Spanish voters punished Prime Minister José MarÃa Aznar’s People’s Party for the bloodshed of last week’s Madrid terrorist attacks on Sunday, throwing it out of government in an angry reaction to his handling of the aftermath.
We did it, says al-Qaeda tape
”Sitting opposite Nina is like looking at one of her paintings. Filled with bright colours, the image seems to vibrate with energy and burst with life. ‘Everyone always asks me [to describe my paintings], but I never know what to say,’ she says, her eyes sparkling behind cat’s-eye spectacles”. The M&G meets celebrated artist and activist Nina Romm and finds out that she has more on her mind than cats.
”Affirmative action is creating a new discrimination, an angry new generation of young whites. Research indicates that if the employment equity quotas were enforced with 1,9% economic growth, 600 000 whites would have to be fired.” Drew Forrest hands out this week’s tien van die beste to Freedom
Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder.
”’Some of these guys know nothing different. They like their little huts,’ came their Afrikaner guide’s breezy explanation as to why the majority of black South Africans are living in slums almost 10 years after the end of apartheid”. An English journalist looks in on the new SA, in black and white.
"Bring back the death penalty," seems to be a popular slogan ahead of the April vote. So what is wrong with this, especially if there appears to be enough voters who would gladly place their crosses next to the candidate who promises to return the noose if he or she is elected? Nothing?
It all started at the White House. This is where African National Congress leaders in the Free State held an impromptu rally last week in preparation for Mbeki’s arrival to launch his drive to be elected for a second term as South Africa’s president. The president’s recent visit to the Goldfields area to canvass votes saw a poverty-stricken community open their doors and speak their minds.
Former foreign affairs director general Sipho Pityana has joined the swelling ranks of "new-order" mandarins who have re-deployed their administrative experience from the government to the business sector. Pityana turns his public service experience to account by heading a new empowerment company.
The Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC) encyclopaedic <i>Human Resource Development Review 2003: Education, Employment and Skills in South Africa</i>, launched last week, contains an excellent section that begins to address the human resources needs in the informal economy, but the "second economy" needs to be seen as part — if unequally — of the "first economy".
The question remains: Why did Jean-Bertrand Aristide, ousted leader of Haiti, end up in the Central African Republic? No one goes there for kicks. The country has no particular political or economic record to write home about. The whole saga is packed tight with humbug.
Time: 11h30 to 12h30 Dr Alan Whitfield: Are we strangling our estuaries? South Africa’s estuaries have been damaged by large-scale water pollution and habitat alterations. Dr Whitfield has some interesting approaches that might turn the tide. Listen to his talk on the importance of freshwater supplies to estuaries and of tidal wave exchange in estuarine […]