Archivo etiqueta «Sudáfrica»
Por Alon Liel, embajador israelí en Suráfrica entre 1992 y 1994 y director general en el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Israel. Traducción de M. Luisa Rodríguez Tapia (EL PAÍS, 21/12/11):
Cuando asumí el puesto de embajador israelí en Suráfrica, en 1992, la historia estaba ya cambiando en favor de la democracia. Sin embargo, seguían en vigor numerosas leyes del apartheid, aunque ya no se aplicaban de forma estricta. Recuerdo, en especial, las leyes concebidas para incapacitar a la sociedad civil, destruir las organizaciones de la comunidad y sofocar los derechos humanos. Entre ellas estaban las que impedían la … Seguir leyendo
By Nic Dawes, editor in chief of The Mail & Guardian; Judith February, manager of the political information service at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa and Zackie Achmat who founded the Treatment Action Campaign, an AIDS advocacy group (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 30/11/11):
Defenders of freedom in South Africa are deeply worried these days. The health of one of the world’s most celebrated democracies, which emerged after decades of struggle against apartheid, is under threat. And any rollback of freedom here will have profoundly negative consequences for other nascent democracies across Africa.
Last week, the ruling … Seguir leyendo
By Justice Malala, a political analyst in Johannesburg (THE GUARDIAN, 23/11/11):
On Tuesday morning my friend Stefaans Brummer, arguably South Africa’s best investigative journalist, sent me a text message. “When I’m incarcerated at Parkview police station, please bring me coffee, a muffin and a hacksaw blade,” he wrote. I don’t do coffee or muffins, I replied jokingly, but I might deliver the hacksaw.
It was easy banter between friends, but there was a chill in our bones. Last Friday Brummer’s newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, had been prevented by President Jacob Zuma’s spokesman from publishing a story. It … Seguir leyendo
By Sean Jacobs, assistant professor of international affairs at the New School in Manhattan and founder of the blog Africa is a Country (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 02/01/11):
Back in Cape Town, I find the city as I remember it: gorgeous and frustrating, a glittering center and quaint suburbs hugging Table Mountain and uneasily overlooking the expanse called the Cape Flats, where I grew up among the city’s black poor and working class.
Yes, a graceful new stadium downtown greets soccer fans. And in a city where most soccer fans are black, and the downtown is still very much … Seguir leyendo
By Jeremy Gordin, a journalist and author of Zuma: A Biography. He is director of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Justice Project, which investigates miscarriages of justice (THE GUARDIAN, 31/12/10):
It’s that time of the year when, in many parts of the world, political analysts are writing about those moments that have somehow captured the soul of a particular government or ruling party – perhaps even the zeitgeist of the country itself.
We in South Africa have of course had our share of those events in 2010. We learned, for example, that President Jacob Zuma’s 28-year-old son, Duduzane, who … Seguir leyendo
By André Brink, the author of A Dry White Season and, most recently, the memoir A Fork in the Road (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 12/09/10):
Twenty years ago the most famous prisoner in the world, Nelson Mandela, walked out of jail and began the process of leading his people to democracy. Today, that new South Africa faces its starkest challenge yet in the form of two pieces of anti-press legislation that would make even the most authoritarian government proud.
One, cynically named the Protection of Information bill, would give the government excessively broad powers to classify information in the … Seguir leyendo
By Sean Carey, currently research fellow at the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (Cronem) at Roehampton University (THE GUARDIAN, 26/06/10):
The sound of the vuvuzela, which has been unfavourably compared by some critics with a swarm of angry bees, has become a defining feature of the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Yet the distinctive drone also has its fans, evident from the fact that it has become the most downloaded free iPhone app in South Africa and Europe.
But the really big story to emerge in the past few days concerns the fact that 90% of … Seguir leyendo
Por Pep Parés, presidente de Amnistia Internacional Catalunya (EL PERIÓDICO, 22/06/10):
El país del arco iris y de la «unidad en la diversidad» ocupará hasta bien entrado julio el foco informativo internacional por la relevancia del Mundial de fútbol, pero también por algunos elementos sociales y políticos que rodean el acontecimiento y que lo hacen destacar mucho más allá de aspectos puramente deportivos. El continente africano organiza por primera vez una Copa del Mundo de fútbol y Suráfrica, que solo 20 años atrás sufría el terrible régimen de segregación racial del apartheid y mantenía encarcelado a Nelson Mandela, consolida … Seguir leyendo
By Mark Gevisser, the author of A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the future of the South African Dream (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/06/10):
In the visitors’ Center at Cape Town’s new Green Point Stadium there is a quote by former president Thabo Mbeki: “The World Cup will be remembered as a moment when Africa stood tall and resolutely turned the tide of centuries of poverty and conflict.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu believes the tournament to be “as important as Obama getting into the White House” for black people; Nelson Mandela has personally selected (we are told) and participated … Seguir leyendo
By Alice Klein, a former newspaper journalist and coordinates a global citizen journalism programme for the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (THE GUARDIAN, 23/05/10):
Too much of the mainstream media’s coverage of sex work predicted to take place during the World Cup in South Africa has unfairly placed an emphasis on sex workers, rather than their clients.
The sensationalist tabloid press would have us believe that sex workers are “vectors of the virus” who pose a public health threat by potentially infecting visiting football fans with HIV. But what about the responsibility of those who pay for sex? South Africa has … Seguir leyendo
By Chris Rodrigues, a South African filmmaker and writer. He blogs for the Mail & Guardian (THE GUARDIAN, 06/05/10):
Examine the latest available Human Development Index (HDI) figures – a measure of education, life expectancy and standard of living – and you will find that the 2010 World Cup hosts are ranked 129 out of 182 UN member states. Or a whole 19 places below both Gaza and the West Bank. The effect of the blockade of the former is not yet included in the retrospective reports but the discrepancy between South Africa’s GDP and HDI makes it, as … Seguir leyendo
By Pravin Gordhan, South Africa’s finance minister (THE WASHINGTON POST, 22/03/10):
Today, the South African economy is two-thirds larger than it was in 1994, when Nelson Mandela took office as the country’s first democratically elected president. With this growth has come strong new demand for electricity. Millions of previously marginalized South Africans are now on the grid. Unfortunately, as in other major emerging economies, supply has not kept pace.
Reserve margins are increasingly tight — too tight for an energy-intensive economy such as South Africa’s, whose mines and factories rely on steady supplies of competitively priced power. South Africa … Seguir leyendo
By Mark Gevisser, the author of A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream (THE GUARDIAN, 04/03/10):
Jacob Zuma is an affable man justly lauded for attempting to recreate Nelson Mandela’s reconciliatory style in the aftermath of Thabo Mbeki’s deeply divisive tenure. In this context, the new South African president’s prickly attack on neocolonial British attitudes towards “barbaric” Africans was remarkable. It was reminiscent of Mbeki himself, and even Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.
The column that provoked the attack, by the Mail’s Stephen Robinson, was indeed an instance of the kind of sarky … Seguir leyendo
By Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society and author of Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (THE TIMES, 12/02/10):
I got there early to get a decent place to watch The Moment. The world had not even seen a picture of him for 27 years. What did he look like now? Would he be the dignified, brave leader who had stood in the dock of the Supreme Court on trial for his life in April 1964 and declared himself ready to die for his principles? Or a crushed old man, willing to compromise with the apartheid Government to … Seguir leyendo
By Wang Dan, a student leader at Peking University who helped organize the Tiananmen protest, was returned to prison from 1995 to 1998 and now teaches history at National Chengchi University in Taiwan (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
Twenty years ago, I was in Qincheng, the most well-known of China’s political prisons, along with several hundred other students and intellectuals who had taken part in the student movement of the previous summer. On a particularly cold winter morning, I sat on my bed and picked up my copy of The People’s Daily, the government newspaper we were allowed to … Seguir leyendo