The neon sign outside describes the club as a ”show venue”, but the only people taking to the stage are crooning customers and their scantily-clad escorts. A report last year by the United States State Department placed Japan on a par with Mexico and Laos for its failure to stem the trade in sex workers.
Zimbawe’s parliamentary elections have not been short on political drama. Former Zanu-PF spin doctor and propaganda chief Jonathan Moyo has now been linked to an initiative of setting up a "third political force". According to media reports, Moyo is the perceived leader of a coalition of about 16 independent candidates who will contest the forthcoming elections.
It is best known for the audacity of its campaigns: protest messages stamped on condom packets and bank notes, and pithy postcards to President Robert Mugabe — but who it is, is less apparent. An underground group of anti-government activists, Zvankwana-Sokwanele — "Enough!" in Zimbabwe’s two main languages, Shona and Ndebele — do not operate out of offices with a nameplate on the door.
There’s a lot of baggage associated locally with the word "protest". Generally speaking, it has become a word with a whole bunch of hidden meanings, depending on who is using it. When the government uses it, it tends to be talking about the "good old days" of anti-apartheid protest against the <i>previous</i> government. But things have take a different turn these days …
An earth tremor injured six miners one day before the earthquake that hit DRDGold’s North West operations on Wednesday, trapping 42 mineworkers underground. The National Union of Mineworkers is incensed about the quake and is blaming the mine management, which, said the union, has a "terrible health and safety record".
"The audience was now openly hostile, its mute boredom transformed into a continuous murmur of discontent, like angry bees massing in the heat of summer. He thought he saw the glint of a dagger under a toga. It was time for the pontification to end. Just two more minutes, he thought, and plunged on -" Tom Eaton presents the final instalment of the Dictionary of Received Ideas.
I wrote to the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> two weeks ago to respond to numerous articles that Mike van Graan had written against the Department of Arts and Culture. My article appeared as an edited letter to the editor. The self-appointed "god" of the arts, Van Graan, then had the unfair advantage of responding to my whole article. I find this unethical, writes Director General of the Department of Arts and Culture Itumeleng Mosala.
Syria’s supporters in Lebanon struck back against the ”cedar revolution” this week with a show of strength that easily dwarfed anything their opponents have been able to muster. They drove into Beirut in cars, waving Lebanese flags, and in battered buses decorated with pictures of the Syrian-backed President, Emile Lahoud.
I clearly misunderstood Marlise and, no doubt, the rules of the game. You see, Marlise had started and managed a successful electronic equipment business for nearly a decade in a neighbouring country and was trying to establish herself in South Africa. So through common contacts, she eventually identified the right entrepreneur she would want to partner with to create a BEE company — me!
Thomas is hunched over a car engine, busily dismantling it, his hands covered in grime. He seems so adept that a casual observer might mistake him for a veteran mechanic. But nothing could be further from the truth. Now 21, he has been serving as an apprentice mechanic for a mere six months. For two-and-a-half years before that, he was part of the legion of children living on the streets of Zimbabwe’s urban centres.