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/ 10 February 2005
Skint, depressed and with moneylenders banging on his door, Muhammad Iqbal decided four months ago to transform his fortunes by selling his last valuable possession — a kidney. The labourer went to the motorway that runs past his one-room house and took a bus to Rawalpindi, the home of Pakistan’s powerful military.
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/ 10 February 2005
Israel is to lift roadblocks around some West Bank cities to permit freer movement and will take other steps to ease controls on Palestinians as both sides seek to build on the newly announced ceasefire. Easing the restrictions on movement would provide tangible relief from one of the most bitterly resented impositions of the occupation.
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/ 10 February 2005
South African food group Tiger Brands said on Thursday that it has repurchased a further 2Â 500Â 212 Tiger Brands ordinary shares — or 1,49% of the issued ordinary shares — on the open market on the JSE Securities Exchange. The shares are valued at R472,418-million.
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/ 10 February 2005
When Napoleon Adok was 16 years old he saw his best friend blown to bits next to him. That was when he decided he had had enough of being a soldier. But he was not allowed to leave. Deserters were put in front of a firing squad, no matter how young they were. Napoleon was one of hundreds of thousands of child soldiers in Africa and the rest of the world. His story is not unique.
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/ 10 February 2005
Former Eastern Cape agriculture MEC Max Mamase should be criminally charged, the Grahamstown-based Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) said on Wednesday. PSAM director Colm Allan also urged Mamase’s wife, provincial social development MEC Neo Moerane-Mamase, to follow his example and quit.
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/ 10 February 2005
An advertisement on the SABC’s website for a weekend screenwriting workshop at something called The Writing Studio triggered a fierce debate in the Dorsbult Bar. ”Write the next great South African film,” read the headline, setting the cat among the pigeons. What, the manne asked, had happened to the first great South African film? How had it slipped past unseen?
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/ 10 February 2005
Ariel Sharon was probably more surprised than most to find himself sitting next to the Palestinian leader on Tuesday declaring the Israeli army ”will cease all its military activity against all Palestinians anywhere”. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected as the new Palestinian President a month ago, even those Israeli officials sympathetic to his pledge to end four years of bloody intifada doubted he could do it. A ceasefire is the first step — but will the chance for peace be grasped?
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/ 9 February 2005
The case between the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) and four political parties being heard in court on Thursday seeks to make public the records of donations in excess of R50Â 000 to these parties. Idasa wants the parties to disclose their private donors, the amount involved and conditions under which the donation was made.
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/ 9 February 2005
Spoon-bending entertainer Uri Geller was set to appear before the august Oxford Union debating society on Wednesday to prove he really is a psychic, the union has announced. Geller (58) has offered to fix, under the watchful eye of a special camera, any broken watches that members of the union may have.