South Africa

Twenty five-year-old South African javelin thrower Hardus Pienaar recorded one of his best performances on the international scene when he finished second in the 10th IAAF World Cup meeting in Athens on Sunday with a throw of 83,62m. The event was won by Andreas Thorkildsen, Norway’s world number one, with a throw of 87,17m.

Rita Marley, the widow of late reggae musician Bob Marley, has been falsely using the name of Archbishop Desmond Tutu to garner publicity for a series of concerts she hopes to hold in the country early next year to commemorate the birth of her husband. The Africa Unite programme will be staged in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Glossy university newsletters do not conventionally stimulate deep reflection, far less memories of Stalin. So it’s perhaps a world first for UKZNdaba, the monthly publication for staff and students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. To the unsuspecting eye, the latest edition of UKZNdaba looks as anodyne as any of its genre.

Every day corporations across the globe welcome affluent executives into beautifully maintained, spotlessly clean offices. Few stop to think about the lives of the unseen, poorly paid cleaners who keep their offices this way. This week, workers from around the world stood together to focus attention on the long-running strike by South African cleaning workers.

Over 4 000 community members from the rural town of Vogelfontein in the North West will receive land expropriated by the apartheid government, the North West provincial government said on Sunday. ”Today [Saturday] we all bear witness to the righting of the wrongs, to the return of respect and human dignity to a people who were unjustly robbed of these noble qualities,” said North West premier Edna Molewa.

Developing countries must continue to cooperate to push the United Nations and rich countries into helping them to develop, said President Thabo Mbeki in Cuba on Friday. ”The central task facing all of us is to strengthen South-South co-operation, especially with regard to maintaining the relevance of the organisations and groupings of the South,” said Mbeki.

Opposition MPs have expressed outrage at the final list of nominations for independent communications authority Icasa’s council, which has been passed by the National Assembly. The list contains the names of two current department of communication officials and past councillor Mamodupi Mohlala.

The South African Congress of Trade Unions (Satawu) re-elected Ezrom Mabyana as its president on Friday. June Dube was re-elected first deputy president and Randall Howard the general secretary on the last day of the union’s second national congress in Boksburg.

South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday, in his weekly online newsletter ANC Today, that the upcoming Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) national congress would ”further strengthen the long-standing bonds” between the African National Congress (ANC) and Cosatu. ”As before, the ANC will await with great expectation the results of this important congress,” he said.

South Africa, currently ranked the fourth largest ”new world” wine producer, has seen its exports increase steadily between 2001 and 2005, rising from 177,3-million litres to 281,1-million litres last year, says Tai Collard, managing director of Cape-based direct wine marketer, Wine of the Month Club.

The government should create jobs and provide education and skills development if it is serious about fighting crime, the South African Prisoners’ Organisation for Human Rights (Sapohr) said on Friday. ”The government has a tendency of panicking and looking for a non-existent quick-fix for crime,” said Sapohr president Golden Miles Bhudu.

The United Nations could face ”defiance” from member states if it does not reform to give broader representation to the world’s people, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. Mbeki told the South African Broadcasting Corporation that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council were abusing their power.

A committee tasked with probing divisions within Cosatu will present its findings to the federation’s top leaders at a specially convened meeting on Friday. The committee was constituted last month by Cosatu’s national office bearers. Meanwhile, it is understood that most Cosatu affiliates have withheld their nominations to re-elect president Willie Madisha to his post.