European and Asian shares fell sharply in early trading on Thursday after Wall Street slumped to levels not seen since 1997 amid renewed concern about United States accounting methods.
HIV/Aids activist Zackie Achmat is no stranger to struggle — but he has come face to face with one of his biggest challenges: to take the drugs that can keep him healthy, or to put his life at risk because of his moral convictions.
The Western Cape Democratic Alliance is expected to finalise by Wednesday its report on whether Cape Town mayor Gerald Morkel and former finance MEC Leon Markovitz are implicated in the political funding scandal centring on German tax fugitive Jürgen Harksen.
Former safety and security minister Sydney Mufamadi was a ”liar”; top policemen had plotted to kill Nelson Mandela and mobster Vito Palazzolo and German fugitive Jurgen Harksen had got their dirty hands all over agents of the state.
Poisonous: A United States newspaper quoted Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang this week as saying that the drugs used to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child are poisonous.”I’m forced to poison my people,” Tshabalala-Msimang reportedly told Newsday. The newspaper said she would only make nevirapine available because she was forced to do so by the Constitutional Court. Tshabalala-Msimang said she had been misquoted.
A fresh exodus of Afghan refugees could be triggered as early as next month if the United Nations agency assisting in their resettlement runs out of funds and is forced to suspend its aid programme, Western donor nations are being warned.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and the party’s secretary general, Welshman Ncube, could not attend the launch of the African Union (AU) in Durban this week after their had been confiscated by the Zanu-PF.
Through the reinforced glass of his window, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s President, Joseph Kabila, watches the final touches being put to his murdered father’s mausoleum. No wonder he seems tense. ”Being a president,” Kabila says softly, ”you know, it’s a dangerous job.”
The SA Local Government Association and the SA Municipal Workers Union will hold a meeting on Monday in an attempt to bring an 11-day national wage strike to an end.
The discussion document greatly amused African National Congress members at the party’s recent provincial general council in Polokwane, causing a delegate to quip: ”That should rule out Thabo Mbeki along with Cyril Ramaphosa as well.”