Fiji has emerged as an unlikely source of pressure on President Robert Mugabe’s regime. Fiji was among the Commonwealth states to voice ”deep concern over the deteriorating situation” in Zimbabwe, noting Mugabe’s ”failure to respond to the calls of the international community…”
United States Vice-President Dick Cheney’s combative speech advocating a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was intended to settle the most serious rift in US public life right now, a conflict simmering not only within the Republican Party, but inside the Bush dynasty itself.
A series of broken promises and undemocratic practices by the government has added weight to the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), which is now seeking international support — precisely the outcome the government hoped to avoid, said the grass-roots organisation this week.
State-owned Telkom donated almost R58 000 to the ANC in Parliament for a strategic planning session. Telkom this week said it viewed the sponsorship as not being for a party political event but for ”an organ of Parliament know as the Chief Whippery”.
A buddy from the SABC dropped into the Dorsbult this week and obviously had had one zanufication-on-the-rocks too many when he recounted some of Sunday Times new editor Mathatha Tsedu’s Zimbabwe exploits.
It was a clash of titans. ANC MP Thandi Modise in the one corner, Kader Asmal in the other. Modise wanted Parliament to have prospective oversight over arms exports; Asmal was having none of it.
Aids vaccine research: United States researchers have made progress in developing an Aids vaccine that would be effective against a range of strains of HIV, according to an article written in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A herd of about 30 black rhinos is in desperate trouble in Zimbabwe after war veterans invaded the game farm where they live. Though poaching is a threat, thirst may kill them first. Richard Pascal, owner of the confiscated land, is worried about their water supply.
”We, the landless people of South Africa, declare our needs for our government and the world to know. We are the people who have borne the brunt of apartheid, of forced removals from our fields and our homes, of poverty in rural areas, of oppression on the farms and of starvation, neglect and disease…”