Legal loopholes mean that more whales will be killed this year than at any time since 1985 and pro-whaling nations are hoping for the first time to have a majority in favour of resuming the hunting when the International Whaling Commission meets on Monday morning.
The effort to combine work and studies is taking its toll on Desiré Rwamagana, a Rwandan refugee who lives in South Africa’s commercial hub, Johannesburg. ”Refugee life is hard. I work in the daytime and go to college in the evening. By the end of the day, I get so exhausted that I can’t even do my homework,” he said.
Beauty is … an 18-year-old girl in pink stilettos, walking to the sound of her own confident giggle. A native of Krugersdorp, Beauty Ramoroka exudes self-assurance and exuberance. She doesn’t subscribe to the popular concept of beauty that condemns plump, dark-skinned women. She, like many other South African women, is redefining ”pretty”.
The African National Congress (ANC) will have to ”look after” Jacob Zuma as long as he remains its deputy president, ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said on Sunday. Zuma lost his salary of about R800Â 000 and perks when President Thabo Mbeki sacked him as the country’s deputy president on Tuesday.
Members of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are turning Johannesburg into a bloody battlefield as they jostle for positions in the party’s structures, City Press newspaper reported on Sunday. This has prompted the MDC to send a ”high-powered” delegation to South Africa to try and defuse the situation, the newspaper said.
Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher emerged with the victory in a United States Grand Prix that fell little short of farce on on Sunday after the withdrawal of 14 Formula One cars running on suspect Michelin tyres left only six cars in the race. All seven of the teams supplied by Michelin formed up on the grid, but were back in the pits at the end of the warm-up lap.
New Zealander Michael Campbell held off a charging Tiger Woods to win the 105th US Open on Sunday. The 36-year-old Kiwi finished level par 70 for the day and level par 280 for the championship to beat Woods by two strokes. It was a stunning showing by Campbell, who began the day four shots back of third-round leader and defending champion Retief Goosen.
His loyal fans were there along with his mother and his brother. Even one of the jurors who last week cleared him of child molestation charges had turned up. In fact the only person missing from the celebration of thanks for Michael Jackson’s acquittal was Michael Jackson.
Paul Wolfowitz, the new head of the World Bank and close ally of United States President George Bush, said on Sunday he was returning from a week-long trip to Africa to urge the Bush administration to help fund a big aid push for the continent, saying he regarded it as being on the move and full of real partners with whom the west could work.
South Africa’s richly plural civil society was forged in the struggle for liberation, but over the past five years its impact on policy and legislation has become less effective than it should be. The African National Congress has made the shift from liberation movement to governing party, but civil society has not quite figured out how to move beyond its old, oppositional role, writes Yasmin Sooka of the Black Sash.