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/ 24 January 2005
South African jazz giant Hugh Masekela played here. So did piano maestro Abdullah Ibrahim. Former United States president Bill Clinton almost did, but declined at the last moment. But now, Kippies, with its high ceilings, arched windows and dark corners, where budding artists have gone on to become legends, is taking a bow.
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/ 24 January 2005
The United States’s most-wanted militant in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on Sunday declared he would wage a ”bitter war” against elections this week in a mounting campaign of intimidation and violence. The warning came as coalition forces and Iraqi officials prepared for the countdown to Sunday’s poll by fine tuning details of the effective ”lockdown” of the country.
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/ 24 January 2005
The politics of social transformation continue to bedevil South African cricket. Good things are happening, but are not communicated as well as they could be. Instead, turbulence and clumsy words deflect any sense of strategic direction. Much of the time it is hard to detect any common vision for transformation in cricket and its place in wider social transformation.
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/ 24 January 2005
The British Army officer, Major Dan Taylor, who devised Operation Ali Baba, will not be disciplined, United Kingdom Ministry of Defence officials said last Wednesday. Taylor who was in charge of the humanitarian aid base Camp Breadbasket, near Basra, told soldiers there to catch the looters who had been stealing food and ”work them hard”.
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/ 24 January 2005
Two Kenyan parliamentarians are winning public support for their proposed legal amendment that repeat sexual offenders be chemically castrated. Adelenia Mwau and Njoki Ndung’u, supported by the other 20 female MPs, will table a Bill to this effect when Parliament reopens next month. Confronted with a marked increase in reported cases of child sexual abuse, there is a public clamour for tougher action against offenders.
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/ 24 January 2005
Civil society groups and anti-debt campaigners in Africa have cautiously welcomed a British proposal for the debt of Africa’s poorest states to be cancelled. While some believe that the proposal is off to a good start, others believe that more specific plans are required. ”For example, how much will Mozambique, where 54% of the population lives in poverty, benefit from the initiative?” asked one researcher.
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/ 24 January 2005
Yes, Prince Harry’s recent donning of a Nazi uniform to a fancy-dress party was a blunder of magnificent proportions. Not so much because a naive young boy cannot be expected to display significant lapses in sensitivity and good taste; no, Harry’s failure must also be partly attributable to those around him — and even the attitudes of a society as a whole.
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/ 24 January 2005
In his letter (”Off-key sweet birds sing the same tune”, January 14), Thabo Mbeki criticised a certain so-called ”sweet bird”, whom he said was ”in favour of change but determined to prevent change”. Tony Leon responds, claiming that Mbeki has revived an old pastime: attacking ”white liberals” and political opposition in general.
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/ 24 January 2005
You can say what you like in the United States media, as long as it helps a Republican president. But slip up once and you will be torn to shreds. The role of the media corporations in the US is similar to that of repressive state regimes elsewhere: they decide what the public will and won’t hear, and either punish or recruit the social deviants who insist on telling a different story.
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/ 24 January 2005
Dynamos pulled off one of the most astonishing comebacks in the history of the Premier Soccer League when they came from three goals down to run out 4-3 winners over home-town rivals Black Leopards at the Giyani Stadium in Polokwane on Sunday.