RESIDENTS in a town in southern Central African Republic brandished sticks this week to beat off dogs, after two people died of rabies after being fatally bitten, national radio reported on Thursday. “With a number of dogs spreading the disease, the local population has been forced to move around with sticks to avoid being bitten […]
Washington | Wednesday A PLAN for Sudan to arrest Osama bin Laden in 1996 fell through when the United States found it unable to put him on trial and failed to convince Saudi Arabia to take him, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The newspaper said the US administration of then-president Bill Clinton had secretly […]
October is dubbed welfare month and this year’s theme is the plight of the elderly. Pule waga Mabe visited a senior citizens’ centre in Soweto Thandisiwe Radebe (65) is still trying to settle down and make friends at the Ephraim Zulu Senior Citizens’ Centre in Soweto. She was admitted to the retirement home about four […]
DANCE Guy Willoughby Cape Town’s annual contemporary dance festival, the FNB Vita Indaba, held over four chock-a-block days at the Artscape Theatre, offered riveting work, including major new ensemble pieces by Tossie van Tonder, Christopher Kindo and Vincent Mantsoe, among others Standards were uneven the selection process needs to be re-examined closely but in general […]
RUGBY Andy Capostagno With two weeks to go in the Super Eight section of the Currie Cup there are still seven teams who can make the semifinals. It stretches credulity a little to believe that the seventh-placed Bulls are still in with a chance, but this is the stage of the season when the mathematicians […]
LIBYAN leader Muammar Gadaffi on Tuesday questioned the legitimacy of the United States leading an international campaign against terrorism, and also accused Britain of being the country sheltering the largest number of terrorists. In comments published on the official Libyan government website, Gadaffi warned against a two-speed policy towards states accused of harbouring terrorists. “It […]
Nigel Bruce If there is any area of agreement between business and labour in this country it is that the government’s macroeconomic policy, Gear, is not working. The growth, employment and redistribution strategy has produced some favourable and essential financial ratios (such as a low deficit before borrowing) and forced greater efficiencies by removing protection, […]
Barry Streek The Cape Town City Council’s rules committee is meeting today and is expected to clear suspended mayor Peter Marais, allowing him to be reinstated by Monday. Should Marais be reinstated in this manner, major conflict within the ruling Democratic Alliance is likely to burst out into the open and could eventually lead to […]
Census 2001’s ultimate success depends on what the government does with the results, writes Evidence wa ka Ngobeni On Wednesday September 10, 85 000 workers from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) will fan out across the country for the start of Census 2001, with only three weeks to record the details of more than 10-million […]
TEACHERS at the Lagos State University have launched strike action to press for higher pay and better conditions. The strike began on Tuesday and “is total and indefinite”, said the chairman of the ASUU teachers’ union, Gbola Aderibigbe. The union leader accused the Lagos State government of not paying outstanding salaries and allowances, and of […]
Mungo Soggot and David Macfarlane Health authorities in Tanzania have not approved controversial tests of an alleged new HIV/Aids treatment that South African researchers are conducting on Tanzanian soldiers. It has also emerged that the coal-based substance, oxihumate-K, that has been administered to HIV-positive Tanzanian soldiers for the past 18 months is used in the […]
Phone calls from space, or through your fridge, are possible through a new telephone technology, writes David Shapshak Making history as an astronaut seems par for the course, but American astronaut Marsha Ivins took a giant leap for mankind earlier this year by making the first phone call in space. In February Ivins had a […]
Jaspreet Kindra The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) leadership is working to forge a common front with South Africa’s church leaders to fight the government over its stance on HIV/Aids. Of particular concern to labour is the government’s refusal to acknowledge the Medical Research Council (MRC)finding that Aids is the country’s biggest killer. […]
THE Tamazight or Berber language is to be officially recognized in Algeria, with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika due to change the constitution which currently only recognizes Arabic. Officials said the decision was announced to representatives of village committees and tribes from the Kabylie region who met Prime Minister Ali Benflis. Kabylie in the northeast is the […]
You suggest you are “starting to feel sorry” for Minister of Home Affairs Mangosuthu Buthelezi, for the delayed enactment of the Immigration Bill (September 28). It is probably true to say that no piece of legislation has come under more intense public scrutiny and stonewalling tactics in the history of the new democratic dispensation. While […]
Jaspreet Kindra Tensions between Mpumalanga Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu and Fish Mahlalela have spilled over in an extraordinary Constitutional Court challenge by the premier to his former MEC. The case highlights deepening conflict between the executive and the legislature in the province. Now an ordinary MPL, Mahlalela was removed as local government MEC by Mahlangu in […]
Paul Rees When the Barbarians take on Australia in Cardiff at the end of next month, it will be the last time the invitation club meets a touring side unless it agrees to donate a significant percentage of the profits to developing nations. For the past 54 years, the Barbarians have traditionally brought down the […]
AN outbreak of swine fever has hit Malawi’s northern district of Karonga, threatening at least 20 000 pigs in the district alone, a veterinary official said on Thursday. Patrick Chikungwa, the district’s veterinary officer said a quarter of the pigs in the region have been affected by the disease which has killed at least some […]
Thabo Mohlala Residents in Zandspruit, an informal settlement in Honeydew north of Johannesburg, are living in fear after marauding hoodlums went on the rampage and assaulted “foreigners”. According to residents the attack followed a brawl at a shebeen where a Xhosa-speaking man was allegedly shot by a man of Zimbabwean origin. Other Xhosa-speaking residents then […]
Glenda Daniels Congress of South African Trade Unions affiliates in the public service have accused the government of flouting bargaining procedures by making an improved pay offer to non-Cosatu unions outside the official bargaining forum. As a strike by potentially 500 000 public servants loomed, state officials hotly denied this, accusing Cosatu of having missed […]
Pride in environmental awareness is what drives a school in northern KwaZulu-Natal, writes Niki Moore It’s a school in the forest the indigenous Dukuduku Forest on the verge of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park. The school is called Ubuhle bemvelo (the beauty of nature) to reflect its location within a World Heritage Site. The […]
THE leader of Swaziland’s main opposition, Mario Masuku, was arrested and taken to prison in Mbabane on Thursday after defying bail conditions imposed on him following a charge of sedition. Masuku, head of the Peoples United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), was charged with sedition a year ago in the tiny landlocked kingdom, ruled by absolute monarch […]
Tony Twine A well-known local economist recently reminded an audience of economists and media writers that participants in currency markets are myopic and have no memory whatsoever. It was less a sideswipe at traders than a reminder that in the heat of trading room battles, the luxury of a cool, calm and holistically collected economic […]
Many Americans are blaming new technology for aiding terrorism, writes Duncan Campbell As United States forces converge on Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone has not been cut off. But calls to his satphone relayed via an Inmarsat satellite 40 000km over the Indian Ocean are going unanswered. His number 00873 682505331 was disclosed during […]
The ruling elite may have missed out on lessons in reasoning NO blows BARRED Sipho Seepe It is difficult to look back at my schooling with fond memories. How could I, when the philosophical grounding of education was to ensure that schools were conducted in such a way that “the natives will be taught from […]
KHADIJA MAGARDIE, Johannesburg | Friday IN the wake of the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, speculation has mounted that the government is under pressure to show its commitment to ending global terrorism by pushing through draft legislation so dogged by controversy that it received mention in Amnesty International’s 2001 human rights report. […]
A second Look Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela There are many troubling questions raised by Sipho Seepe’s article (“Where are the so-called leaders?” September 21 to 27), not least the question of the extent to which fear has paralysed those in leadership and silenced them from speaking out against some of the indefensible statements made from the president’s […]
Howard Barrell and Jaspreet Kindra The HIV/Aids epidemic has taken on “shattering dimensions” and now accounts for one-in-four of all deaths, according to the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) report into the virus that has been suppressed by the government. The report, in the opinion of many the most authoritative of its kind into the effects […]
Duncan Mackay After years of steady improvement, women’s distance running has finally come of age. When Japan’s Naoko Takahashi set the world marathon record of 2hr 19min 46sec in Berlin on Sunday she achieved a landmark that had long been the holy grail for every female runner. A sub-2hr 20min time had been a target […]
FIVE people were wounded, two of them needing hospital treatment, when a pet hyena broke loose in a northeast Nigerian city. The hyena, used for entertaining crowds by its owner Ismaila Ibrahim, broke its chain and attacked passers-by in the Gomari district of Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, a report by state-run Borno Radio said. […]
The world’s media is battling for ringside seats as war looms in Afghanistan. Stefaans Brmmer reports from Dushanbe, Tajikistan The uniform in Hotel Tajikistan is the khaki camera jacket, as worn by gung-ho journalists worldwide. Its proliferation of pockets conveniently stores notebooks, pens and lenses, but also the wads of cash and official passes that […]
Peace protesters hold it aloft as do the advocates of war. The Right rallies round it but so do radicals. It’s now a flag of defiance and of mourning. Ed Vulliamy explores the many meanings of the Stars and Stripes In a landscape smothered by the dust of death Pompeii in our lifetime three New […]