Minutes of the board meeting of the South African Forestry Company Ltd (Safcol) that awarded Zama Resources a deal to buy a 75% share in Safcol’s Komatiland plantations have raised new doubts about the transaction.
Experts say a traditional African herbal medicine, Metrafaids, substantially reduces the viral loads of HIV-positive patients.
I know I tend to blather on about the absurdities of political correctness, but once again I can’t contain myself from reporting on another mindless foray by the PC brigade.
South Africa’s leading independent newspaper, the Mail&Guardian, has been sold to Zimbabwean entrepreneur and newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube. Ncube, who will relocate to Johannesburg, takes over as chairman and chief executive of the newspaper from outgoing Chief Executive Govin Reddy. It was announced to Mail&Guardian staff on Tuesday afternoon that Ncube’s company, Newtrust Company Botswana […]
The government is now legally obliged, "without delay", to implement a comprehensive nationwide programme for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. This must include the provision of nevirapine, which is an anti-retroviral drug.
This week’s announcement by pharmaceutical company Vaxgen of a potential vaccine against the HI-virus must be treated with caution. The announcement from the United States company came on the first day of the 14th International Aids Conference in Barcelona. According to Vaxgen, if all goes well, they may be in a position to market the […]
An Amnesty International report released this week says torture and ill-treatment are the most frequently reported human-rights violations committed by police in Southern Africa. The Policing to Protect Human Rights report found the South African Police Service (SAPS) was often cited for bribery and corruption. It also found a high level of illiteracy in the […]
The ying and the yang of the African Union (AU) summit are encapsulated in two images: the controlling hand of Thabo Mbeki on the gavel and the robed and ranting Moammar Gadaffi.
It’s not bullfighting’s big leagues. But in small-town California, a handful of passionate people like Dennis Borba give the dramatic clash between man and beast life in the United States. Borba, outfitted in his traje de luces, the snug “suit of lights” meant to keep horns from snaring the garment, says a traditional pre-fight prayer […]
An article published in the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s weekly newsletter this week slams the government’s policy on land reform, saying it has failed "dismally" to achieve social and economic transformation and development.
Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s blocking of a R720-million grant to fight Aids in KwaZulu-Natal is causing major ructions between the government, on one hand, and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the province and international donor agencies, on the other.
When an increase in adolescent suicides in one rural community is thought to bear some relation to difficulties in paying school fees, a stark failure of government policy becomes visible.
A newspaper quoted Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang as saying that drugs used to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child are poisonous.
So as not to miss the last days of this year’s National Arts Festival, I tried to edge into the only parking space left in Grahamstown. Some performers were blocking the access, mother waltzing with a silver cup, her daughter kissing a beam with clockfaces on it and her husband in his vest squashing beercans (Castle). Klonkies from the plaas were jitterbugging in the back of their bakkie.
The prominence given by the media to the outcome of the G8 meeting is understandable. However, for many the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), billed as a high priority for the G8 meeting, was reduced to a mere footnote.
The African Union (AU)is a nice, highfalutin idea. If I understand it correctly, the premise is that, since the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) managed to do nothing but spend a lot of money on a massive bureaucracy, endless summit conferences, pomp, ceremony and other forms of buffoonery, the best thing was simply to dump it.
When you hear talk of a “slow boat” in Cape Town, it has little to do with a trip to China. It is street lingo for getting high — and for most people getting high means smoking a cocktail of Mandrax and dagga. And for many, this drug of first choice — the “white pipe” […]
Politicians itching to jump ship will have to wait at least another month, after the Constitutional Court decided this week to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the new floor-crossing laws on August 6. To forestall pre-emptive strikes by political parties against would-be defectors, the court also ordered the suspension of the laws, approved by […]
Back in the 1970s, when Oom Krisjan was a much younger man, Monty Python’s Flying Circus were his favourite comedians. John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin and the rest of the Pythons took the mickey out of just about everything, but bureaucratic nonsense was one of their favourite targets…
If you had said 10 years ago that there would be two African-American sisters, born 15 months apart, from Compton, Los Angeles, at numbers one and two in the world with six grand slam titles between them, most people would have thought you were mad. But when Venus and Serena Williams are at the top […]
On Sunday Joanne Simpson cycled away from her home in Saint Amandsberg, a quiet, terraced suburb of the Belgian city of Ghent, and began a two-wheeled pilgrimage that will end on July 21 on top of a vast limestone mountain, Mont Ventoux, high above the vineyards and oak woods of Provence. When her father Tom, […]
The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) highlighted “disgracefully” high salaries paid to municipal managers in the war of words surrounding its national wage strike this week. Samwu represents 220000 muni-cipal employees nationwide and had demanded “a minimum living wage” of R2200 a month in talks with the South African Local Government Association (Salga), an […]
Switzerland’s air traffic control company on Wednesday admitted its automatic collision warning system was turned off for maintenance on Monday when a Boeing 757 and a Russian Tupolev 154 slammed into one another and exploded in a fireball above Lake Constance. The revelation raised fresh concerns about the role of controllers from Skyguide, the private […]
It’s six in the evening, and police Constables Brent Browning and Sias Strydom are preparing for night duty in one of the North West’s crime hubs: Klerksdorp — known for its prison and its small-town values. For the past five months the pair have had the highest arrest rate at their station. But, as Strydom […]
A New Zealand company said this week US authorities had approved extended trials of a new drug it claimed "gobbles up" the virus that causes Aids.
A LIFE TO LIVE by Yvonne Burgess (Penguin) Burgess’s first novel, published in 1973 and now reissued. This story of a farm girl who leaves for the city to support her family during the Great Depression has been hailed by Stephen Gray as "a product of the most ruthless and disciplined talent".
To connoisseurs of really good television police dramas the title Between The Lines will be familiar. It’s a British series about a trio of metropolitan detectives who eventually fall out with their bosses and go private.
South African soccer supporters need not fear that they will be without football when the World Cup ends on Sunday. The Vodacom Cup challenge — showcasing four of Africa’s great clubs — begins next week. The participating clubs are Soweto giants Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs, who take on FC St Eloi-Lupopo from the Democratic […]
The Inkatha Freedom Party may pull out of national government if the Constitutional Court rules in favour of defections next week, warn party sources. The warning came as the African National Congress signalled it would take control of KwaZulu-Natal, should the Constitutional Court allow defections. Five members of the provincial legislature crossed the floor to […]
The Treatment Action Campaign wants to act against provinces that don’t want to roll out the programme to prevent mother-to-child-transmission of HIV.
Now that the "musical sewers" legislation is through Parliament, it’s interesting to watch which and where certain politicians are scuttling, their little pink tails twitching, as they cross the floor to their new drains.
I think I am on record somewhere or the other (probably in this very newspaper) as describing the national passion for soccer as witless and tasteless, or words to that effect.