle Lager/MTN cricket Test at Newlands on Monday, taking three England wickets after tea. At close of play, England had 95 for four in reply to South Africa’s first-innings score of 441 all out. England have a deficit of 346.
Still nascent and largely underground, black thought is rising. On websites, in niche magazines and occasionally in the mass media, a new generation of black intellectuals is reinterpreting history and the present. Our generation of young black thinkers realise that there is a fundamental lack of black thought that interrogates the now, and which engages with reality honestly enough to find it desperately in need of change.
Following the handling of the Asian tsunami disaster, the United Nations has come under fire. Said one columnist of London’s The Times on Monday, ”The blunt truth is that on international crises ranging from war in Iraq to the waters of the Indian Ocean, the UN is philosophically redundant, structurally irrelevant and bureaucratically ossified.” Or is it? And what could usefully replace it?
Liverpool went fifth in the Premier League with a 2-1 win away to relegation-threatened Norwich on Monday. Norwich, meanwhile, returned to the bottom three. Blackburn ensured Charlton suffered a second straight defeat with a 1-0 victory at Ewood Park, and Crystal Palace scored a 2-1 win at home to Aston Villa.
Wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist crashed in a 109-ball century on Tuesday as Australia commandeered the final Test from Pakistan on the third day at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Gilchrist blasted five sixes and 14 boundaries in a swashbuckling, 139-minute virtuoso innings for his 13th century in his 65th Test match.