Karabo Mokwena (24) had been looking for a job since he passed matric in 2000. When he was offered a job by Fidelity Springbok Security Services in Pretoria last year, he thought his prayers had been answered. But in order to secure the job, Mokwena was expected to provide his own gun and promised an additional R300 tax-free in cash every month for doing so.
Last week husband-killer Anieta Ferreira was released from prison, virtually a free woman. The decision by the Supreme Court of Appeal to commute Ferreira’s life sentence has been hailed a victory for abused women. But criminologist Irma Labuschagne says a strong message has to be sent out that not all women who murder their husbands or partners will get lenient sentences.
Wearing a white dress and an uncertain smile, Irene Mutoni gazes from her cot, a two-year-old girl in a fading photograph. Her favourite food, says the caption, was banana and rice. Her favourite toy was a stuffed dog. Her first word was daddy. Her method of death was drowning in boiling water.
Gito Baloi, celebrated South African bass guitarist and member of Tananas, was shot and killed on the streets of Johannesburg early on Sunday morning, police said. He was shot in the neck, but managed to walk a little way from his car before he collapsed, according to witnesses.
The thing is, we all now fervently believe that it is safe to venture out of the woods. The thing is, it isn’t. Consider this. Nosimo Balindlela, provincial minister for sports, arts and culture for the Eastern Cape, has just instituted a civil claim to the tune of R100 000 against a (presumably white) woman, Erika de Beyer, who called her a baboon in the parking lot of an East London shopping centre some time last year.
Uganda’s first tabloid has broken Africa’s biggest taboo by revealing that the country’s foreign affairs minister, James Wapakhabulo, died of Aids. The storm was stirred by an obituary in the newspaper Red Pepper of the foreign minister, who died last month.
At least 22 people were killed and as many as 200 injured on Sunday in a three-hour gun battle between coalition troops from the United States, Spain and El Salvador and thousands of Iraqi protesters loyal to a firebrand Shia cleric.
‘It is not very nice being white in South Africa if you’re young, even though I’m not a racist and had nothing to do with apartheid ever," reads an anonymous comment posted on the www.southafrica.com website. It is by no means a lone assertion. Ten years into democracy, Sean O’Toole wonders if white South Africans are ready to transform their collective identity.
Eight out of every 10 applications for a firearm licence made by a black South African is turned down, according to the Black Gun Owners Association. Abios Khoele, chairperson of the one-year-old association, told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> that the granting of licences is "like a competition" for applicants who feel that they are taking part in a random selection process.
The bride-to-be is thrilled; the groom is grim. But Rand Afrikaans University will not leave Technikon Witwatersrand standing at the altar when their union is solemnised on January 1 next year. With another set of tertiary mergers due to take effect on January 1 2005, we resume our series of "Merger Migraines" by looking at the premarital nerves afflicting the most controversial of the upcoming unions.