It is time the African National Congress clarifies the real nature of its relationship with Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF, the Democratic Alliance’s acting leader, Douglas Gibson, said in a statement on Sunday. Weekend newspaper reports said ANC officials had met with Zanu-PF officials in Johannesburg to forge closer political ties.
There is enormous potential for shark eco-tourism in the Eastern Cape, according to British shark researcher Matt Dicken. A marine biologist based at Bayworld at present, Dicken was speaking at an international marine seminar and expo at the University of Port Elizabeth last week.
The South African Communist Party in Gauteng has elected a new leadership at its eighth congress, which ended on Sunday. The congress started on Friday in Johnnesburg. SACP spokesperson Kaizer Mohau said Vishwa Satgar maintains his position as provincial secretary. Bob Mabaso was re-elected chairperson.
Former employees of three independent Zimbabwean newspapers shut down by the Media and Information Commission (MIC) are struggling to make ends meet. ”We have established that a substantial number of them [staff of now-defunct newspapers] are living in near destitution,” said the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists’ president, Matthew Takaona.
By Monday morning there was still no news of Leigh Matthews who was kidnapped on Friday, the day before her 21st birthday, police said. ”We heard nothing over the night,” said police Superintendent Chris Wilken. Matthews’ parents, Rob and Sharon, have appealed to her kidnappers to release her safely.
Dramatic Jo’burg kidnapping case
Pope John Paul is to remove one of the Orthodox church’s most revered icons from his private chapel and dispatch it to Moscow in an attempt to improve the Vatican’s tense relations with the Russian Orthodox hierarchy. The Madonna of Kazan has been a bone of contention between the two branches of Christianity.
President Hosni Mubarak has raised hopes that Egypt is embarking on reform at last with the appointment of a modernising technocrat as prime minister over the weekend following the mass resignation of the Cabinet. The shake-up comes ahead of speculation as to whether Mubarak, who is 76, will seek a fifth six-year term.
The United States government came under scathing attack from senior members of the medical establishment on Sunday for blocking scientists from attending an international Aids conference that opened in Bangkok. The biennial conference bears huge significance for those involved in the fight against HIV/Aids.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said on Sunday that the World Court’s ruling against his country’s vast barrier through the West Bank encourages terrorists, shortly after a bomb at a Tel Aviv bus stop killed a young woman. Sharon said his government "totally rejects" Friday’s non-binding ruling by the International Court of Justice.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118506">Court declares Israel barrier illegal</a>
I’m not an expert on sport. But being locked up in a foreign hotel room often makes you feel like you are. Sport, sport, sport, you realise, is all you are about to be served — unless you feel like following another aimless coming-of-age film on the movie channel, or submitting your soul to the suicidal power of various gospel choirs dotted around the southern hemisphere.