South Africa

Renaming South Africa’s main airport after a liberator like late African National Congress president OR Tambo keeps the country’s memories alive, said President Thabo Mbeki on Friday. ”This renaming ceremony is about our memory of ourselves,” said Mbeki. ”If we do not know who we have been, we will not know who we will be.”

The United Nation’s food agency on Thursday said a huge gap in funding could see food aid cut to up to 4,3-million people in the Southern Africa region. ”The -million funding shortfall comes just as the annual ‘lean season’ approaches, when people have to wait until next March or April for the next harvest,” a statement by the World Food Programme said.

Disgruntled taxi drivers were blocking roads and causing a major traffic congestion in the Pretoria city centre, Tshwane metro police said on Friday morning. ”All roads leading into the city centre have been blocked by a massive entourage of taxi drivers going in and taxi drivers are ignoring all traffic signals,” said spokesperson Mel Vosloo.

Harold Manciya flies across the dance floor, his arms winding in every direction while his legs remain completely still — dead still. Left disabled after a plough fell on his back when he was a child, Manciya has been a paraplegic for 20 years. At 31, he has participated in wheelchair basketball and long-distance walking by wheelchair, and started his own kwaito band.

Did the contractor controversially paid R100-million by the Post Office to revamp its branches do private favours for executives of the para­statal — including its then-CEO, Maanda Manyatshe? Manyatshe, now boss of cellphone giant MTN, denies a ”corrupt relationship” with the contractor, Vision Design House (VDH).

Two suspected rapists were pulled from police vans, castrated, beaten and stoned to death in the Durban township of kwaMashu on Thursday. The Witness website reported on Friday that the victims were thought to have been part of a gang of rapists who terrorised kwaMashu, attacking 12 families in a single street.

Talk Radio 702 presenter Tim Modise has been appointed executive director of communications and commercial affairs for the 2010 Soccer World Cup Local Organising Committee, station manager Pheladi Gwangwa said on Thursday. Modise, who hosts the 9am to midday slot on Talk Radio 702 and 567 Cape Talk, will take up the post in January.

Many commuters will be left stranded on Friday morning as Johannesburg taxi operators join those in Pretoria for a march to the Union Buildings, the National Taxi Alliance said. Operators will be protesting against the proposed taxi recapitalisation process due to start from Saturday, said spokesperson Sicelo Mabaso on Thursday.

South Africa has lost too many irreplaceable stars, mourners said at a memorial service for singer Lebo Mathosa on Thursday. ”I just think we’re losing too many stars, and for pointless reasons,” said South African music veteran PJ ”Thandeka” Powers at the service, held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg.

Two Nigerian stowaways who survived an eight-day voyage from the Côte d’Ivoire on the outside of a car-carrier ship arrived in Port Elizabeth with about a cupful of water left. The National Sea Rescue Institute said on Thursday one was clutching a bottle with about 300ml of water left in it, which had to be prised from his hand.

Millions of people in Southern Africa face food shortages after rich countries failed to meet money pledges, the United Nations food agency said on Thursday. The World Food Programme said a -million gap in funds has forced it to cut aid to up to 4,3-million people in Southern Africa. That included aid to mother and child nutrition centres, school feeding projects and schemes targeting HIV/Aids.

A Zimbabwean man has spent nine years in prison waiting to be tried for murder, Harare’s Herald newspaper reported on Thursday. Its website said a visiting judge found Marko Simakani in a remand prison last week, and he finally appeared in the High Court in Harare on Tuesday.

South Africa will enhance peacekeeping and conflict resolution in Africa while serving on the United Nations Security Council, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Wednesday. She said at the London School of Economics that the government’s vision for a prosperous, peaceful, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and united Africa would influence its work on the council.