The day before United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived, there had been as many as 4 000 people living in makeshift shelters in the patch of grubby sand between the fast-flowing river and the row of tiny headstones which mark the cemetery at Meshtel, in North Darfur. But in the middle of the night, that number had been reduced to zero.
"’My trumpet became my weapon,’ writes Masekela of his response to the time. It is this weapon that forms the focus of the book and links the events of Masekela’s life as he becomes one of South Africa’s prize-fighter musicians." Nadia Neophytou reviews <i>Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela</i>.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: "The 1955 Ealing Studios classic <i>The Ladykillers</i>, a very British movie in almost every way, does not seem like an appropriate vehicle for a remake by Joel and Ethan Coen, known for their offbeat take on pop-Americana and their love of the South. At least not at first." Shaun de Waal reviews the remade <i>Ladykillers</i>.
He arrived rattling in chains at the door of a building named Victory Courthouse in the grounds of his former palace now occupied by America’s generals. High Value Detainee One was uncuffed, brought in with guards holding him by the arms and curtly seated before the judge.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=118060&t=1">Saddam dismisses court as ‘theatre'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118062">Defence slams ‘illegal’ tribunal</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118085">Saddam upsets Kuwaiti ‘dogs'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118067">’Saddam should be wiped out'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118013">’I have a few questions…'</a>
Four years ago the beach at Sodwana in northern KwaZulu-Natal could have been mistaken for the Ben Schoeman highway between Pretoria and Johannesburg. Returning from a swim, you had to remember to look left and right before crossing the beach back to your towel. Has banning 4x4s from South Africa’s beaches been a good or bad thing? We investigate the pros and cons.
"Flying toilets" are a new phenomenon in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum, where women and girls are forced to use desperate measures to overcome inadequate sanitation. "We keep our business [faeces] for the evenings. In the dark we wrap it in plastic bags and throw it as far away as possible. These are our flying toilets and our neighbours do the same." How much progress has the world made since all the fanfare of the World Summit in 2002?
Should there be a sunset schedule for affirmative action in industry? Two key black intellectuals — Billiton SA’s Vincent Maphai and the University of Cape Town’s Loyiso Mbabane — have locked horns on this issue. Black economic empowerment (BEE) is now mainstream policy and big business. With much BEE now framed by the Broad-Based BEE Act, there is hot debate about how earlier provisions and policies need to be adapted to fit in with it.
The African Parliament is the glittering prize South Africa is expected to be handed at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week. AU officials already gathered in the Ethiopian capital say there is only a slim chance that Egypt will grab it when the 53 member states finally vote on who will be awarded the right to host the Parliament.
To date, Zimbabwe’s leading political parties, Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), have failed to find enough common ground for official talks. For more than a year South African President Thabo Mbeki’s office has told critics that there are talks, or talks about talks, going on. In reality that has turned out to be empty talk. Mugabe is skilfully dancing around Zimbabwe’s issues
while Africa obligingly turns a blind eye.
Tax practitioners draw a sharp distinction between tax avoidance and evasion — the latter is cheating, amounting to fraud, while the former boils down to a taxpayer arranging his or her affairs openly to minimise tax. Much of the tax practitioner’s work consists of drawing contracts to minimise the tax burden.