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/ 16 February 2005
Just fifteen years ago, FW De Klerk altered the South African paradigm when he unbanned the African National Congress and released Nelson Mandela. In the years that followed, many other paradigms were shifted and other forms of statesmanship displayed as a transition was successfully negotiated. Two weeks ago, the Zimbabwean election date was announced by Robert Mugabe’s government. Can we expect statesmanship?
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/ 16 February 2005
The South African Wine and Brandy Company has launched the a survey to ascertain the industry’s local and global competitiveness. Johan van Rooyen, SAWB CEO, said the study will seek to determine what factors are enhancing or constraining the industry in the quest to be more competitive, and how "truly competitive" the industry is on an international scale.
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/ 16 February 2005
The Cape has a reputation for doing things differently and Capitec Bank’s head office, nicknamed "the campus", in Stellenbosch is no exception. There is not a suit or tie in sight. Capitec was formed in 2000 when micro-lending group PSG seized the gap in mass banking. Simplified banking at low cost is the core, as is changing customers’ attitudes.
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/ 16 February 2005
It looks deceptively as if Côte d’Ivoire is at peace again. Many schools have reopened in the rebel-run north and noisy groups of children wearing black and white or gingham check uniforms kick up the dust on their way to class in the morning. But after two and a half years of armed confrontation, the war is far from over. And despite appearances, the schools are not running normally.
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/ 16 February 2005
Tropical Africa is the new rage among the gastronomic glitterati of Cairo. Planet Africa opened its door last month in the affluent northern Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. It is the latest and largest example of a surge of interest in African things. It is now de rigueur, mainly among the more youthful set of the Egyptian middle classes, to decorate flats and villas in sub-Saharan African themes.
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/ 16 February 2005
Imagine my surprise. After years of popping in and out of synagogue life, I took my interest in Judaism to another level. Not exactly a higher level because, being gay, I had began to drift from the core tenets: family life, procreation and community accountability.
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/ 15 February 2005
A new humanitarian crisis is brewing in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where about 56 000 people have fled armed groups, out for lucrative mineral resources, that are murdering, raping and burning crops, a United Nations observer in the region said.
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/ 15 February 2005
If Kenya is to reach the Millennium Development Goal of reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters in the next decade, officials may have to call a halt to the work of traditional birth attendants. The risks of allowing them to ply their trade unhindered, says Kenya’s Department of Health, are simply too great.
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/ 15 February 2005
Two suspected motorcycle taxi thieves were burned alive and killed on Tuesday in a busy section of the Burundian capital, witnesses said. The two men, who had allegedly recently stolen a motorbike in Bujumbura, were chased down by dozens of enraged motorcycle taxi drivers.