“If you’re both a) a smoker, and b) a complete bastard, then you’ll know the joys of stealing someone else’s lighter, as well as the horror, pain and outraged anguish when some sonovabitch has stolen yours. (It’s hard to believe but there are some people who think this is a double standard)." This week Ian Fraser brings us the lighter side of Lighter Thievery, among other things.
The authorities in Swaziland are doing little to stem the flood of bogus "miracle Aids cures" in a country with one of the world’s highest HIV infection rates, according to a report in the latest edition of Science In Africa.
"The Treatment Action Campaign’s Nathan Geffen says ‘We do not know, never had known and probably never will know the exact number of people infected with HIV in any developing country.’ Well, yes. My point exactly," writes renowned author Rian Malan.
The World Bank has stepped in to reinforce Africa’s mining renaissance, prompted by the rise in the gold price and peace settlements in a range of war-torn countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo. This emerged from the recent Mining Indaba 2004 in Cape Town, an investor conference oriented towards direct inward investment in Africa.
Despite more than 30 years of the feminist movement, men still hold sway over how relationships turn out. And they are helped by the women who love them. Sitting at a bar with a few of friends — all male and married or in stable relationships — we discussed the Judge Siraj Desai saga. Or, more pointedly, how we would have reacted had we been Mark Isaacs (the cuckolded spouse) and somebody had slept with our partner, consensually or not.
If aggregate newspaper purchases are any barometer of a country’s literacy levels — and they sometimes are — there may be grounds for cautious optimism in South Africa. The latest circulation and readership figures show more people are buying newspapers than ever before.
It was 10am on Monday morning when the usher called the International Court of Justice to order to hear the case against Israel’s West Bank ”security fence”. Inside the United Nations building, officially called the Peace Palace, everything went smoothly.
The recently planted rows of pineapple plants in the one and a half hectare field on one side of the Malayon family home look neat and well-tended, but are otherwise not really worth a second glance. But what occurred last year on and around this plot in Kalyong village, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, is threatening to turn this unremarkable field into a battleground in the war over genetically modified crops.
It is old news — 251-million years old — but the story of what happened then, now told for the first time, demands our urgent attention. Its implications are more profound than anything taking place in Washington or Iraq. Prehistory may soon repeat itself, not as tragedy but as catastrophe, unless we understand what happened and act upon that intelligence, writes George Monbiot.
Dr Vincent Maphai, in his article, ”Transition’s long sunset”, provides a clear analysis of South Africa’s much talked about political, social and economic transitional milestones, which, in not so many words, he labels ”probationary transitional arrangements”. Patrick Ntsime gives the issue a second look.