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/ 17 December 2004
Norman Reynolds recently argued in the <i>M&G</i> that alternative, community-based currencies keep wealth in communities ("Ora points the way"). But there is a better example of a localised economy — Cape Town’s Talent Exchange. Operating for almost two years, the exchange is essentially a bartering system. But people do not exchange goods directly. Instead, they trade in an invented currency called "Talents".
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/ 17 December 2004
Only six weeks after President George W Bush’svictory, the vibrations continue euphoric. Depressed Democrats wonder if they could ever win again. Pundits ponder theses about eternal Republican hegemony. Talk is of more Bush power, more neo-conservative solutions, more variations on a narrow agenda. But is that quite what unfolding events tell us? Or will the administration be filled with mere mediocrities?
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/ 17 December 2004
If you’re reading this late on a Friday afternoon — 5.30pm, say — then about 180 000 South African male prisoners have already been locked in their cells for the night. And after lock-up is when it happens: the sexual violence that characterises the incarcerations of many. Yet confusing interpretations of inter-male sex in South African prisons expose our inability to understand these activities.
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/ 17 December 2004
Sometimes two seemingly unrelated pieces of upcoming news reveal themselves to be part of one and the same iceberg. The film Kinsey, based on the life of the notorious sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, will open in South Africa early next year. This month saw a fast-track review by the Food and Drugs Administration of a testosterone patch that aims to improve the sex lives of menopausal women. The iceberg? The science of sex — or rather, the lack of science of sex.
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/ 17 December 2004
There are fears that the Great Lakes region could again descend into war. Rwandan President Paul Kagame has insisted that he will enter the Democratic Republic of Congo and attack Hutu fighters based there if Kinshasa and the United Nations fail to disarm the rebels. But whether rebels or refugees, many Rwandan Hutus are too afraid to return home.
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/ 17 December 2004
”Two weeks ago, my sister was raped coming home from school. How is my sister supposed to look at me and my brothers and not think of this man? How is she going to trust another man? At the tender age of 14, what picture will she have of men in general?” A policeman and and a brother tells of his anguish at gender violence.
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/ 17 December 2004
For more than a century, the emblem of a red cross on a white background has saved the lives of people in war zones across the globe. It has also acted as a badge of safety for those who wear it. But now the neutrality and independence of the Red Cross Red Crescent is fast becoming a casualty of a global war on terror that threatens to obliterate the capacity of humanitarian aid agencies to operate in areas of conflict.
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/ 17 December 2004
Two weeks ago, IBM agreed to sell its PC business to Lenovo, a Chinese company formerly known as Legend. However, there is no need for buyers to panic. In the short term — 18 months to three years — it should be business as usual. The next generation of ThinkPad portables should arrive on schedule, following the current roadmap. As for the long term — beyond five years — we can only wait and see.
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/ 17 December 2004
After three weeks of high-profile events, golf in South Africa now takes a break for the festive season. There is a qualifier for the (British) Open Championship at Atlantic Beach in Cape Town on January 13 and 14, but the season proper doesn’t resume until the 20th, which will give the players an opportunity to burn off Christmas excess.
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/ 17 December 2004
Sharif Omar has been waiting two years for the bulldozers, ever since Israel’s steel and barbed wire ”security fence” carved its way between his village and its land. Last week the excavators and diggers finally arrived on the outskirts of Jayyous to lay the foundations for an expansion of the nearby Jewish settlement of Zufim, fulfilling the fears and warnings of its Palestinian neighbours.