Legislation paving the way for registered nurses who have undergone prescribed training to perform abortions was approved in the National Assembly on Thursday, despite the objections of several opposition parties. Democratic Alliance MP Ryan Coetzee said it was DA policy to allow its members to determine their own position on matters of conscience, including abortion.
In ”Follow the money to peace” (July 30) Yazini Funeka April approaches the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from a narrow perspective. The most prominent feature of the complex DRC crisis, alongside the consequences of decades of dictatorship, is the uncontested presence of former FAR and interahamwe who perpetrated genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
The first athletics medals of the Olympics went up for grabs on Friday as week one of the Athens Games drew to a close with the host nation facing another drugs case involving a Greek athlete. Italy’s Ivano Brugnetti sped away to victory in the men’s 20km walk at the sun-baked 70 000-capacity Olympic Stadium.
South Africa’s Olympic athletes did not fare too well on Friday. Among others, Janice Josephs finish seventh in the 100m hurdles; Geraldine Pillay did not qualify in the 100m sprint; triple-jump champion Khotsa Mokoena failed to come close to his personal best; and shooter Martin Senore failed to make the final eight.
Special Report: Olympics 2004
The United States is to allow human rights groups to enter Guantánamo Bay for the first time since detention camps were set up 2 years ago. The Pentagon has previously barred independent observers from the military base in Cuba, where more than 600 men are detained indefinitely as part of the ”war on terror”.
Iraqi teenage sprinter Alaa Jassim’s taste of Olympic competition lasted just less than 13 seconds in Athens on Friday but she said she would not have missed it for the world. The 18-year-old lives in Baghdad and trains six days a week, although only in the evening and only when there is no bombing or shooting.
President Thabo Mbeki struck a challenging note for ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement gathered in Durban this week. He urged them to quit the rarefied, airconditioned atmosphere of the conference centre and visit the squatter camps to experience the poverty there. ”The things we discuss here must impact on the lives of billions of ordinary people out there — in Durban, Ghaza and elsewhere.”
Knowing and respecting the contribution Professor Jonathan Jansen makes to intellectual life, I had hoped that in raising the North West University saga to serve his thesis on race and education, he would have advanced and sophisticated the discourse (”How far have we come?” August 13). It is a pity that some still harbour the idea that scholastic merit is subordinate to race, writes Sipho Seepe.
South African men’s rowing pair of Donovan Cech and Ramon di Clemente, in the true spirit of the Olympic Games, have put their weight behind the Canadian team in an effort to get their boat reinstated for Saturday’s final. Canadian rower Chris Jarvis said his team have a letter signed by the South Africans ”stating their support for us”.
Special Report: Olympics 2004
The organisers of the Athens Olympics have vainly tried to remove the Greek edition of Playboy from the newspaper stands for offending the Games with a section on the Olympian traditions of sex. ”Harder, deeper, longer,” was how the magazine paraphrased the Olympic motto ”faster, higher, stronger”.
Special Report: Olympics 2004