A smuggled video showing hundreds of thousands of poor Zimbabweans on the move after the government tore down their homes as part of an urban renewal project underlined a call from human rights groups for the campaign to stop. The Zimbabwean government, meanwhile, pledged to build new houses for those it has made homeless.
The elderly Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced on Thursday to 60 years in prison for orchestrating the killing of three young civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964. Killen (80) showed no emotion as he was wheeled out of the courtroom in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in a yellow prison jumpsuit to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Up to 900 000 people have been evacuated in southern China after the worst floods in almost a century killed more than 80 people and wreaked havoc on buildings and crops. With torrential rains forecast to continue until the weekend, the death toll is expected to rise, as is the economic cost, which is currently estimated at 1,7-billion yuan (-million).
Outgoing minister of minerals and energy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka ascends to the second most powerful position in the country with questions on the Oilgate saga still unresolved — and new evidence has emerged that throws doubt on her claim that she adopted a strictly hands-off approach to PetroSA, the parastatal at the centre of the controversy.
Street vendor Fanafuthi Sidi is chuffed that his daily profit has risen from R12 to R40 since competitors in the hit TV show <i>The Apprentice</i> South Africa came visiting. The contestants were given the task of finding a street vendor and increasing his or her turnover.
President Thabo Mbeki has confidently set out his stall with the appointment of his protégé, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, to the deputy presidency. He has opted neither for the seniority of African National Congress national chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota nor the popularity of Trevor Manuel, nor for the trust he places in Sydney Mufamadi.
The African National Congress (ANC) goes into its national general council meeting (NGC) next week facing a convergence of policy debates and leadership battles that is unprecedented in its decade-long rule. Unity — or the lack of it — is likely to colour the entire debate.
A more streamlined, technocratic ANC, with unruly regions and branches brought firmly under the control of Luthuli House, is at the centre of plans to align party structures with those of the government. But the plan is likely to face stiff resistance; some provincial leaders told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> they have already resolved to contest it.
Being a grown-up doesn’t mean you’re too old to love the idea of living in a tree house. Knysna’s Phantom Forest Eco-Reserve offers the ultimate tree-house fantasy. Built overlooking the indigenous forest and an estuarine wetland, these elevated luxury tree-house suites offer the perfect weekend playground.
Some three billion years ago, planetary explosions saw stars fall from the sky into the oceans that flanked Godwanaland, the great land mass of our infant planet. Deep below the waves, the carbon of shattered stars merged with the Earth’s mantle to form hard crystalline diamonds.