Poland tops the house-price growth league in Europe, but the runaway global leader is South Africa, where average prices have almost tripled in five years. During the early post-apartheid days, British and German buyers picked up properties along Cape Town’s Atlantic seaboard at bargain prices — and are now sitting on a fortune.
Recently, judges in Uganda went on strike to protest against government interference with the judiciary. The strike action followed government security agents’ raid on the high court in Kampala to arrest six opposition supporters. The six men, members of the Forum for Democratic Change led by Kizza Besigye, had been granted bail after being accused of planning a coup and of being members of the People’s Redemption Army.
South Africa is investigating two main sources of biofuel, maize and sugar, and already proponents are starting to square off. The windfalls task team has recommended investment incentives for the manufacture of biofuels, or liquid fuels from indigenous raw materials, excluding crude oil and natural gas.
Across the world, experience has shown that film can only survive with state support. A raft of public sector initiatives to increase the volumes and quality of South African film, television programming and audio-visual material created for new media is on the cards.
Everybody knows that Trevor Manuel is sitting on a pile of money. As he told us in his recent budget speech, he is expecting that pile to be worth R11-billion this year.
But this is only the budgeted surplus for government departments. If government’s wider interests are added – including, among others, social security funds — the budgeted surplus for the year increases by more than 50% .
A strong link between droughts and violent civil conflicts in the developing world bodes ill for an increasingly thirsty world, say scientists, who warn that drought-related conflicts are expected to multiply with advancing climate change. "Severe, prolonged droughts are the strongest indicator of high-intensity conflicts," said Marc Levy of the Centre for International Earth Science Information Network .
Europe became the world leader in tackling climate change recently, when 27 governments agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and commit the European Union to generating a fifth of its energy from renewable sources within 13 years. Greenpeace has hailed it as the biggest decision taken to fight global warming since the Kyoto protocol 10 years ago.
It is easy to think the worst of Americans. Perhaps you have just read that they are indulging a new trend — that of separate sleeping quarters for married people. Aha! you think. They are craven, status-driven warthogs, who simply wish to flaunt their wealth by the incredible amount of space they can take up because their houses are so huge. Or maybe it is the snoring.
To drive social change that makes a real difference in the lives of people living in poverty in Southern Africa, we need to transform the way we do business. Innovative attitudes and practices of organisations and individuals that create change, especially by developing and implementing policies and strategies to end poverty in Southern Africa, can now be nominated for the Drivers of Change Award.
When last did you hear a good-news story coming out of Darfur? For that matter, have you ever heard a good-news story from there? Well, I’ve got one. In the South Darfur city of Nyala, there is a small group of Sudanese men and women who risks life and limb each day to deliver humanitarian information over the radio to the millions of displaced persons in the region.