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/ 26 November 2004
When Joyce Mujuru became Zimbabwe’s first and youngest female Cabinet minister soon after independence in 1980, she had no academic qualifications. Mujuru was one of 12 children born to a peasant family in Mount Darwin. She opted out of school at age 18 against her parents wishes to join the liberation army, adopting the name Teurai Ropa, which literally means to "spill blood".
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/ 26 November 2004
"Mention the name Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and the name Stompie Seipei immediately comes to many a South African mind. The death of this child activist in 1989 will hang around Nelson Mandela’s former wife’s neck for the rest of her life." Journalists and political analysts struggled to understand that ordinary people still loved and adored Winnie, despite this dark stain on her record, writes Max du Preez.
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/ 26 November 2004
The Zanu-PF old guard has awoken from its slumber ahead of the party’s crucial congress in Harare next week and achieved what many world leaders, including President Thabo Mbeki, have been unable to do: summons President Robert Mugabe and get him to act on their advice. Surrounded by trusted former liberation war fighters, Mugabe relented and endorsed their candidate for the one vacant vice-presidential post.
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/ 26 November 2004
A month that began with a promise of log domination and a semifinal place in the Coca-Cola Cup for Sundowns ends with neither. A loss to Orlando Pirates in the Premier Soccer League and defeat by Wits in the quarterfinal of the Coke Cup has left Sundowns’s pride battered. Coach Paul Dolezar has had to get police protection and owner Patrice Motsepe is throwing his hands in the air in disgust.
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/ 26 November 2004
Four years after the murder of Mozambican journalist Carlos Cardoso, his legacy in investigating corruption has cast a shadow over the campaign for next week’s election. At the time of his death he had been investigating how more than -million had disappeared from Mozambique’s formerly state-owned banks during the privatisation process of the 1990s.
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/ 26 November 2004
One of the biggest surprises of the Namibian elections has been that Hifikepunye Pohamba, the South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) presidential candidate, polled more votes than his party despite persistent references that he is a puppet of the more popular Sam Nujoma. Even during the election campaign Pohamba kept a low profile.
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/ 26 November 2004
Who would have thought that South Africa would ever need to take a rugby lesson from Argentina? The Pumas have been the Cinderellas of southern hemisphere rugby for half a century, but after Saturday’s 24-14 defeat of France in Marseille they finally made it to the ball.
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/ 26 November 2004
Something is rotten in the kingdom of Spain. Two days after the Madrid-Barca derbi and everyone actually agrees. (Well, everyone who’s not completely blind, or stupid, or both). No matter where you look people are saying the same thing. That Real Madrid are rubbish, while FC Barcelona are the hostia, the holy host, the body of Christ in bread — the dog’s dingly-danglies to the non-Catholics among you.
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/ 26 November 2004
President Thabo Mbeki will hit the ground in Côte d’Ivoire this week with the deadlock hardening between the government and the rebels, and President Laurent Gbagbo’s relationship with France steadily unravelling. The world’s former cocoa capital is currently in the throes of a violent domestic row, the likes of which has not been seen in post-colonial Africa. Trying to save the peace deal here may just be the most difficult thing Mbeki has ever done.
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/ 26 November 2004
The Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) is set to be paying for its showpiece Millennium Stadium for at least another 35 years under the terms of a debt re-financing package announced on Thursday. The WRU is 55-million pounds (-million) in debt, the entire deficit resulting from cost over-runs in the construction of and a lack of income from the 73 000-capacity stadium.