The JSE Securities Exchange South Africa (JSE) was weaker at midday on Monday on the back of a stronger rand and general lack of buying interest in the market. Volumes were extremely light — less than R400-million-worth of shares had changed hands.
Business was good in the taverns of Kano as the city’s football fanatics gathered to watch the English FA Cup quarterfinals this weekend, and as the beer sellers stacked crate after crate of empties back onto their trucks they seemed unaware that this might be one of their last loads.
Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide issued a statement on Sunday saying he was ”well looked after” by his hosts and would personally address reporters at an unspecified ”opportune time”. When reporters asked Mildred Aristide if her husband was healthy, she nodded. Asked if the couple were prisoners, she sighed.
Empowerment group Mvela Resources on Monday announced that it would finalise its recent R1,79-billion private placement within a week. The proceeds of the private placement will be used to fund the R4,139-billion acquisition of a 15% interest in Gold Fields’ South African gold mining assets and business operations.
The problem with Othello (in the white mind at least — hey, let’s not beat about the bush here) is that the play can be taken as a metaphor for any black man in power. The key image is of that power slowly slipping out of his hands, causing him to descend into his primal state vis-à -vis the (white) civilised world — Othello retreats into voodoo, murder and madness.
Tossing a rugby ball with Aids orphans and planting trees, Britain’s teenage Prince Harry is showing his caring side during a trip through the impoverished southern African country of Lesotho. ”It’s really good fun to learn about the people here,” he said at a photo opportunity this week. ”It’s not a place that everyone knows much about.”
When he climbs into his huge ”husky”, a South African-made armoured tractor used to detect mines, Josh Streeter thinks of a 24-year-old friend who was killed in December by a bomb planted on the main road linking Baghdad to the northern city of Mosul.
An ATM machine in Port Elizabeth was stolen over the weekend and then abandoned with all the money still inside. Police said a breakdown service received a call at 2am Saturday to come to the assistance of a motorist in New Brighton. When the truck arrived it was hijacked by two men.
Greeks have given a decisive victory to the conservative opposition New Democracy party in a general election regarded as one of the most significant since the collapse of military rule 30 years ago. Early results from exit polls showed that they were leading by more than five points, 47,5% against the Socialist party Pasok’s 42%.
South Africa’s Apartheid Museum is still evolving in trying to document the country’s brutal past and the complex history of white racist oppression and the black liberation movement. Christopher Till, the director of the museum, said the gut-wrenching images and sounds were reflective of a tough history.