<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=zuma_report"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/243078/zuma.jpg" align=left border=0></a>"I wish I knew how it would feel to be free. I wish I could break all the chains holding me. I wish I could say all the things that I should say." The Lighthouse Family song, played during former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s video presentation at Congress of South African Trade Unions’s central committee meeting this week, was intended to express ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma’s predicament as he faces a corruption trial.
It would be a mistake to dismiss Israel’s dissolution of its settlements in the Gaza Strip as an irrelevancy, as some supporters of the Palestinian cause are prone to do. There is a powerful symbolism to the spectacle of Israeli troops cracking down on recalcitrant settlers, and in the fact that the architect of the withdrawals, was a prime mover behind the settlements after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Telecoms group Telkom has announced the appointment of Transnet group executive Leapeetswe (Papi) Molotsane as its new chief executive officer. Molotsane, whose appointment is effective from September 1, replaces current CEO Sizwe Nxasana.
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where you should be. Now put the foundations under them." What I like about these words by Henry David Thoreau is that he reminds us of the value of having dreams to work towards.
As a generation of young Swazi women ended a five-year vow of chastity in a traditional ceremony this week, health officials are debating the impact of the custom on reducing the risk of HIV infection.
A burglar who broke into an office in Portugal last week, making off with a portable safe that contained just €10 (about R79), returned over the weekend to leave a note apologising for the theft, the Lusa news agency reported on Sunday. The envelope with the note was slipped into the mailbox of the office.
Lions at a safari park in the north of England are prowling after Smart cars, in the apparent belief that the boxy little two-seat European city cars are worthy prey. Visitors to Knowsley Safari Park in Smart cars have discovered that the lions are paying them particular interest.
A Colombian plane with 160 people on board crashed on Tuesday in the mountains of western Venezuela, leaving no survivors. The West Caribbean Airways plane, on a flight from Panama to Martinique in the French West Indies, came down in a remote zone in the Sierra de Perija mountains.
Old Mutual Healthcare and Kwacha, the holding company of 100% black-owned Sizwe Medical Services, have announced the proposed merger of their businesses that will result in the health-care subsidiary of Old Mutual being 36% black-owned, after taking into account its black economic empowerment (BEE) deal announced in April this year.
Listed gaming and hotels group Johnnic Holdings has urged its shareholders to reject an offer by Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI), arguing that the offer, which undervalues Johnnic shares, is lower than the current share price and would deny Johnnic shareholders participation in the potential upside.
A common approach involving the Zimbabwean private sector and political parties was needed on the pending loan agreement between South Africa and Zimbabwe, said South African deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad on Tuesday. Pahad was briefing the media in Pretoria on the ministerial meeting and Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit.
The black economic empowerment deal concluded by Aflease Gold and Uranium Resources earlier this year will contribute to empowerment in the communities where the group’s assets are located, according to Neal Froneman, the group’s CEO.
Allied Technologies (Altech) CEO Craig Venter announced on Monday that the JSE Securities Exchange-listed company has $100-million "at the ready" and could willingly buy, within 48 hours, the remaining 50% that the Econet Wireless group holds in Econet Wireless Global.
Specialist chemicals group Omnia on Monday announced its intention to apply to become eligible for emission-reduction projects under the Kyoto Protocol, which came into effect on February 16. In terms of the protocol, industrialised countries are given limitations on the amounts of greenhouse gases they can emit.
The shareholders in South Africa’s second national operator (SNO) on Monday signed a shareholders’ agreement, pursuant to the issuance of the public switched telecommunication service licence by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa.
Nedbank’s innovative bonus-share scheme for black retail clients, introduced as part of the Nedbank group’s black economic empowerment (BEE) transaction, opened to the public on Monday. Nedbank is the first bank to include clients as beneficiaries in a BEE transaction.
They’re still playing that ridiculous "Arrive Alive" ad on the radio. The one that says something along the lines of "If you run over a pedestrian you WILL be charged with culpable homicide, whether it’s your fault or not!" That’s balderdash, and they know it. Only if it could be proved that you contributed to the "accident" through negligent or reckless driving could you be charged with culpable homicide.
"When the dust has settled in Sydney on Saturday, expect to see the Wallabies firmly back in the Tri-Nations picture. Two weeks have passed since Eddie Jones and his squad flew back home after a mauling in South Africa, and let no one tell you the man who is officially rugby’s smartest coach has spent all this time tearing out his hair in frustration," writes Rob Davies.
Originally marketed for medical students, a life-sized skeleton paper doll has proved a hit in Japan among people who have time on their hands and want to piece together the human body. Like a human, "Bony" has about 200 bones and it takes a grown-up three days to finish reconstructing the doll.
A French amateur psychic’s powers of prediction were under sharp scrutiny after his crystal ball started an inferno that burnt out his flat, a British newspaper reported on Friday. The fortune-telling device caused a fire that destroyed two other flats and rendered several more uninhabitable, <i>The Times</i> said.
<b>AUTHOR’S NOTES:</b> By day, Nadine Botha is the listings editor of the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>. By night, she is a poet, whose debut collection, <i>Ants Moving the House Millimetres</i>, has just been published, she spoke to ZA@Play.
<i>Chicago</i>, the musical, now dancing on the Cape leg of its local tour, is at once a celebration of the exceptional talent and artistic skill in our country, writes Mike van Graan.
If anyone has ever had a raw deal from the print media it is this wretched man, Lawrence Mushwana. Just like many other victims of the poisoned word processors of today’s journalists, our Public Protector has recently been all but hanged, drawn and quartered in a series of viciously unbalanced newspaper articles.
An empowerment consortium led by former justice minister Penuell Maduna is poised to take a R2,5-billion stake in Uhambo, the fuel refining and retail giant that will be created if Sasol’s fuel business is permitted to merge with Engen. Maduna is expected shortly to announce the structure of his Tshwarino consortium.
South Africa needs to achieve "significantly higher rates" of economic growth if it is to succeed in meeting the needs of the people, President Thabo Mbeki has told trade unionists. He said one of the issues being studied by his government was import parity pricing as it affected the chemical industry.
The godfather of canned hunting in South Africa was a Portuguese man who owned a game farm in northern KwaZulu-Natal in the 1970s. He had a nice little scam going with Gauteng zoos, which sold him "surplus" wild animals. He took them in the back of his car to a piece of open veld in the Magaliesberg for "hunters" to shoot.
So, you have a little bit of money and you want to go someplace. You can either rely on the glossy handouts from your local travel agency, or you can do a little bit of online snooping in advance — and create the mother of all trips for yourself. But let’s look at local prices briefly, which are sufficient reason for projectile vomiting all by themselves.
President Thabo Mbeki and his government are desperately trying to limit public embarrassment over the widely publicised political conditions they have reportedly attached to an emergency bail-out for President Robert Mugabe. They should have followed the diplomatic principle enunciated by classical Greek dramatist Euripides.
A puppeteer in Britain has been rapped for portraying Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein as villains, a report said on Wednesday. American-born Brent de Witt (41) has been scolded for using the pair’s characters in the traditional children’s puppet play <i>Punch and Judy</i>.
New Dutch commercial television channel Talpa is planning to broadcast a show called <i>I Want Your Child and Nothing Else</i> featuring a single woman who gets to choose a sperm donor to father her child, Dutch media reported on Wednesday. The program is initially a one-off that will be aired on August 23.
Momentum plans to entrench its position as a significant player in the health industry with the proposed acquisition of African Life Health, the group said on Wednesday. Momentum announced earlier on Wednesday that it has agreed to sell its 34% shareholding in African Life to Sanlam at a price of R882-million.
A recent survey has uncovered mixed feelings about HIV vaccines. One of the discoveries was that several people believe an HIV vaccine already exists.