"The city boasts new shopping centres, new restaurants and new university buildings, but poverty is still one of the overriding impressions of this settler town, where everyone and their grandmother is a car guard." Mike van Graan reflects on the context of the National Arts Festival.
"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday " — Alexander Pope (1688 to 1744). By happy synchronicity, the above quotation popped up on the Wordsmith website the very morning I was starting on this column. It couldn’t have been better suited to my subject.
At this week’s annual gathering of leaders of the most troubled continent on the globe, a little change — better still, reduction — in conflict would have been welcome. But there they were again in Addis Ababa. The usual suspects. Sudan and DRC emerged at the top of the African Union’s list of hot spots.
Seven soccer officials appeared in courts in Polokwane and Bloemfontein on Thursday after being arrested during the police crackdown on football match-fixing. Twenty-nine soccer officials have been arrested so far in the investigation into match-fixing and corruption requested by the South African Football Association.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118388">Soccer refs ‘didn’t sleep at home'</a>
Patients in the emerging health-care market — notably in urban townships and rural areas — will in future have less accessibility to the medicines that are becoming more affordable to them in the wake of new government legislation. This is the contention of Johannesburg-based empowerment group Amalgamated Healthcare.
Ten-year-old Molin considers the streets of Zimbabwe’s capital her home. She’s not alone. Research by a Harare-based NGO, Futures International, in May 2004 indicated that at least 12 000 children eke out a living on the country’s highways and byways. They have become part of the decaying infrastructure of Zimbabwe’s towns.
The call has come from the land of the free, the United States, for election observers for the US electoral process this autumn. The US-based human rights group Global Exchange plans to host at least 28 independent, international monitors as part of its Fair Elections initiative. The monitors will apply internationally developed standards of electoral fairness to investigate and report on issues of concern to the US electorate.
The International Monetary Fund has delayed Zimbabwe’s possible expulsion for unpaid debt, giving the southern African country six months to turn around its economy. Zimbabwe, which has been gripped by severe economic problems for the past six years, was facing possible expulsion as a member of the fund over unpaid debt amounting to about $290-million by February.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=118381">AU to suppress Zimbabwe report</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=118354">Robert Mugabe’s reign of terror</a>
The first phase of the establishment of South Africa’s R400-million Dreamworld film studio project has commenced, as bush is cleared on the site near Faure, about 20km from Cape Town. Dreamworld, which won a government tender to set up the studio earlier this year, has an ownership structure comprising acclaimed South African film maker Anant Singh and local television station etv.
The confidence levels of South African retailers soared to a 16-year high of 80 index points in the second quarter of 2004, jumping 15 points from 65 index points during the first quarter of the year, according to the results from the latest Bureau for Economic Research retail survey.
They are the institutions of hope and aspiration that have become soiled and bedraggled. With a trail of many tragic millions of rands wasted, and of human and institutional failure, it is time to take a hard look at whether we need the National Development Agency, the National Empowerment Fund, the loan guarantee agency Khula and the enterprise promotion agency Ntsika — at least in their present form.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Tuesday appealed for food aid, saying many parts of his country are experiencing food shortages because of inadequate rainfall, his office said. Kibaki insisted that his government will ensure that food aid reaches those affected.
The finalisation of a $400-million debt and equity arrangement for the Moma titanium minerals project in the Nampula Province on the north eastern coast of Mozambique will provide a major boost to the South African government’s commitment to the sustainable development of the African region.
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria has awarded Russia a two-year, $34,2- million grant for treatment.
Bidvest, the industrial group with interests in distribution, service and trading businesses, on Tuesday announced that it is to separate the role of chairperson and chief executive while launching a major new black economic empowerment (BEE) initiative.
The situation in Diepsloot remained tense after violence in the area on Monday, the police and members of the South African Civic Association (Sanco) said on Tuesday. "The situation is very bad for now. What I see is people running through the streets," said Nkosana Dube, the spokesperson for Sanco in Diepsloot.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118259">Rubber bullets fly in Diepsloot</a>
Botswana launched a stinging attack on Tuesday on the human rights group supporting San Bushmen in a land claim in the desert Southern African country, calling it a "fund-raising gimmick". Judges continued inspections in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve,where the Bushmen lived before they were evicted in 1997.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118200">Bushmen land claim ‘nonsense'</a>
South Africa and United Kingdom-listed SABMiller, one of the world’s largest brewers by volume plans to sell its entire 21% stake in South African retailer Edgars Consolidated Stores (Edcon) via a private placement beginning on Monday, the group said in a statement.
For Zambia’s urban poor, accessing clean drinking water is a wearisome daily grind that takes up time and saps energy. For thousands of residents in Kaloko, a shanty township on the southern outskirts of Ndola, in the central Copperbelt region, fetching water had meant waking up by 5am, a six kilometre roundtrip to the neighbouring township of Mushili, and a struggle to keep one’s place in the queue at a rowdy communal tap.
At last, a column that doesn’t start off by mentioning Zimbabwe in the first sentence. Oh. Oops. (Hmm, they’re saying the problems in Zim are a strictly internal matter. If the world had said that about South Africa, the African National Congress would still be begging on the streets of Lusaka and being laughed at. Kids, can you say "hypocritical double standards"?) But let’s start off this week with a geeky bang …
The South African Revenue Service (Sars) is set to clamp down on taxpayers who fail to reflect accurately and honestly details relating to the travel section on their tax return forms, the receiver said in a statement on Monday. A Sars spokesperson said some taxpayers have been dishonest when furnishing travel-specific information.
Here’s an interesting scenario. Imagine that someone arrived at your farm one day and suddenly declared it to be someone else’s farm. "Colonialism," you’d say. Let it ride. This kind of thing is happening all the time. What can you do about it, anyway? What can anyone ever do about colonial conquest? Shit happens.
Solidarity and the National Union of Mineworkers on Friday handed over a memorandum to Anglo Platinum management at its base metals refinery in Rustenburg. AngloPlat ignored an agreement that was signed with the unions earlier this year and decided to implement a bonus of 18% instead of the agreed upon 30%, Solidarity said.
The Sontanga Quartet joins hands with Alex van Heerden and Derek Gripper to try to explore the traditional Afrikaans music of the Western Cape, while using contemporary classical and jazz idioms.
A tenet I follow is to invest only in countries whose currency maintains its value over the long term. If, like me, you invest in the United States, you have to ask yourself: Can I expect the US dollar to maintain its long-term value, asks Martin van Blerk. With debts mounting and the dollar sliding, the United States may not be a good investment.
Several rockets were fired at a Baghdad hotel complex housing foreign journalists and businessmen on Friday, scoring a direct hit on the Sheraton hotel and wounding up to four Iraqis. The attack came one day after ousted strongman Saddam Hussein appeared in court to hear charges of crimes against humanity.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118106">’I am Saddam Hussein'</a>
He arrived rattling in chains at the door of a building named Victory Courthouse in the grounds of his former palace now occupied by America’s generals. High Value Detainee One was uncuffed, brought in with guards holding him by the arms and curtly seated before the judge.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=118060&t=1">Saddam dismisses court as ‘theatre'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118062">Defence slams ‘illegal’ tribunal</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118085">Saddam upsets Kuwaiti ‘dogs'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118067">’Saddam should be wiped out'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118013">’I have a few questions…'</a>
The African Parliament is the glittering prize South Africa is expected to be handed at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week. AU officials already gathered in the Ethiopian capital say there is only a slim chance that Egypt will grab it when the 53 member states finally vote on who will be awarded the right to host the Parliament.
Tax practitioners draw a sharp distinction between tax avoidance and evasion — the latter is cheating, amounting to fraud, while the former boils down to a taxpayer arranging his or her affairs openly to minimise tax. Much of the tax practitioner’s work consists of drawing contracts to minimise the tax burden.
In a country notorious for poor service, it is refreshing to see a company like Liberty Life actually doing something proactive to remedy the problem. It’s never easy admitting that one is not perfect, but the life assurer has done just that with its recently launched "We’re working on it" media campaign.
Metorex, the midtier multicommodity mining group, has taken advantage of the recent strength in the rand/dollar exchange rate. At the time of its acquisition of the Barberton gold operation, Metorex entered into forward gold sale contracts to provide security for the repayment of a six-year loan raised from a consortium of bankers.
How far it was from the triumphant departure of the much-hailed liberator, with young women blowing kisses and throwing flowers and children waving miniature American flags! A furtive ceremony behind acres of concrete, blade-wire and sandbags, and the liberator-in-chief hops into a helicopter and hot-tails it to safety. But of course it is not over — the Americans have not left Iraq, and real authority has not been transferred to the interim Iraqi government.