Seven months after gunmen on horseback drove Mohammed Ishaq’s family from their village in West Darfur, hunger is about to claim the life of his baby son. The shortage of food that has wasted nine-month-old Zohar’s limbs is widespread in Mornay refugee camp, where one child in five is suffering acute malnutrition.
For the second time in a week, the liberals of New York stood in line for their cultural sustenance. On Monday night they waited to snatch the first autographed copies of the memoirs of the former Democratic president Bill Clinton. On Wednesday they went to watch Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, a film aimed, at least in part, at ending the incumbency of the current Republican president, George Bush.
Something pretty revolutionary is going down in a dusty patch of Limpopo province. It involves billionaire and Africa’s first astronaut Mark Shuttleworth, a multi-national technology company and the government. Shuttleworth is so passionate about it, he says it could rocket South Africa into the future.
"Apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd is probably turning in his grave, but at the end of the day it is love that matters. Jeri [Ngomane] is a great husband and a fantastic father to our kids." Sanet de Klerk’s gushing paean to marriage appeared in an article in <i>Drum</i> magazine’s September 2002 edition, under the headline "Jeri, the rainbow man".
The weka is an odd bird. With spindly legs, tubby body and a narrow, bobbing head, it picks its way through the New Zealand bush. It is famously shy, but such is the tranquillity of the Queen Charlotte track that the odd, disconcerted weka may be the only creature you meet. Even at the height of New Zealand’s tourist season, you’ll be lucky to cross paths with half a dozen "trampers", as New Zealanders call them.
The Hillside Beach Club near Fethiye on the Turquoise Coast is very easy on the eye. Set in a secluded bay surrounded by pine-covered hills, the steeply terraced rooms look out over a sea the required shade of turquoise, and beyond to the Toros mountains. <i>Escape</i> takes it easy in the country’s most exclusive beach resort.
"The hippo was invisible as we entered the reeds with our canoes. It watched us silently as we approached, unaware of the big lump hiding beneath the tranquil Pongola river. Just as we were about to glide right over the animal, he wiggled his head and gave a splurt of disgust. We froze and then started a slow but urgent U-turn." <i>Escape</i> enjoys a close encounter at Mvubu Game Lodge.
If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, then freedom of expression must be the bigot’s favourite hideout. As I see it, writing and circulating an e-mail suggesting that if you want to create black people you need a wheelbarrow-load full of faeces and another of mud has nothing to do with showcasing the right to freedom of expression, as a case before the Equality Court argued. It is bigotry.
This week’s column is the second part of some reflections on the proposed new legislation: the draft Prohibition of Hate Speech Bill. It is hard to decide which part of the draft Bill is the most revealing of insidious government intentions. In some of its provisions the Bill is disturbingly similar to legislation in Zimbabwe and under which virtually all independent political and social comment has been obliterated by the Robert Mugabe government.
South Africa should manage its trade relations with China more effectively, rather than "naively pursuing" a free trade deal with the emerging-world economic giant, says Martyn Davies, a director of research and strategy at the research consultancy Emerging Markets Focus. Davies said the main barriers to entry were cultural, linguistic and political and that these would not disappear with a free-trade agreement.