Justine Nofal

If the history of Nafta is anything to go by, the Southern African Customs Union countries are in for a torrid time if the United States succeeds in closing a similar agreement with them. NGOs in Washington have warned the Sacu countries about the implications of a free trade agreement.

The IDC has been in touch with the World Bank and IMF over the funding of black empowerment in South Africa’s mining industry. The move is likely to prove controversial within the ruling alliance, many of whose members accuse the bank and IMF of undermining Third World development.

South Africa’s floundering currency is driving food prices higher and feeding inflation — and prices are expected to continue their upward spiral into next year as the effects of the rand’s weakness intensify. Further increases in the cost of basic foods are expected to deepen the desperation.

Heather Hill, public information officer for the United Nations World Food Programme in Johannesburg, where the food distribution logistics are grinding into action, said donors were responding slowly to an appeal in July for $507-million to feed the 10,2-million people at risk.

The International Red Cross says the famine in Southern Africa is the worst food emergency in the world since the Balkan crisis in the 1990s. Yet the food emergency affecting Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique is a different type of scourge.

A Benoni farmer has asked the Pretoria High Court to enforce an order handed down in the Witwatersrand High Court to evict 6 000 families squatting illegally on his farm. The sheriff of the Court told the farmer that he would have to pay R1,8-million to remove the 40 000 squatters.

A Xhosa initiation school graduate, on condition of anonymity, breaks the silence surrounding this tradition: <i>’Ndiyindoda!</i>" I shout on cue. I am a man. In split seconds the <i>ingcibi</i>, a traditional surgeon, crouching between my thighs severs my foreskin.

Large-scale "white" agriculture this week voiced disbelief and confusion over government moves to reintroduce controls over agricultural markets.
The planned policy switch was welcomed by the National African Farming Union.