Whether you’re travelling for a week on business or taking a year off to trudge around the world with a backpack, there are bound to be people you really want to stay in touch with while you are away. Good news on the travel communication front is that a new South African innovation — called v4t — offers the convenience of roaming at a much more attractive price tag.
On the recent weekend of European Union accession, Budapest was taking it all in its stride. There were street parties, festivals and the museums were free for two days. But nowhere in this handsome city did it feel like a blissful new dawn. Then again, why should it? As a phlegmatic local remarked, "Hungary is already in Europe.” With its plethora of visual feasts and tempting asides Budapest offers itself as a destination with bite.
Imagine a children’s picture-book version of the Garden of Eden, and you can begin to picture how every inch of Uganda hops, flutters and crawls with life. The countryside is a lustrous, velvety green. It teems with birds, deer, buffaloes, warthogs and hippos — and, of course, insects. <i>Escape</i> travelled to Uganda to visit one of the last remaining habitats of the mountain gorilla.
Back in the bad days of apartheid when gambling was a no-no and boobs were terribly naughty, Sun City was something of a brash old tart, pimping herself as a den of decadence in the dusty Bantustan of Bophuthatswana. Twenty years on and the old matriarch is suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. <i>Escape</i> looks at what’s hot this winter at Sun City.
Trying to sell nature-based tourism in game reserves to people who would rather go to the beach on holiday, if they go at all, sounds like a case of real hard sell. Isidore Bandile Mkhize, newly appointed director of the flagship Kruger National Park, wrote a doctoral thesis on the reasons behind this and is determined to turn the situation around.
Father’s Day offers an opportunity to reflect on what, in the year 2004, it means to be a good father and a good man. Masculinity and fatherhood are social constructs that have changed dramatically in the past 50 years. By setting out to redefine women’s identity, exponents of the new feminism have also challenged men to redefine themselves.
It was unacceptable that a rape survivor’s chance of getting justice depended on whether there was a specialised court near her home. Fatima Chohan-Kota, chairperson of the parliamentary justice committee, made the point during last week’s Departmentof Justice budget briefing to the committee. At the briefing it emerged that the Sexual Offences Courts had a 68% conviction rate compared with 42% in ordinary courts.
In 1976 we were toddlers. Although both of us are black and female, our lives were profoundly different then. When freedom came in 1994, one of us was a 21-year-old studying in the United States. The other — age 19 — stood in a long, laughter-filled queue under a brilliant April sky in Natal. Promise Mthembu and Sisonke Msimang reflect on the young people who changed the face of history, and the state of the youth today.
”Let’s chuck these cheats in the dustbin,” is how Premier Soccer League CEO Trevor Phillips feels about the recent allegations of match fixing and bribery which implicates top officials, players and referees within local football. ”Sometimes it is too difficult to decide between competence and cheating. But something needs to be done about the standard of refereeing,” he said.
”I have consistently argued that if governments and their constituents lose faith in the ability of the world trade negotiations in Doha to deliver, we can expect a growing imbalance between multilateral and bilateral deal-making and a wider gap between strong and weak countries,” writes director general of the World Trade Organisation Supachai Panitchpakdi.