South Africa start another long cricket season at an inhospitable venue, where they will take on the world’s most unusual spin bowler. The problem for Graham Smith and his tourists is that the reassuring normality of a Galle Test generally involves 60 overs of Muttiah Muralitharan and four fielders chafing one’s shins and bottom with their cap badges.
In the wake of South Africa’s 23-21 loss to New Zealand in Christchurch last week a few questions have to be asked. What, for instance, is the point of phase play? The All Blacks scored the winning try in the 80th minute by holding on to the ball through 15 phases. By contrast, the Springboks never once held the ball beyond three phases, yet they scored three tries to one.
An estimated 25 000 people are working as slave labourers in Brazil clearing the Amazon jungle for ranchers, or producing pig iron in the forest using charcoal smelters, according to a new study. An unpublished report concludes that despite the best efforts of the government to free slaves and prosecute offenders, the level level of lawlessness in the country’s interior means that the practice continues.
Right now, nobody is throwing eggs at the glass doors of 120 Bree Street in Cape Town. On a similar stretch of pavement, this time outside Johannesburg’s Fourways office park, bundles of razor wire are not being unrolled. In fact, nothing at all is happening, which seems to be the modus operandi of the global middle-class protest movement.
Those who dedicate their professional lives to idleness should do so with discretion if they hope to keep their jobs. This is one message in Hello Laziness: The Art and Importance of Doing the Least Possible at Work, an anarchic anti-business bible published in France.
Amnesty International has sounded a warning of a ”profound humanitarian crisis” in Swaziland, a state it slates for its poor human rights record where the king and his royal advisers pay scant regard to courts, the Parliament and international treaties.
If you are inclined to bet on the weather, now is the time to buy shares in short-term insurer Mutual and Federal (M&F). A shining star in the Old Mutual camp, M&F announced enviable interim results this week — and gave ”benign weather” as the reason. ”In recent months, South Africa experienced no major weather events. This means that we have not had to pay out on damages associated with such events.”
As the extent of the atrocities in Western Sudan becomes apparent, the scramble to find a quick-fix solution begins. The United States Congress unanimously voted to call the crisis ”genocide”. Logistically, it would need to be on a completely different scale from the United Kingdom’s recent endeavours in Sierra Leone and Kosovo. Any intervention would need unanimous international support.
Months after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his plan to pull Jewish settlers out of Gaza, portraying it as a sacrifice for peace, the government is grabbing more land for West Bank settlements. Israeli peace groups and Palestinian officials say thousands of homes are under construction in the main settlements, in addition to an expansion of Jewish outposts, illegal under Israeli law.
A new battle to corner the market in cheap, off-patent medicines began this week as the United States’s Mylan Laboratories bought its rival, King Pharmaceuticals, in a -billion deal that will create the second-biggest prescription drugs company in the US. The all-paper takeover of King will create a corporation with -billion in annual revenue and 6 000 staff — including 1 400 sales representatives.