Kliptown in Johannesburg erupted recently — and poor service delivery was at the root of the disturbance. Following similar explosions in Deneysville and Metsimaholo in the Free State, Lenasia South, Eldorado Park and the Khutsong area, poor communities have taken to the streets to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with government’s perceived inability to minister to South Africa’s poor.
United States troops are increasingly disillusioned at the continuing ability of insurgents to strike at them — and the longer tours of duty being imposed by Washington, Guardian photographer Sean Smith’s latest film from Iraq reveals.
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A parked car bomb killed 25 people and wounded 115 when it exploded near an intersection in central Baghdad on Thursday and police said the toll was likely to rise as many bodies were still buried under rubble. Bodies lay strewn around the street after the blast, which smashed three buildings into piles of masonry and concrete.
Former South African president FW de Klerk on Thursday denied that he had ever condoned apartheid-era murders or other gross violations of human rights. ”I have not only a clear conscience, I am not guilty of any crime whatsoever,” he said. He was responding to newspaper reports that former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok, who faces prosecution, intends to spill the beans on him.
After being pulled off shelves early on Friday last week following a temporary court interdict, the Mail & Guardian is still unable to report on an explosive final draft of an internal audit report of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). On Thursday, Judge Justice Poswa granted the applicant, a senior SABC executive, a further postponement of the matter.
Lawyers for the alleged British mastermind of a foiled coup in Equatorial Guinea launched an appeal on Thursday against his extradition from Zimbabwe, arguing the move would amount to a death sentence. ”He is so ill he should not be extradited. He will not be able to withstand trial,” Mann’s chief attorney, Jonathan Samkange, told the hearing.
Zimbabwean police concocted accusations of terrorism against an opposition MP and 12 followers based on testimony from non-existent witnesses at a fictional South African farm, a judge has said. Prosecutors had failed to produce the witnesses when ordered to do so and were unable to pinpoint the farm on a map, Justice Lawrence Kamocha said.
The Health Department has rejected claims by the Democratic Alliance (DA) that it was not doing anything to stop the influx of unregulated alternative medicines into the country. Department spokesperson Sibani Mngadi on Thursday said a lot was being done to prevent the distribution of bogus medicines in the country.