Award-winning playwright Martin Koboekae has turned his hand to novels, and <i>Taung Wells</i> fails to disappoint. The author has treated his subject matter with the accuracy of a historian, writes Sabata-Mpho Mokae.
One of a pair of rare Komodo dragon lizards brought to the London Zoo amid great fanfare last month has died after falling off a wall while trying to reach her mate, zoo officials said on Friday. Nina, a 10-year-old female Komodo dragon, died of internal bleeding on Wednesday after somehow scrambling up a 2,4m wall.
The decision to cut interest rates this month was not due to political pressure, Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni said on Friday. He said some people had claimed that the Reserve Bank bowed to political pressure when it reduced the repo rate — the rate at which it lends money to commercial banks — by 50 basis points to 7,5% on August 12.
Police were preparing on Friday to exhume the body of a six-year-old boy whose head was found in a man’s refrigerator at Ntunda Trust near Tonga, Mpumalanga, on Thursday. Police spokesperson Inspector Leonard Hlathi said a 32-year-old man had been arrested and was going to show police where the boy’s body was buried.
The arrest this week of a 63-year-old woman in Burkina Faso accused of circumcising 16 young girls has brought home to many that genital mutilation is still widespread in the West African state, despite being outlawed. She sliced off parts of the girls’ genitalia under driving rain ”in the backyard, where they usually kill chickens”.
While the government speaks nobly about transparency and good governance, there is an enormous gap between its words and its deeds, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon in his weekly SA Today newsletter. Leon also commented on the minister of defence’s signing of a new trade agreement with Iran.
The music of jazz maestro Abdullah Ibrahim, which spans 50 years, "belongs to us all, it is our music and it represents us". Ibrahim is a griot committed to celebrating the collective memory of his people. South Africa’s "apostle of song" wants local music to celebrate life, writes Sandile Ngidi.
Followers loyal to radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said on Friday they were prepared to hand control of the revered Imam Ali Shrine to top Shi’ite religious authorities in a bid to end a two-week-old uprising in the holy city of Najaf. United States tanks were on the streets, but residents reported seeing some of al-Sadr’s Mehdi army militia pulling out of the city.
Najaf faces final assault
The late Paul Meintjes whom a prophet had predicted would rise from the dead must be buried by Saturday, according to an order delivered by police to his family in the Free State town of Hertzogville on Thursday. On Wednesday his widow took delivery of Meintje’s 50-day-old corpse and has since kept it in a coffin beside her bed.
A South African woman whose arrest last month raised concerns about whether terrorists could easily enter the United States by way of Mexico has been indicted on charges of violating US immigration law and lying to a federal officer, a US prosecutor announced on Thursday.