I clearly misunderstood Marlise and, no doubt, the rules of the game. You see, Marlise had started and managed a successful electronic equipment business for nearly a decade in a neighbouring country and was trying to establish herself in South Africa. So through common contacts, she eventually identified the right entrepreneur she would want to partner with to create a BEE company — me!
Thomas is hunched over a car engine, busily dismantling it, his hands covered in grime. He seems so adept that a casual observer might mistake him for a veteran mechanic. But nothing could be further from the truth. Now 21, he has been serving as an apprentice mechanic for a mere six months. For two-and-a-half years before that, he was part of the legion of children living on the streets of Zimbabwe’s urban centres.
Unrelenting United States pressure on Cuba, set to ratchet up again at next week’s United Nations Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva, is testing relations between the Bush administration and a new generation of centre-left Latin American leaders. As it has done each year since the early 1990s, the US will urge the commission to adopt a resolution condemning Cuba’s human rights record.
Miss Lucy Mangan’s case for using the title Miss instead of Ms (”The meaning of Ms”) is that she’s run out of the requisite adolescent fervour to sustain the practice into adulthood. Mangan’s mother clearly was not one of the ”British feminists in the 1970s and early 1980s” to whom she refers. I grew up with the idea that Ms was the norm. And so it should be.
Animals from the Kruger National Park, including ”protected species and even lions”, are being hunted and killed in the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve (TPNR) in order to balance the books, according to United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa. He said the hunting has been happening since the boundary fence between the Kruger park and the adjacent TPNR was taken down.
At least nine officials of the National Ports Authority (NPA) have been suspended because of irregularities in the management of several construction projects by the NPA. In two separate cases, investigations are under way into possible overspending at Ngqura, and into alleged kickbacks at Richard’s Bay. The revelations come as Transnet CEO Maria Ramos’s focus on risk management begins to bite.
African countries have agreed on the rules by which they would like to play a new United Nations game. Four countries have emerged as candidates for the two permanent seats on the UN Security Council that Africa is requesting. Libya can hardly be regarded as a serious candidat, while the other three — Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa — will not be able to avoid a knock-down, drag-out battle.
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Some of the 62 South African suspected mercenaries who had been due to be freed from a Zimbabwean jail this week became tearful upon learning on Thursday morning that their release has been put on hold. ”They are not doing well,” lawyer Alwyn Griebenow said from Harare after visiting the men at the Chikurubi prison.
Attorneys representing ousted Independent Democrats Western Cape leader Lennit Max have queried the independence of the Scorpions in the latest development surrounding his disciplinary hearing. ID leader Patricia de Lille has testified that she became aware from a source in the Scorpions that criminal charges were being investigated against her.