Recently in South Africa Category

The power and reach of radio is felt throughout Africa. But what improvements need to be made?

By Bono

I SPENT March with a delegation of activists, entrepreneurs and policy wonks roaming western, southern and eastern Africa trying very hard to listen -- always hard for a big-mouthed Irishman. With duct tape over my gob, I was able to pick up some interesting melody lines everywhere from palace to pavement ...
Despite the almost deafening roar of excitement about Africa's hosting of soccer's World Cup this summer, we managed to hear a surprising thing. Harmony ... flowing from two sides that in the past have often been discordant: Africa's emerging entrepreneurial class and its civil-society activists.

An interactive map in Mother Jones Magazine of the celebrity recolonization of Africa.

OVERSIZED SHADES have replaced pith helmets, writes By Dave Gilson in Mother Jones Magazine, but the new scramble for Africa has its share of adventurers, would-be saviors, and even turf battles. As Madonna's publicist explains, "She's focusing on Malawi. South Africa is Oprah's territory."

The map below takes a lighter look at the sometimes serious, sometimes silly business of celebrity altruism. For more on how Africa became the hottest continent for A-list do-gooders like Bono and Brangelina, see here. And if you're looking for a more sober approach, check out Mother Jones' recent package on human rights.

President Jacob Zuma was warned to rein his bodyguards and keep more control over the ANC's Youth League whose members have been harassing journalists.

While presenting Zuma with the national newsmaker of the year award in Pretoria, Yusuf Abramjee chairman of the national press club, warned that an attack on the media was an attack on democracy and the South African constitution.

"We cannot sit back and watch our reporters and photographers being manhandled by VIP bodyguards. How do we allow VIP protectors to act unlawfully by deleting photographs from cameras because the photographers took pictures of convoys? Police officers allegedly harassed our colleagues this week in two separate incidents, and this must stop."

By a special correspondent

The playboy son of a notorious African dictator, who was named this week in a US senate money laundering report, has surreptitiously acquired two mansions in Cape Town, South Africa, and a fleet of luxury cars worth more than $10 million.

Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, 38, is the aptly named "Playboyof the Southern World" who is lovingly called Tedorini by his dad. American-educated, he managed to accumulate his wealth on a salary of $60 000 a year as a forestry minister in the notoriously corrupt government of Equatorial Guinea.

Teodoro's latest girl friend is the fashion model Eve, according to the New York Daily News. He spent close to $700,000 to rent Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen's 303-foot yacht, Tatoosh to impress her recently.

Teodoro spends most of his time as a playboy at his mansions in Cape Town, London, Paris and Los Angeles. A friend of Eve tells the New York tabloid that the Playboy has been after her for a long time and that Eve finally gave in to his invitations - since then its been off and on.

Pressure is mounting on South African President Jacob Zuma after he broke his silence and admitted to having fathered his 20th child with the daughter of a friend. Zuma's spin doctors have been insulting and threatening the media since weekend media reports disclosed that Mr Zuma had fathered a child out of wedlock with Sonono Khoza, the daughter of his friend, Irvin Khoza, who is chairman of South Africa's 2010 World Cup local organising committee.

South Africa has come out with guns blazing after a top German soccer official renewed his country's security concerns in the 2010 soccer world cup host nation after last week's deadly attacks on the Togolese national team in Angola. The Chief Executive Officer of the 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa (OC), Danny Jordaan, described attempts to link events in far flung Angola to South Africa's preparedness to deal with security issues by president of the German Football Federation Reinhard Rauball as "illogical and uninformed."