Athlete Hendrik Mokganyetsi, a veteran campaigner in the SA Olympic team, collapsed during training at the Olympic Village on Saturday and spent the weekend in hospital. Wayne Derman, the chief medical officer of the SA team, said on Sunday that Mokganyetsi had undergone medical tests and doctors had found no problems with him.
South African marathoners, Gert Thys, Hendrick Ramaala, and Ian Syster, have the credentials and experience to deliver at least one medal from the world’s oldest marathon course, which will be used on 22nd and 29 August for the 2004 Athens Olympics.
The thoughts of the women among South Africa’s Olympic team were with their sisters who celebrated Women’s Day back home, but none in the team considered herself more fortunate than hockey-player Pholo Tsoanelo. Pholo’s name means ”fortunate one” and the Gauteng player considers herself extremely lucky to be in Athens for her first Olympics.
SA athlete collapses in Athens
Famine has claimed the lives of 152 people, mostly children, in the western Zimbabwe city of Bulawayo, it was reported in Harare on Sunday. The weekly independent Standard newspaper quoted Bulawayo health department records, saying that 29 people had died of malnutrition in July.
Iraq’s interim government moved on Saturday to defuse the country’s rampant and bloody anti-American insurgency by signing a long-awaited amnesty law. The move will pardon Iraqis who have committed minor crimes against United States or Iraqi government officials, but it will not include those who have killed US soldiers, Iraqis or any hostages.
The New National Party’s decision to amalgamate with the African National Congress is an embarrassment for everyone who has ever been associated with the party, said Pieter Mulder, leader of minority party the Freedom Front Plus. He suggested that NNP members of Parliament cross over to his party, rather than the African National Congress when the floor-crossing period starts in September.
A series of witnesses place six top al-Qaeda fugitives in Africa buying up diamonds before the September 11 attacks on the United States, according to a confidential report by United Nations-backed prosecutors. The first-person witness accounts detailed by the prosecutors add to long-standing claims that al-Qaeda laundered millions of dollars in terror funds through African diamonds before launching its deadliest offensive.
It is rare for a politician to be so feted in Africa. Young, good-looking and articulate, the rising political star whose name means ‘blessed’ in Swahili has become a symbol of hope for the continent.Yet he is not an African. Barack Obama, whose father is Kenyan, is in fact running for election in America where he is favourite to become the country’s only African-American senator in November.
The woman in the yellow shirt stood up and told of her life-long struggle against being fat, a fight that she had clearly lost. She was enormous. ‘Every time I dieted I ended up larger,’ she said as she broke into tears, ‘If I were anorexic or bulimic, I would get sympathy. It is so frustrating.’ She was applauded by 100 other very fat men and women.
The party that built apartheid and turned South Africa into a pariah State completed its march to oblivion on Saturday by deciding to merge with its one-time nemesis, the African National Congress. The New National Party, heir of a mighty movement that jailed Nelson Mandela and built nuclear bombs, said its shrunken membership would dissolve and fight future elections under the banner of the black ruling party.
FF+: Don’t join the ANC, join us