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Mbeki’s Ex-Deputy Gains In ANC Leadership Race

By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 27, 2007; Page A13

JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 26 — President Thabo Mbeki’s bid to win a third term as head of the ruling African National Congress suffered a serious setback over the weekend as party activists meeting across South Africa showed a strong preference for his charismatic former deputy, Jacob Zuma.

Political analysts said weeks of heavy lobbying could still tilt support toward Mbeki, or some compromise candidate, by next month’s ANC national convention. But Zuma’s show of strength made clear that Mbeki’s support among the party faithful had waned dramatically.

“The presidency of the ANC is Zuma’s to lose,” political commentator Aubrey Matshiqi said.

Last weekend’s provincial meetings selected nominees for party president, but more importantly they measured the support that candidates have among loyalists who will attend the decisive national convention Dec. 16-20 in the northern city of Polokwane.

The winner would become the presumptive next president of South Africa because of the ANC’s dominant position in national politics. The exception would be Mbeki, who says he does not seek a third term as the country’s president and is barred by the constitution from doing so. Elections are scheduled for 2009.

In last weekend’s nominating contests, Zuma won five of South Africa’s nine provinces, while Mbeki won four. The margins of victory were far wider for Zuma, who won 2,270 votes nationwide compared to 1,396 for Mbeki, according to news reports.

A victory next month would represent a remarkable political comeback for Zuma, a charismatic former anti-apartheid guerrilla whom Mbeki fired in June 2005, after Zuma’s financial adviser was convicted of having a corrupt relationship with him. Several months later, Zuma was charged with raping a family friend.

A court acquitted Zuma on the rape charges in May 2006 and graft charges were subsequently dismissed, but corruption allegations linger. Despite repeated setbacks for prosecutors, the possibility remains that he could be charged before December’s convention, complicating his possible rise to the party presidency.

The political fortunes of Mbeki and Zuma have headed in opposite directions since his firing. Many South Africans viewed the move as abrupt and the rape allegations as the product of a conspiracy to destroy him.

Zuma, whose supporters serenade him with the song “Bring Me My Machine Gun” at nearly every public appearance, also has support among South Africa’s powerful labor unions and Communists, who criticize Mbeki for not doing enough for the nation’s many poor people.

But Zuma’s populist instincts and scant formal education deeply worry many business leaders. Many of Mbeki’s allies portray Zuma as a threat to the president’s legacy of cool-headed, competent governance.

The overt hostility between the two camps has prompted a search for possible compromise candidates with broad appeal and little of the baggage of Mbeki and Zuma. Among them are businessmen Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale, Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and party Secretary General Kgalema Motlanthe.

Popularity: 9% [?]

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Tobasco and Oyster and Champagne Festival ; http://www.bloemendalwines.co.za/1bw0601… !

2008 Oyster & Champagne Festival
21, 22 & 23 March 2008

With the great success of the 2007 Oyster and Champagne festival, Bloemendal and Tabasco bring you an even bigger and better Oyster and Champagne Festival for 2008. A great time was had by all in 2007, where 10 000 oysters and copious amounts of bubbly were consumed. There were great live bands and Jenny Morris “Giggling Gourmet” demonstrating food and wine pairing on stage. All her dishes were auctioned off for the Reach for a Dream Foundation who raised over R25 000.00 that week-end.

This year’s program:
# 21 & 22 March 2008. . Gates Open at 10h00 15 000 Oysters
# 3 Stages for Live Entertainment
# Celebrity Chef Demonstrations
# Shuck ñ Slurp Competition
# Local Cap Classiques and French Champagne Stalls
# Food Stalls
# Full Bar Facilities
# Kids Entertainment
# Helicopter Flips
# Free Champagne Glass on Arrival
# Limited to 1300 people per day
# R5.00 per Oyster

23 March 2008. Gates Open at 11h00
Brought to you by Vineyard Concerts
# The Greatest local Rock Concert of all Time. (Bands to be announced shortly)
# Oyster Bars and Food Stalls
# Full Bar Facilities
# Local Cap Classiques and French Champagne Stalls
# Kids Entertainment
# Limited to 1200 people
# Picnic Baskets
# R150.00 Unreserved
# Bring your own Picnic Blanket

Advanced bookings for the 21st and 22nd can be done by submitting the following form to us

TABASCO® Oyster and Champagne Festival
7 & 8 April 2007

Popularity: 15% [?]

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 http://www.changingtidesgroup.co.za/

Go check out this website, really great for entrepreneurial investors.

WHO WE ARE - WHAT CAN WE HELP YOU ACCOMPLISH?

CHANGING TIDES Limited is an international affiliate organization providing direction and assistance, by way of referrals, to entrepreneurs, prospective business owners and investors. We are able to do so through a portfolio of firms dedicated to radically enhance the financial lives of their clients by equipping them with tools, skills, strategies and resources.

CHANGING TIDES Limited’s core business revolves around continually researching, and acquiring the rights to a wide range of outstanding Business Systems to meet the different goals and needs of its clients, at any stage of their lives… whether they are unemployed, staff members of organizations, young or seasoned entrepreneurs, or potential and current business owners.

Should your goals include being able to eventually quit your job or business, to create wealth, to save for retirement, or to continue to produce income at retirement, CHANGING TIDES Ltd can link you to systems to help you meet those goals.

We also create agreements, partner with, and monitor a wide range of outstanding companies providing services and assistance to investors to Central and Southern Africa.

Our continuous research allows the selection and blending of such companies in optimal portfolios that provide a less volatile and more predictable return stream with greatly improved long-term results. We, at CHANGING TIDES Ltd are committed to continuous expansion of the number and nature of portfolios we provide and we pursue our research activities in ensuring we meet this idea.

THE MISSION

Our mission is to provide our clients with a broad range of innovative, reliable, ethical and profitable business systems and investment opportunities.

Popularity: 10% [?]

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I enjoy Las Vegas as the story line is normally intriguing and if it isn’t it is good fun to watch all the people doing their thing in the casino. The cast are good to look at so who wouldn’t want to watch Danny or Delinda strut their stuff. Sam being a total ICE QUEEN all the time and Mr. Delainey always  cool and  in control.  One  person I get a little annoyed with is the chick Mary, with her botox and boobs, now there is fake if you have ever seen fake.

Las Vegas

Airs: Season VI
From Gary Scott Thompson — the writer of the hit film “The Fast and the Furious”–comes “Las Vegas,” now entering its fourth season. This fast-paced, sexy drama follows the elite Las Vegas surveillance team charged with maintaining the security of one of Sin City’s largest resorts and casinos.

Oscar and Golden Globe Award nominee James Caan (“The Godfather,” “Misery”) stars as Ed Deline, the head of the surveillance team for the Montecito Resort & Casino. With his protégé, Danny McCoy (Josh Duhamel, “All My Children”) a former U.S. Marine and Las Vegas native, they deal with card-counting cheaters, costly streaks of random luck and rival casinos stealing their big-money players.

Rounding out this cast of high rollers is Ed’s daughter, Delinda (Molly Sims, MTV’s “Starsky and Hutch”), Mary Connell (Nikki Cox, “Nikki”), Mike Cannon (James Lesure, “For Your Love”) and Samantha “Sam” Jane (Vanessa Marcil, “Beverly Hills, 90210”).

Popularity: 10% [?]

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The Wealthiest South Africans

The top directors in terms of value of shareholding on the JSE Securities Exchange.

(1) R14.09 bn.

Nicholas Oppenheimer
Non-Executive Director: Anglo American Corporation of South Africa Ltd.

(2) R8.59 bn.

Johann Rupert
Non-Executive Chair: Remgro Ltd.
Non-Executive Chair: Venfin Ltd.

(3) R7.94 bn.

Patrice Motsepe
Non-Executive Chair: African Rainbow Minerals Ltd.

(4) R5.23 bn.

Lauritz Dippenaar
Non-Executive Chair: Discovery Holdings Ltd.
Non-Executive Chair: RMB Holdings Ltd.

(5) R5.00 bn.

Gerrit Ferreira
Non-Executive Chair: FirstRand Ltd.
Executive Chair: RMB Holdings Ltd.
Executive Director: Venfin Ltd.

(6) R3.37 bn.

Raymond Ackerman
Executive Chair: Pick ‘n Pay Holdings Ltd.

(7) R3.37 bn.

Wendy Ackerman
Executive Director: Pick ‘n Pay Holdings Ltd.

(8) R3.37 bn.

Gareth Ackerman
Chair: Pick ‘n Pay Holdings Ltd.

(9) R2.39 bn.

Christoffel Wiese
Non-Executive Director: Invicta Holdings Ltd.
Chair: Shoprite Holdings Ltd.
Chair: Tradehold Ltd.

(10) R2.22 bn.

William Venter
Chair: Allied Electronics Corporation Ltd.
Non-Executive Director: Allied Technologies Ltd.
Chair: Bytes Technology Group Ltd.

Popularity: 13% [?]

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CHRIS CHAMELEON

When I first saw him on 7deLaan I was a little put of with his scar and didn’t really know what his role was all about. But when this man started to sing I was totally intrigued. His music is absolutely brilliant and I would love to see him live.

Full names

Mr Chris CHAMELEON

Synopsis

In his final year in school, at 18 years of age, he wrote a one man play for his school’s competition. The name of the play was “Boy.” It turned out to be a great success winning every competition he entered that year, culminating in his winning the Dalro. In the seven years that Boo! were together they performed in the U.S.A. and Europe - even in Hungary and Croatia. They also performed at many European and American festivals with the likes of White Stripes, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Franz Ferdinand and Cypress Hill. His album 7de Hemel reached platinum status (sales exceeding 50 000 units) in August 2006. He reached the semi-finals of the International Songwriting Competition (ISC) in 2007 with the single Anywhere from the album Shine. Was voted Number 52 in Heat Magazine’s Hot 100 for 2007.

Noteworthy Events

In his final year in school, at 18 years of age, he wrote a one man play for his school’s competition. The name of the play was “Boy.” It turned out to be a great success winning every competition he entered that year, culminating in his winning the Dalro national acting competition in 1989.

He then became very active as a television actor in South Africa performing in over 30 series and shows in his first five years as an actor.
Some of his roles were as the burglar in drag in Egoli, the mentally retarded Henry in Sonkring, the psychopathic Herman in Konings and the temperamental brother in Uninvited Guest.

In 1995 Blue Chameleon were the opening act for the international band Roxette, performing in front of 56 000 fans at Ellis Park Stadium.
Blue Chameleon also founded the Johannesburg based club “Silos,” which has changed its name to become what is now known as Carfax.
In January 1996 Chris started working as an assistant director in television for both South African and international productions.
In the seven years that Boo! were together they performed in the U.S.A., Europe - even in Hungary and Croatia. They also performed at many European and American festivals with the likes of White Stripes, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Franz Ferdinand, Cypress Hill, Coldplay and many more.

His song Ek Herhaal Jou was nominated for a Huisgenoot Tempo Award in 2005 and a SAMA award in 2006.
His debut solo album Ek Herhaal Jou reached gold status (sales exceeding 25 000 units) in July 2006.
His album 7de Hemel reached platinum status (sales exceeding 50 000 units) in August 2006.
He reached the semi-finals of the International Songwriting Competition (ISC) in 2007 with the single Anywhere from the album Shine.
Is fluent in English, Afrikaans, German and Dutch.
Was voted Number 52 in Heat Magazine’s Hot 100 for 2007.

Awards

Championships/Events

Popularity: 13% [?]

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Also known as “The Great Hunger”

Monday is St. Patrick’s Day–a day on which, they say, the whole world is Irish. If so, then the whole world ought to know the story of the tragic times that changed the course of Irish history: the 19th-century Irish potato blight.

In the mid-1800s, after centuries of hardship, Ireland suffered a famine that killed more than a million people and drove a million more away. Few people were lucky enough to go untouched. Here’s the story of how politics, poverty, and potatoes combined to change Ireland forever.

Let Them Eat Spuds

The English practice of making life difficult for the Irish began in earnest in the early 16th century, when Henry VIII started kicking Irish Catholic gentry off their estates and handing the keys to his English Protestant friends. Few English lords warmed to the idea of living in Ireland, though. Many simply stayed in England and charged their new Irish tenants rent.

Later, laws designed to move more property to Protestant hands allowed any son who became a Protestant to inherit Dad’s whole estate, while Catholic sons had to divvy the land up. By 1801, the year Ireland became part of Great Britain, Protestants owned all but 5 percent of the Emerald Isle.

While England built factories and modernized its cities, Ireland remained rural, green, and shockingly poor. At least half of Ireland’s 8 million people lived in one-room mud huts, scraping out a bleak existence from the soil. Life was nasty, brutish, and short–not to mention potatocentric. Cheap to cultivate, simple to prepare, and rich with vitamins, the potato was Ireland’s salvation. Millions ate little else.

The Blight Begins

In 1845, September’s seemingly healthy potato crop rotted within days, causing a stink that could be smelled for miles. A deadly airborne fungus, the potato blight, claimed half the harvest. Britain’s Tory prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, tried to avoid a crisis by shipping cheap corn from America. But that ended by the summer of 1846, when England’s new Whig government decided the Irish were better off left alone.

Treasury secretary Charles Trevelyan, now in charge of Ireland’s economy, closed Peel’s corn supply depots and announced that England would not interfere in the “rights of private enterprise.” Instead, Trevelyan proposed a plan for Ireland’s self-sufficiency. Local taxes would fund public works projects, which would provide jobs for workers, who would in turn buy food from local merchants.

The plan was a disaster. When the potato crop failed again–this time completely–panic spread. A Catholic priest wrote to Trevelyan of passing people “seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly.” Public works wages were too low to afford both food and rent. And local merchants exported goods, including food, rather than lower prices.

Soup and Sympathy

Though English Quakers and other groups were moved to action by the Irish plight, many English lawmakers felt the Irish should reap what they had sown, even if that meant starvation. For these hardliners, Ireland was a backward place full of lazy, superstitious, Gaelic-speaking rabble-rousers who would surely bite any hand that fed them.

Meanwhile, food riots broke out as starving men and women watched ships loaded with local grain leave for foreign shores. English soldiers, sent to police the Irish mobs, were punished for giving out food to half-dead children. London newspapers published countless sketches of emaciated children scratching in the dirt for edible roots, old women waiting to die, and dead babies in their mothers’ arms. Typhus and cholera spread, and people died in droves.

More American corn, bought by private charities, arrived in early 1847, but the afflicted Irish had no money to buy it. Food was piled high in warehouses while people continued to starve. Finally, the British government approved free soup kitchens run by religious groups and local relief committees. Three million people showed up for a daily ration of soup.

The Great Hunger

Blaming Ireland’s landlords for the whole predicament, Parliament passed the Irish Poor Law Extension Act in June 1847, a proposal to collect £10 million in taxes from property owners to help support relief funds. But people hadn’t paid rent for months. Faced with ruin, landlords were forced to evict tenants. One English landlord was murdered by two Irishmen after he evicted 3,000 people, including 84 widows.

By late summer, the soup kitchens–intended as a temporary measure–were shut down. Homeless and starving, people died on the roadsides, with no one to bury the bodies. Ironically, 1847’s potato crop was healthy, but too small to do any good, because people had eaten the seedling potatoes in desperation.

An insurrection in early 1848 provoked the London Times to complain of the people’s “monstrous ingratitude.” When the potato crop failed again that fall, English compassion had slackened considerably. Another plan to tax property owners only drove people overseas, following the hundreds of thousands who had already fled. For those who couldn’t afford the passage, the horrors mounted. Nearly naked, and without shelter, men, women, and children wandered the countryside until they dropped dead.

Road to Republic

Eventually, after more than a million people had died, and another million had fled, the blight subsided. The horror, and the loss of some 25 percent of the population, dramatically altered the political landscape. Gradually, money from Irish nationalists in America helped fund Charles Stewart Parnell’s Land League, which forced the British government to recognize tenant rights in 1881. Dormant nationalists awoke. The fight for Irish independence had begun.

–Claire Vail

Popularity: 9% [?]

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I thought I would blog about something fun as the latest news reviews and bloggs of mine has been a little sad and maybe that is why people choose to either concentrate on the good things of life, I suppose we all have our own little worlds that we live in to survive the world.

Anyway this movie was truly enjoyable and I have watched it more than once. Adults can definitely be kept interested and humoured.  

The sea underworld is shaken up when the son of the shark mob boss is found dead and a young fish named Oscar is found at the scene. Being a bottom feeder, Oscar takes advantage of the situation and makes himself look like he killed the finned mobster. Oscar soon comes to realize that his claim may have serious consequences. Written by Anonymous

This mafia movie, set in the world of saltwater fish, is the story of what happens when the son of the shark boss(De Niro) of a fish crime family is killed by a dropped anchor, and a bottom-feeder named Oscar (Smith) is found at the scene of the crime. Hoping to win favor with the enemies of the ganglord, the fast-talking hustler poses as the killer known as the “sharkslayer”, but soon learns it’s a dangerous game in a world where the big fish generally eat the little fish… Written by austin4577@aol.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

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 The Kingdom

I was on the edge of my seat from the word go, lost the plot a little but still kept me entertained. It seems we will have loads of these movies out now, suicide bombings, global warming ect.

When a terrorist bomb detonates inside a Western housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, an international incident is ignited. While diplomats slowly debate equations of territorialism, FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury quickly assembles an elite team and negotiates a secret five-day trip into Saudi Arabia to locate the madman behind the bombing. Upon landing in the desert kingdom, however, Fleury and his team discover Saudi authorities suspicious and unwelcoming of American interlopers into what they consider a local matter. Hamstrung by protocol-and with the clock ticking on their five days-the FBI agents find their expertise worthless without the trust of their Saudi counterparts, who want to locate the terrorist in their homeland on their own terms. Fleury’s crew finds a like-minded partner in Saudi Colonel Al-Ghazi, who helps them navigate royal politics and unlock the secrets of the crime scene and the workings of an extremist cell bent on further destruction. With these unlikely allies sharing a propulsive commitment to crack the case, the team is led to the killer’s front door in a blistering do-or-die confrontation. Now in a fight for their own lives, strangers united by one mission won’t stop until justice is found in The Kingdom. Written by Universal Pictures

Popularity: 6% [?]

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The Atrocity Exhibition: A War Fuelled by

Charles Paul Freund

In 1993, a photographer named Kevin Carter went to Sudan to capture images of that nation’s dismal and unending civil war.  One of the pictures he took was of a starving little girl: she had collapsed in the bush, and a vulture nearby seemed to be waiting for her to die.  The photo was reproduced all over the world, touching many thousands of people, becoming an icon of African misery, winning a Pulitzer Prize, and, a year later, apparently contributing to Carter’s own suicide.

Carter, a white South African, spent only a couple of days in Sudan.  According to Susan D Moeller, who tells Carter’s story in Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, he had gone into the bush seeking relief from the terrible starvation and suffering he was documenting, when he encountered the emaciated girl.  When he saw the vulture land, Carter waited quietly, hoping the bird would spread its wings and give him an even more dramatic image.  It didn’t, and he eventually chased the bird away.  The girl gathered her strength and resumed her journey toward a feeding centre.  Afterward, writes Moeller, Carter “sat by a tree, talked to God, cried, and thought about his own daughter, Megan.”

When the image of the prostrate girl and the patient vulture appeared, many people demanded to know what had happened to her.  The New York Times explained in an editors’ note that while she resumed her trek, the photographer didn’t know if she had survived.  Carter stood accused; callers in the middle of the night denounced him.  The girl began to haunt the photographer.  In June 1994, Carter, beset by difficulties, killed himself.  His suicide note speaks of the ghosts he could not escape, the “vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain,” and the “starving and wounded children” ever before his eyes.

This death of a messenger is a cautionary tale for an age of atrocity imagery.  Terrible pictures of agony and murder have come to America from Lebanon, from Somalia, from Haiti, from Rwanda, and now from Kosovo, and they have unleashed the most powerful of emotions.  Yet these emotions emerge from pictures that tell inevitably distorted versions of their awful realities.  Their concrete representations suggest a moral imperative to act, to intervene with force against evil.  Yet the resulting interventions have, one after the other, revealed the illusions of mercy: there is no such thing as military humanitarianism.  Such action, despite its moral incentive, is always political, and always results in political consequences and responsibilities.  When these assert themselves, the atrocity imagery changes: it often features Americans.

In Carter’s case, Western newspaper readers saw a little girl.  Carter, in the Sudanese village where he landed, was watching 20 people starve to death each hour.  Perhaps he might have laid aside his camera to give the victims what succor he could (and thus never have encountered the girl in the bush); perhaps his photographs could have led to greater help than he could personally give.  Should he have carried one girl to safety?  Carter was surrounded by hundreds of starving children.  When he sat by the tree and wept, it was beneath a burden of futility.  But his was not a photo of futility, nor of mass starvation, nor of religious factionalism, nor of civil war.  Readers saw a little girl.  In part, at least, Carter died for that.

Popularity: 8% [?]

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