The Development Bank of Southern Africa has approved loans to the value of R25-billion over the past 10 years to finance development in the region. The bank, which describes itself as a financier, adviser and partner in development funding, estimates that since democracy its work has benefited four million households and created, with other funders, 527 874 jobs.
For those largely unfamiliar with Congolese history, a list of people who have shaped the country’s past might include no more than two or three names. Patrice Lumumba and Mobutu Sese Seko would certainly feature; perhaps Laurent Kabila as well. In years to come, however, the names of three Congolese women might become equally well known.
South Africa has significantly improved regulation on insider trading over the past five years, but successful criminal prosecutions remain elusive, said analysts last week. They were reacting to a survey undertaken for the Financial Services Board by Genesis Analytics, which found that the impact of the overhauled insider regime was pronounced.
The story of Sharpeville-born, Lesotho-raised Tebello Nyokong suggests that sometimes adversity is the best career counsellor. Nyokong won the Science and Technology category in this year’s prestigious 2004 Shoprite Checkers/SABC2 Women of the Year Award for her research in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Yet her path, from childhood, was strewn with obstacles.
We must acknowledge that people have sex, that we enjoy sex. Working from that premise we can focus on reducing high risk sexual behaviour as opposed to stopping sexual practices.We also need an international campaign to focus on the demands of poor women, who bear the brunt of debauched policies like those of the Bush administration. So why is George W Bush taking women back to the dark ages?
While most Latin American countries have not yet experienced large-scale HIV/Aids, recent trends suggest the disease could reach pandemic proportions in the region unless its nations step up prevention-promotion measures.
Dark knees, firm breasts, an intact hymen — inconclusive but satisfactory ways of speculating about a girl’s virginity. Virginity testing is, for the most part, a well-intentioned attempt to promote abstinence and abate the spread of the HIV/Aids pandemic. But reviving an age-old cultural practice to promote abstinence will do more harm than good for women’s sexuality.
The Zimbabwean media have degenerated into a state of chaos, with clear polarisation along party political lines, according to a report by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa). The Institute sent a delegation from Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia to Zimbabwe to examine the state of media freedom in the country in the run up to parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2005.
When the Olympic Games start in Athens this month, former Robben Island prisoners will remember their own Summer Games. The torch that started the Robben Island Olympics was a Molotov cocktail made by the prisoners out of a glass lampshade filled with earth and combustible oil. Robben Island’s inmates were the ultimate sports heroes, writes Romi Bryden.
Writers, politicians and filmmakers from more than a dozen countries have offered their support to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who faces a referendum this month on his future. The group have signed a manifesto saying that if they were Venezuelan they would vote for Chavez in what will be a volatile contest. Signatories include Argentinian Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Perez, and politician Ken Livingstone.