Most South Africans are proud to be South African, but race relations remain fraught, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has found. The findings, in the council’s <i>South African Social Attitudes Survey</i>, raise the question of whether an overarching national identity really matters for the formation of a united, non-racist society, said the HSRC’s Marlene Roefs.
Germany’s Green party environment minister said on Monday that Britain should emulate Germany’s example and build thousands more wind turbines if it wanted to prevent climate change. Britain has agreed to increase dramatically its own wind farm programme, as a means of achieving 10% of energy needs from renewable sources by 2010.
Gay rights groups in California were celebrating victory in the latest round of the protracted struggle over gay marriage on Monday after a judge in San Francisco ruled that the state’s ban on homosexual marriage was unconstitutional. ”The denial of marriage to same-sex couples appears impermissibly arbitrary,” said Richard Kramer, a San Francisco superior court judge.
Relations between Japan and South Korea neared breaking point on Monday over renewed claims by Tokyo to sovereignty over a cluster of uninhabited islands in the Sea of Japan. Faced with continued violent protests in Seoul — during which two women cut off their fingers — Japan recalled its ambassador to South Korea, Toshiyuki Takano.
The ordeal began with a gun in the ribs in the middle of the night. By morning, after a pancake breakfast, the man accused of killing four in an Atlanta courthouse rampage was offering to hang curtains in his hostage’s flat, and she was an American hero.
A five-year-old boy in southern China survived a fall from a sixth floor apartment when his trousers snagged on a washing line, a news report said on Tuesday. The boy, who fell after climbing to a window of the apartment, was snagged by the trousers and suspended upside down outside an apartment on the fifth floor.
For all United States President George W Bush’s courting of Europe, when it comes to women’s rights he is closer to Iran and Syria than the European Union. In 1995 representatives from 189 countries met in Beijing and agreed on a programme on women’s equality and human rights — the Beijing platform for action. But the US has refused to support it unless it is amended to exclude the right to abortion.
The Western Cape created 194 000 new jobs in the three years before 2003. But the official unemployment rate increased to 26,1%, or by 612 000 people, according to this year’s provincial budget documentation. The rate in 2000 was 22,6%, according to the <i>Provincial Economic Review and Outlook</i>, tabled last Tuesday with the Western Cape budget.
Children outside a primary school in Cape Town were approached on Tuesday by animal activists who are trying to persuade young people to stop eating chicken. The activists use cards depicting the downside of chicken consumption. The campaign coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals spoke to the Mail & Guardian Online.
I am writing this as a white middle-class professional woman, a lawyer, a slightly detribalised Afrikaner from a long line of respected nationalists — racists, by their own admission, also patriots in their own way. One of the lingering questions for me is, why whites, who claim not to be racist, object so vehemently to allegedly false accusations of racism?