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I post con tag "Sud Africa" archivio

Le violenze xenofobe in Sud Africa

Res publica   22.04.15  

Quartz fa il punto sui disordini scoppiati in Sud Africa. La caccia allo straniero.
Una guerra tra poveri, frutto di un mix di nazionalismo, scarsa istruzione, ambiguità dell'African National Congress e assenza delle istituzioni.

On Saturday late afternoon, after canceling his scheduled state visit to Indonesia, Zuma appeared at the temporary relocation camp for foreign nationals in Chatsworth, KwaZulu Natal.

Although he tried to assure the disheartened and agitated crowd that the South African government condemned the events of the past two weeks – he lacked the earnestness he once displayed those many years ago. Many in the crowd along with many in and outside the country why it had taken Zuma this long to step up and address both the victims and the attackers.

Even his speech failed to be unequivocal.

Summed up, his overriding message to the more than 1000 foreign nationals stationed at the temporary relocation camp in Chatsworth was: "We do not want you to leave, but if you want to go, we will help you leave."

Articolo interessante anche per noi europei. Analogie inquietanti.

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Il super radiotelescopio condiviso

Geek   25.05.12  

Alla fine si è scelto il compromesso per realizzare lo Square Kilometre Array.
Il più grande radiotelescopio del mondo, tremila antenne per scoprire i segreti dell'universo e individuare civiltà aliene, sarà costruito tra il 2016 e il 2024 nei siti di Mileura nell'Australia occidentale e nella regione sudafricana di Karoo, premiando entrambi i principali paesi candidati.

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Il sogno sudafricano ha perso la rotta

Res publica   09.01.12  

In un lungo articolo Time racconta come l'African National Congress abbia perso la sua spinta riformatrice e abbandonato la guida morale del paese, lasciando praterie a nuovi partiti e a più fresche idee democratiche di rinnovamento e riconciliazione.

I'm in Bloemfontein to measure that against reality. Because while South Africa has seen steady economic growth in the 17 years after apartheid, it has also experienced an abiding racial divide. That partition is expressed in enduring prejudice on both sides and persistent economic segregation. Remarkably, income inequality rose after apartheid ended: redistribution programs have mainly benefited a politically connected elite. Most whites and a few blacks live in the first world. But out of a total population of 50 million, 8.7 million South Africans, most of them black, earn $1.25 or less a day. Millions live in the same township shacks, travel in the same crowded minibuses (called taxis in South Africa) and, if they have jobs, work in the same white-owned homes and businesses they did under apartheid — all while coping with some of the world's worst violent crime and its biggest HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The ANC blames apartheid's legacy and, as party spokesman Keith Khoza describes it, "the reluctance of business to come to the party." But 17 years is almost a generation. The government's failure to transform South Africa from a country of black and white into a "rainbow nation," in Archbishop Desmond Tutu's phrase, means black poverty is still the key political issue. A second, related one, however, is the ANC's dramatic loss of moral authority. At 93, Mandela is still among the most admired people on earth. But his party has become synonymous with failure — and not coincidentally, arrogance, infighting and corruption. Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and, at 80, still the nation's moral conscience, encapsulated South African political debate last year when he came out of retirement to give two speeches. In the first he asked whites to pay a wealth tax in recognition of their persistent advantage. In the second he called the ANC "worse than the apartheid government."

[...] As the Arab Spring showed, ruling parties that fail to distinguish their interests from those of the nation may also not spot their approaching fall. And the signs of the ANC's decline are there. The party is fragmented. Its support peaked at 69% at elections in 2004 and fell to 61% at local elections in 2011. And in December it lost three previously safe seats in local by-elections. Meanwhile, the DA is growing. Its support rose from 1.7% in a general election in 1996 to 16.7% in 2009, when it also took Western Cape province, and to 23.8% in 2011. Zille says her ambition is to take two more provinces in the next general election in 2014 and the government in 2019. Like any other politician, she wants power. But she insists that removing the ANC is essential if South Africa is to finally enjoy genuine democracy. "Loyalty is a great trait, but if you are to hold political leaders to account, you can't be loyal to a political party," she says.

In a previous life, Zille was an antiapartheid journalist. Her ultimate goal, she says, is to make good on Tutu's vision of a Technicolor nation. But in South Africa's black-and-white present, Zille is only too aware that she has a "melanin deficit." Hence moves by the DA to recruit to its leadership a black-struggle legend of its own: Mamphela Ramphele, a former World Bank managing director and long-standing ANC critic. If the name is unfamiliar, that's because Ramphele never married her partner: Steve Biko.

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Il più grande radiotelescopio del mondo

Geek   15.09.11  

Il Sud Africa, in collaborazione con altri otto stati africani, e l'Australia assieme alla Nuova Zelanda si contendono la realizzazione del più potente radiotelescopio del mondo.

Il Square Kilometre Array costerà quasi un miliardo e mezzo di euro e sarà composto da migliaia di antenne con una superficie totale di un chilometro quadrato.
La mole di dati raccolta dovrà essere elaborata da un computer mille volte più potente di quello attualmente più veloce e sarà la nostra migliore occasione per svelare i misteri più profondi dell'universo e scoprire civiltà aliene.

L'Africa in questa corsa sembra avere per il momento una marcia in più.

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Il colonnello visto dal Sud Africa

Res publica   07.09.11  

Lo stretto legame che lega il Sud Africa al colonnello Gheddafi raccontato dall'Atlantic.

In its lingering affection for Qaddafi, South Africa is not much different from many other sub-Saharan African states, whom Qaddafi showered with money for decades, and some of whose post-colonial revolutionary groups he helped fund. If African leaders did not respond positively to his calls for a "United States of Africa" some 10 years ago, they were at least willing to accept his financial largesse. But the case of South Africa is uniquely disappointing, given its pretensions to being the leading expositor of democracy on the continent.

Qaddafi's connections to the African National Congress, South Africa's long-dominant ruling party, go back decades, when he supported its struggle against apartheid. No less a figure than Nelson Mandela has been the Libyan dictator's most respectable booster. In 1990, fresh out of prison, Mandela paid one of his first visits to Libya, where he was the inaugural recipient of the oddly named "Al-Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights." In 1997, Mandela paid Qaddafi back in kind, awarding him South Africa's prestigious Order of Good Hope. "Those who feel we should have no relations with Qaddafi have no morals," Mandela declared. "Those who feel irritated by our friendship with President Qaddafi can go jump in the pool."

The roots of the ANC's comradeship with Qaddafi are not just ideological, but pecuniary as well. When Mandela's ex-wife Winnie was on trial for the assault and kidnapping of suspected South African government informants (one of whom was killed by her bodyguards), Qaddafi helped pay for her legal defense. The final report of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission later found Winnie "politically and morally accountable for the gross violations of human rights." Qaddafi is also rumored to have given $2 million to Zuma to pay legal fees incurred during his 2006 rape trial.

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La nazionale operaria

Res publica   29.07.10  

I giocatori nordcoreani sono stati tenuti per sei ore in piedi di fronte al pubblico ludibrio, in seguito al deludente risultato della nazionale al mondiale sudafricano. Un posto in un cantiere edile di Pyongyang per l'allenatore.

Più di un milione di euro, è la richiesta degli sponsor dell'equipe de France in seguito al danno d'immagine dopo la figuraccia al mondiale.

Meritate vacanze e tanto sole per la nazionale italiana e per Marcello Lippi.

Tutte e tre le nazionali sono uscite al primo turno come ultime classificate.

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Il Sud Africa dopo la Coppa del Mondo

Res publica   12.07.10  

Non c'è dubbio sul fatto che i mondiali di calcio siano stati un successo, sotto tutti i punti di vista.
Secondo Danny Jordaan, amministratore delegato del comitato organizzatore dei mondiali, il Sud Africa ha ottenuto un credito internazionale come mai prima d'ora e questo successo può diventare una rampa di lancio per una crescita economica e sociale, duratura e di lungo termine.
Ora diventa vitale non disperdere il patrimonio conquistato e non smettere di investire con profitto nello sviluppo del paese.

E' quello che si augurano in molti. Con Jacob Zuma al timone qualche perplessità tuttavia sorge. Staremo a vedere.

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Vuvuzela

Res publica   12.07.10  

Cosa resterà di Sud Africa 2010?

Ma le vuvuzela naturalmente, ora con contorno di canzoni. Una più inascoltabile dell'altra.

In attesa dello sbarco (salvo divieti) nei nostri stadi.

After the South African World Cup draws to a close Sunday, the nation will surely quiet down. International crowds will clear out, returning to their homes. The FIFA radius around stadiums will fold, allowing local vendors to return to business as usual. Each scream, chant, and cheer will die out, one voice at a time.

The vuvuzelas, they will remain. Many of the thousands upon thousands of plastic death-horns will be found in the streets, or in hotel rooms, or left in airport terminals by those who figured they might take the things as souvenirs, only to find they didn't fit in their luggage.

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