A Zimbabwe Foreign Ministry official gatecrashed the United States embassy’s July 4 celebrations on Wednesday to criticise outgoing ambassador Christopher Dell, saying ”diplomats are supposed to be bridge builders not bridge busters”. Samuel Mhango criticised Dell for remarks he made in an address on Wednesday on the assault by police of opposition leaders in Harare.
The last hour of captivity for Alan Johnston was perhaps the worst. His guard burst into his room in the early hours of Wednesday morning and told him to get dressed. His regular captor, "an extraordinarily moody man with dark rages", had been joined by some new gunmen who looked "totally wired".
Just as the London bombs in the summer of 2005 were Blair’s bombs, the inevitable consequence of his government’s lawless attack on Iraq, so the potential bombs in the summer of 2007 are Brown’s bombs. Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor as prime minister, has been an unerring supporter of the unprovoked bloodbath whose victims now equal those of the Rwandan genocide.
Lesotho has an estimated HIV/Aids prevalence of 30%, the third highest in the world, as well as alarming rates of tuberculosis. Without fully fledged and all-encompassing aid, the entire Basotho nation is set to be extinct within 30 years. Thijs van der Post travels to Lesotho’s mountains to meet those who are trying to make a difference.
Much tighter control of the spies at the National Intelligence Agency is needed to prevent them from abusing their broad domestic security mandate, civil society and media groups have told a ministerial review commission, set up by Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils in the wake of the ”hoax email” and illegal surveillance scandals.
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The only people who said crime was out of control in the Western Cape were the Democratic Alliance, Western Cape provincial community safety minister Leonard Ramatlakane said on Wednesday. He said calls for him to step down were ”frivolous” and something to which he would not respond.
There are no major safety concerns about nuclear waste management in South Africa, the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) said in Cape Town on Wednesday. NNR Nuclear Technology and waste programme manager Thiagan Pather was speaking at a public participation forum.
While many people dread Friday the 13th, for father and son Norman and Patrick Pieterse it may just be their lucky day. On July 13, Cape Town Regional Court magistrate Johnny Vermeulen is to pronounce them guilty — or not -– of aggravated armed robbery.
The Afrikaner enclave of Orania and the Northern Cape government have agreed that Orania’s quest for self-determination should be discussed at all government levels. Chairperson of the Orania representative council Prinsloo Potgieter said this was the outcome of a meeting between the council and premier Dipuo Peters.