Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has never visited South Africa, has missed three African presidential inaugurations and the launch summit of the African Union. This has led to mounting criticism of Egypt’s role in Africa. Mubarak has even stayed away from meetings of the five-man New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) steering committee.
Kenenisa Bekele, the 22-year-old Ethiopian who is set to emerge as the glittering star of the track at the Olympic Games in Athens, hides his face in his hands. The laughter takes hold of him. He rocks gently back and forth, unsure whether he is more embarrassed or exhilarated to be asked if his mentor, Haile Gebrselassie, has recovered from having two of his world records smashed.
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Naledi Xhosa won an out-of-court settlement this week when she sued her former employer for unfair dismissal after Xhosa tested positive for HIV and Hepatitis B. Xhosa was immediately dismissed on the grounds that she posed a health risk to the employer’s infant and family. The court case shows how HIV/Aids challenges
the relationship between domestic workers and their employers.
South African Aids activists sang and danced through the streets of Cape Town on Thursday as part of a worldwide campaign to get the United States government to reduce military spending. Some 500 marchers made their way to the US consulate in central Cape Town to deliver a letter addressed to President George Bush calling for less spending on the military and more on fighting diseases such as HIV/Aids.
The Road Accident Fund has no plans to force the government to increase the petrol price by 25 cents per litre. RAF board acting chairperson Saths Cooper was responding to a report that the RAF and the Law Society of South Africa would force the government to increase the petrol price by 25c/litre in order to remedy the RAF’s ”terrible financial situation”.
The incoming government has announced that service delivery will be the watchword of all departments and has spelt out targets: providing a million jobs, halving the number of people living in poverty, delivering water for all by 2008 and sanitation by 2010. The question is whether they can be practically realised with existing financial commitments in annual budgets. The government will have to double budgets for water and electricity to halve the poverty rate by 2010.
Any campaign to lower the cost of books should look at their whole pricing structure and not just VAT, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Thursday. Asked whether she supported calls for VAT on books to be scrapped, Pandor said she liked to start ”where things begin”, which was the cost of books and the markups added by those who were selling them.
Insurgents, some believed linked with terror suspect Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, unleashed attacks on Thursday on four cities across Iraq leaving more than 66 dead and 268 wounded in an apparently coordinated onslaught. The heaviest death toll of Thursday morning’s violence was in Baquba, northeast of the capital, where at least 20 Iraqis and two US soldiers were killed.