A friend from abroad was recently stopped by the police on what was supposed to be a routine check on whether drivers have legitimate licences, carry contraband and so on. Having been satisfied with her licence, the officer suddenly shifted his interest to her complexion. The way South Africans treat Africans from other parts of the continent suggests a deep psychological impairment on a massive scale.
There is a global consensus on the importance of developing trade and the fact that only the World Trade Organisation (WTO), by realising the November 2001 Doha Development Agenda, can push through the development-friendly reforms that are urgently needed. World Trade Organisation secretary general Supachai Panitchpakdi argues that only the WTO can facilitate fair trade.
I wish it were possible to storm the gates of neo-liberal state power in this country, dominated by the ruling African National Congress, and declare a workers’ socialist republic. But I know with certainty that at least for the next decade there will be no such prospect. The ANC is still deeply rooted among the majority black working class and it will take a long time to uproot this support.
When I was 14 and still had the emotional capacity to become prostrate with rage at injustices, both real and imagined, I swore I would always be a Ms. I made my sister swear, too. The logic of the feminist argument was unassailable: all men were Mr, regardless of their marital status — why should women not be accorded the same privacy? But we didn’t know then what a freighted monosyllable Ms would become.
When I first heard the word makwerekwere, I thought I was mistaken for somebody whose name was Makwerekwere. I was having a breakfast on the sunny terrace of Time Square café, a microcosm of the Makwerekwereland that Yeoville, Berea and Hillbrow have become. A man sitting at the next table looked at me and said: ”Good morning Makwerekwere.” He was smiling broadly.
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The South African government is to review finance allocations to public tertiary institutions across the country, with specific attention to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, according to the state news agency BuaNews. It said this is to provide opportunities for higher learning for poor young people.
Israel insisted on Monday that Syria is to blame for a Tel Aviv suicide attack as a car packed with explosives was discovered in the West Bank, casting a shadow over efforts to forge peace in the Middle East. Israeli intelligence briefed European Union ambassadors on its alleged involvement in Friday’s bombing.
Truck drivers ended their six-day strike on Tuesday with the signing of a wage agreement. Supermarket shelves were without many product lines and some petrol stations in Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal were out of fuel by the time the truck drivers’ sometimes violence-marred strike entered its sixth day on Tuesday.
Nearly 4 000 members of one of the half-dozen armed bands operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) violence-ridden Ituri region have begun to lay down their arms in a move hailed as a breakthrough. But the United Nations on Tuesday acccused another group of continuing to commit atrocities in the north-eastern region.