MALAWI’S revenues from tobacco, the nation’s top foreign currency earner, are expected to drop 13% this year. Projected earnings from the 2001 crop are $143-million, 13% less than in 2000 and 23% less than in 1999, said Godfrey Chapola, general manager the parastatal Tobacco Control Commission (TCC). Chapola blamed the drop in earnings on smaller […]
As millions of workers downed tools this week to protest against privatisation of state assets, Howard Barrell, Glenda Daniels and Sipho Seepe spoke to Cosatu president Willie Madisha on the tensions between the trade union federation and the government and ANC leadership Glenda Daniels: What forms of privatisation or restructuring are you objecting to and […]
Congress Mahlangu Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza has launched a R37-million agricultural development scheme to benefit small and emerging black farmers as well as agricultural communal projects all aimed at alleviating poverty in rural communities. Didiza made the announcement when she transferred 241 title deeds to emergent farmers in Nkomazi, Mpumalanga, two […]
GOVANMBEKI Govan Mbeki’s death this week ends one of the longest and most heroic lives in liberation politics. Govan Mvuyelwa Mbeki was born in 1910 in Nqamakwe, Transkei, the son of a deposed chief. After attending various Methodist mission schools he completed a BA at Fort Hare in 1937 and subsequently worked in the Transkei […]
THE Kenyan government has identified six foreign firms to bid for the purchase of state-owned Kenya Reinsurance Corporation, a government official announced here on Wednesday. Finance ministry investment secretary Esther Koimett said in a statement that a total of eight local and international firms had sent in expressions of interest on or before the July […]
food Lauren Shantall The very first time I tasted one, I was on a seaside holiday and knee-high to my grandmother, who leaned forward into a fading show of dune flowers to pluck a few of their odd, fleshy fruits. These were surprisingly sharp and juicy in all that blurry heat and beach grit. I […]
analysis Judith February Although the dismantling of apartheid signalled the end of legalised racial oppression, South African society remains deeply divided along racial lines. The inequalities reflected in rampant poverty and joblessness continue to be specific to a larger proportion of black people in South Africa. The government, however, has enacted legislation to counter racism […]
Barry Streek The Democratic Alliance has put Cape Town’s controversial mayor, Peter Marais, on compulsory leave and suspended two DA councillors in the city for their role in the “streetgate” affair. The councillors now face a criminal investigation for fraud, which stems from an inquiry by advocate Willem Heath into the saga. Heath has recommended […]
FIRE-fighters continued to keep a close eye on the Hogsback area on Wednesday after a runaway fire razed a large section of the forest and gutted a home on Tuesday. The fire was brought under control at about 7pm. An estimated 2 000 hectares of pine plantation and a house were destroyed, while three more […]
We read your report (August 24) on the National Development Agency (NDA) with dismay but not surprise. Anyone in the field of funding and poverty relief knows about the debacle surrounding the transformation of the old Transitional National Development Trust (TNDT) into the NDA. But we had not thought it was so bad. You report […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo We are just a few weeks into the Premier Soccer League (PSL) season but already some patterns are beginning to emerge. Disputes have arisen, in particular a disciplinary hearing on the alleged intimidation of the referee by Orlando Pirates players that led to the abandonment of their match against Ajax Cape Town. The […]
The union federation has put forward seven principles it deems necessary for informing the Bill to equitably reimburse pension-fund members Ngwako Modjadji The Congress of South Trade Unions (Cosatu) is calling for the estimated R80-billion pension “surplus” to be restituted to beneficiaries, backdated to the 1980s when the federation advocated a “migration” from pension to […]
UP to 40 people were reported missing or dead on Wednesday after a river in northern Nigeria burst its banks, flooding dozens of villages. Manir Babba Dangundi, the council chairman of the affected Kumbotso area of Kano State, said 40 people were missing or dead. State government officials were unable to confirm any deaths but […]
Organisations caring for the elderly fear that data-sharing is taking place between Cash Paymaster Services and a loan company Paul Kirk An adviser to the government on pensioners has set up a company that offers loans to the aged at an interest rate that the Mail & Guardian has calculated to be more than 420% […]
Last week Robert Kirby presented the Mail & Guardian readership with an attack on Tony Leon’s integrity that was at once gruesome and florid, and altogether rather spectacular. But when one sets aside his searing metaphor, passion for hyperbole, surprising and often impressive tangles of description, it becomes clear that Kirby was really just talking […]
Pressure groups gathered in Durban for the NGO Forum that precedes the main conference Khadija Magardie One can always, legend has it, tell a NGO worker just look at the hair. Though the face of activism in all its forms has changed, and the typical activist is now as at home in a pair of […]
A NUMBER of children were seriously wounded in the capital of breakaway Somaliland last week when police exchanged fire with a group of civilians accused of holding an illegal meeting, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said on Wednesday. Police reported one person killed and six wounded in the clashes in Hargeisa last Thursday. Unicef […]
Martin Gillingham was at a meeting where some extraordinary records were set The banner read: “EPO cheats out.” A simple message and one that reflects sentiments shared by many fair-minded people in track and field. The young woman holding the banner in the stands at the world championships in Edmonton, as the Russian runner Olga […]
It’s back to the drawing board for labour, business and the government to come up with a strategy for economic growth Glenda Daniels The most significant political strike in the post-apartheid period is over but the government, labour and business appear no closer to a strategy that can repair broken relationships between them. Unions say […]
Paul Kirk Despite assurances to the contrary, one of the Big Brother contestants has not been cleared of all charges relating to his illegal possession of a machine gun and an unlicensed 9mm pistol. This week it emerged that Bradford Wood has a murky history having in the past been charged with several crimes including […]
THE International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is to begin testing two HIV vaccines in Uganda soon with the collaboration of the Ugandan government. Under the memorandum of understanding, the two signatories will begin trials for a vaccine which will prevent the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes Aids. Under the agreement, IAVI will sponsor […]
Gregory Mthembu-Salter “Dull. A bit slow. Very slow” is how prominent independent Zambian politician Dipak Patel describes Levy Mwanawasa, Zambia’s ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy’s (MMD) presidential candidate. Zambia is due to hold general elections in November, but until last week the MMD was without a candidate, after President Frederick Chiluba was forced to abandon […]
The younger Williams sister won the US Open two years ago but has since been eclipsed by Venus Stephen Bierley Two years ago, as the Manhattan traffic crawled across Queensboro bridge towards Queens home of the Mets and, for two weeks in late summer, the United States Open tennis championships New York drivers were confronted […]
John Naughton In principle, computing ought to be amenable to rationality. After all, programs are just encoded logic. Why then do arguments between computer folk about the relative merits of operating systems have the surface characteristics of religious wars? Umberto Eco once wrote an essay in which he argued that the IBM PC was a […]
Belinda Beresford A leading United States researcher on HIV/Aids has formally complained about “gross misrepresentation” in the coverage of his research in the African National Congress’s online magazine, ANC Today. Dr Jeffrey D Klausner, who is also one of the top HIV/Aids officials for the City of San Francisco, wrote a letter to ANC Today […]
POLICE in Tanzania’s northern region of Arusha this week burnt 120 tonnes of marijuana impounded recently, a senior official said on Thursday. “The exercise took place at a forest on the slopes of Mount Meru and it took three days to destroy all 120 tonnes,” said Placid Chaka, the Arusha regional police commander. Police also […]
When Johnny Reb was entered in a B division race over 1600m in June, there was almost universal consensus that he wouldn’t see out the distance. After all, his breeding (by Fast Gun, out of the Lancaster mare War Baby) seemed to be all about speed, he had sprinted well and, to top it all, […]
Barry Streek Countries in the developing world have to work together in international trade and in institutions to gain influence on issues such as globalisation. This is the view of Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin as published in the latest edition of New Agenda, published by the Institute for African Alternatives. “It is […]
Nawaal Deane Women and children are dying of poverty in the former Transkei. The children are dying of malnutrition related diseases and the women are victims of violence exacerbated by poverty. The former homeland of Transkei, one of the poorest regions in South Africa, has the highest mortality rate for women and children in the […]
Stefaans Brmmer, Mungo Soggot and Nawaal Deane Irvin Khoza’s close association with a self-proclaimed apartheid military agent during the liberation struggle is at odds with the soccer boss’s reputation as a staunch African National Congress cadre. The relationship between Khoza and Petrus Johannes Koekemoer, alias Peter Murray, pretty much exemplifies that darker part of the […]
Marianne Merten For the women of Silvertree Rugby Football Club in Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats playing rugby is nothing new they have been at the game since 1954. Since the club’s inception in the historic District Six almost 50 years ago, women have played rugby at fundraising games. Today the mother of one […]
Richard Jago “Cry for help when there’s no here-Rafter …” wailed the Melbourne Age when the Australian’s rickety shoulder was apparently falling to bits. That sentiment is being even more keenly felt now as Pat Rafter, arguably the most popular man on the tennis tour, plays what may be his final grand slam. All year […]