There have been some odd happenings in South African sport during the course of the 21st century. Take the case of cricketer Jacques Rudolph, who made his debut for the Proteas against India in 2001, only for the ICC retrospectively to strip the game of its Test match status.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika asked the army on Thursday to step up attacks on Islamist rebels, saying they were ”enemies of the people”. ”As armed forces commander in chief, I want the fight against residual terrorism doubled in intensity,” the official APS news agency quoted him as saying.
A child was born with four legs at the Lebowakgomo hospital outside Polokwane on Thursday night, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reports. Provincial health department spokesperson Phuthi Seloba said: ”This is a very strange case. In the past 10 years in this province we’ve never seen such a case.”
An illegal stash of mining explosives was probably to blame for a nightclub blast that killed at least 25 people in north-east China, media reports said on Friday. The explosion ripped through the Liaoning province club, killing at least 25 and injuring 41, including eight young girls holding a birthday party.
With strikes looming in the gold mining, coal mining, metal and other major industries, potentially involving hundreds of thousands of workers, 2007 is already the most strike-plagued year since the 1994 election. Jackie Kelly, of the labour consultancy Andrew Levy Employment, disclosed this week that 11-million working days had been lost to industrial action this year.
Zimbabweans are switching to barter, payment in kind and the use of foreign currencies, such as the rand, instead of the local dollar to survive hyperinflation and the accelerating economic meltdown. Zimbabwe’s currency is still pegged officially at Z$250 to one US dollar; recently the informal market price was about Z$130 000 to US$1, although two weeks ago it had crashed to Z$400 000 against the US dollar.
Once upon a time, chocolate lovers had it easy. Lunchbar or Bar One? Flake or Sweety Pie? Or, perhaps, an Inside Story. Splashing out meant buying a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray or Côte d’Or for your hostess at a dinner party. No longer. A sustained economic boom and growing affluence has seen an explosion of premium chocolates available in South Africa.
At about 4pm on Tuesday afternoon a casual observer might have thought things were back to normal in Refenkgotso, a small township in Deneysville, just south of the Vaal river. The previous morning’s rioting by a mob numbering a few hundred people had left a local ANC councillor dead and a municipal building partially burnt and vandalised. But by the next day, children were playing pick-up soccer games or huddling around braziers as usual.
Women are slowly beginning to make their mark in wage bargaining on the mines, territory that has long been dominated by men. Dr Elize Strydom, the chief negotiator at the Chamber of Mines, is one of the few female negotiators who is making her presence felt inside the bargaining rooms.
The SACP in Gauteng has nominated its provincial secretary, Zico Tamela, to challenge Blade Nzimande for the general secretary’s post in a move calculated to embarrass Nzimande. The SACP will elect new leaders at its national conference that takes place at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth from next Wednesday to Saturday.