Following his return from international travel to brief governments and investors on the current state of the peace process in his country, Antoine Ghonda Mangalibi, Foreign Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), spoke with Irin recently on his country’s view of the Great Lakes regional peace conference, and more.
Scripted endings to careers are rare in sport. Too often great players hobble into retirement on the arm of a physiotherapist, or choose euthanasia, a quick pre-emptive press-conference to avoid the indignity of being dropped. But Stephen Roger Waugh has always written his own script.
Arsenal versus Middlesbrough. You’ll learn to love those words. The teams meet four times over the next 18 days. On Saturday at Highbury, it’s a mere Premiership clash. The unbeaten Gunners, held 1-1 at Everton on Wednesday, come against one of the meanest defences in the division.
The Castle Premier Soccer League has decided to celebrate the new year with a fixture paying tribute to the old. Orlando Pirates take on rivals Moroka Swallows at the Johannesburg stadium in the country’s oldest and most continuously played fixture. It has been more than 55 years since these two sides first met.
The premier league title chase is developing into a battle between the Soweto heavyweights and Western Cape-based clubs. The northerners have had the upper hand in the past, winning five league titles (Sundowns three, Orlando Pirates two) while the Cape has won only once (Santos).
India and Pakistan agreed to talks this week to resolve their differences and expressed confidence about settling their dispute over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, which brought them to the brink of war two years ago.
Two airline crashes in Africa this past fortnight have added to the continent’s dismal air safety record. On December 25 113 people were killed when a Beirut-bound Boeing 727 clipped a building on the end of the runway at Cotonou, the commercial capital of Benin and ended up in the Atlantic Ocean.
The decision by the oldest Burundian rebel group to start talks with President Ndayizeye is more than a light at the end of the tunnel for that war-torn country. Before emerging into daylight, however, Burundi faces problems of implementing the ceasefire. This in turn poses tough questions for South Africa and other members of the African Mission in Burundi.
After 1990, South Africa was described as a society in transition towards democracy. This raises a number of questions. When will this transition end? When will a ”normal society” be a reality? There are several ways of answering such questions. Democracy is not a state but a process, argues Vincent Maphai in the first of a series on the end of South Africa’s transition.
On a mission to spread love, four-time world heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield said on Friday he had forgiven Mike Tyson for biting his ear in an infamous 1997 bout and would even forgive terrorist leader Osama bin Laden for the September 11 2001 attack on the United States.