Africa also suffers sex abuse by priests: bishop
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Sexual abuse by Catholic priests is a scourge in Africa as well as the Western countries where scandals have badly hurt the Vatican’s image, a leading African Catholic archbishop has said.
Archbishop of Johannesburg Buti Tlhagale said the damage weakened the Church’s ability to speak out with moral authority in Africa, where it has at times been a rare voice challenging dictatorship, corruption and abuse of power.
Q&A: What does Terre’blanche killing mean for South Africa?
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The killing of South African white far-right leader Eugene Terre’blanche has raised fears of racial strains 16 years after the end of apartheid.
Below are answers to some questions on the killing and what it could mean for South Africa, Africa’s biggest economy.
South African far-right leader Terre’blanche murdered
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African white far-right leader Eugene Terre’blanche, who fought to preserve apartheid in the early 1990s, was beaten and hacked to death at his farm on Saturday.
“He was hacked to death while he was taking a nap,” one family friend, a member of Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), told Reuters, requesting anonymity.
South Africa’s slow recovery strikes home
Three hours before South Africa’s central bank delivered a surprise interest rate cut, me and my wife stood on the grass outside our house while an auctioneer held a forced sale that could have driven us and our children from our home.
We are tenants – it was the landlord whose house had been repossessed – and a buyer was found who was ready to keep the lease.
Betting on Zimbabwe
With global risk aversion decreasing there has been renewed interest in frontier markets.
They don’t come much more frontier than Zimbabwe, which is where Investec Asset Management is looking to make one of its newest investments – buying into a supermarket chain – and then for other potential opportunities.
Nigeria’s political merry go round
Nigeria’s ruling party made clear this week it wanted to see another northerner as the candidate for the 2011 presidential election, according to its principle of rotating power. That makes it harder (if not impossible) to see how Acting President Goodluck Jonathan might ever contest the ballot since he is from the Niger Delta in the south.
The Peoples Democratic Party’s unwritten rule of rotating power through Nigeria’s regions every two presidential terms – for these purposes there are six regions – was thought up on the return to civilian rule in 1999 because until then power had largely rotated among northerners, most of them in uniform.
What can Nigeria expect now?
The return of Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua three months after he left for a Saudi hospital might normally have beeen seen as a sign that a long spell of debilitating uncertainty was over.
But this was no ordinary return for a long absent president with an army band and a red carpet.
Blair hopes Middle East talks resume within weeks
ABUJA (Reuters) – Middle East envoy Tony Blair said on Saturday he hoped Israelis and Palestinians would resume peace negotiations within weeks, after a break of more than a year. The former British prime minister represents the “quartet” of Middle East negotiators, and Washington recently said he would be intensifying his work with U.S. negotiator George Mitchell to broker talks.
“I hope we can get it going in the next weeks, but who knows,” Blair told Reuters during a visit to Nigeria. “The Israelis want to get into negotiation, the Palestinians want to get into negotiation, the question is the terms.”
Doubts grow over $2.5 bln Nigerian telecoms sale
ABUJA/HONG KONG, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Doubts surfaced over the
planned $2.5 billion sale of Nigeria’s former state telecoms
monopoly on Thursday when China Unicom denied involvement in
bidding in the African country’s biggest privatisation.
But Nigeria said the bid for a stake in of one of the
world’s fastest growing telecoms markets still stood and GiCell
Wireless, the small Nigerian operator fronting the bid
consortium for Nitel, said financing was coming from Dubai
rather than China.
Chinese denial puts Nigeria telecom sale in doubt
HONG KONG/ABUJA (Reuters) – The planned $2.5 billion sale of Nigeria’s former state telecoms monopoly was thrown into doubt on Thursday when China Unicom <0762.HK> denied involvement in bidding in the African country’s biggest privatization.
But the small Nigerian operator involved in the consortium named as the preferred bidder for Nitel this week said China’s No. 2 carrier had only shown interest in providing technical support and financing would come from Dubai’s Minerva Group.
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