Saddam Hussein destroyed his last weapons of mass destruction more than a decade ago and his capacity to build new ones had been dwindling for years by the time of the Iraq invasion, according to a comprehensive United States report released on Wednesday.
President Thabo Mbeki governs an imagined South Africa — that much is clear from his regular ruminations on the internet. And any citizen or body of citizens who diverges in word or deed from the president’s imagined country is out. Dissent, and you face an on-line skewering. Last week it was the turn of journalist and activist Charlene Smith.
<b>Project Manager, IUCN-SA</b>
After training as an attorney, Ridwana’s first involvement with conservation was as a consultant to DEAT to establish its conflict management and dispute resolution systems. In 2002 she was offered a position by the IUCN as project manager on access and benefit-sharing in biodiversity, to assist DEAT to develop a legislative framework to enable communities to derive benefits from providing access to genetic resources.
<b>Administration Manager, ResourceAfrica</b>
“We act as the ‘voice of the voiceless’,” says Ursula van Graan. “I have been revamping the office systems and facilitating workshops, but I hope to become involved in projects in a more hands-on way, so I can understand how what I do at the office affects projects on the ground.”
<b>Chief Executive Officer, Johannesburg Zoo</b>
A qualified civil engineer, Jennifer specialised in transportation before joining the zoo in November 2003. She ran Durban’s bus operations and transport for KwaZulu-Natal province, before moving to an airline and then into corporate banking, along the way acquiring an MBA.
<b>Manager: De Wildt Vulture Unit, De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust</b>
Kerri seems too small to handle huge vultures. But woe betide you if you dare to imply that vultures are dirty birds! “I hate sitting behind a desk and my job is unique. I love it to the last feather,” she says.
<b>Project Manager: Water Unit, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research – Environmentek</b>
In matric, Mapule applied to the CSIR for a bursary to do a BSc in biochemistry. She went on to do honours in pharmacology and an MSc in water resources management.
Zanu-PF bigwigs are at loggerheads over the eviction of more than 400 families, including war veterans, from 22 farms they occupied during the land grabs that accompanied Zimbabwe’s last parliamentary elections. Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said the people ”illegally settled themselves” on the farms and the government was now ”regularising the land reform”.
For better or worse, come January 2005, South Africa’s higher education landscape will be so altered as to be unrecognisable. Some institutions will have vanished, others will be merged and rebranded, and a new breed of mega-varsities called comprehensives will have been established. Once the mergers are completed next year, what then?
”They [European Muslims] don’t know what terrorism did to Afghanis. They don’t know what Osama [bin Laden] and his buddies did in the destruction of Afghanistan. They don’t know how many mosques were destroyed by these people. They don’t know how many children were killed.” Jean-Jacques Cornish speaks to Afghanistan’s urbane transitional president ahead of this weekend’s elections.