Africa.gm - Africa news and information community - News - RSS

Syndicated content powered by .geographical media

RSS syndication makes it easy to receive content updates in My Yahoo!, Newsgator, Bloglines, and other news readers.

Current Feed Content

---

SWAZILAND: Women's equality in theory, but not in practice

A groundbreaking legal action in Swaziland's High Court is testing the new Constitution and its recognition of equal rights for women. King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, approved the Constitution in 2005 - on the back of centuries of discrimination against women that accorded them second class status - ending customary and institutional discrimination based on gender. Although the Constitution recognizes the equality of women, in practice much legislation remains...

SWAZILAND: ARV programme needs to double

MANZINI Wednesday, December 03, 2008 (IRIN) - The release of revised projections indicating that twice as many HIV-positive Swazis are in need of life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs than was previously thought has highlighted the urgent need for government to iron out problems in its treatment programme. A new UNAIDS model for estimating how many people need ARVs has seen the figure for Swaziland almost double from 34,000 to 62,000. In a country where 26 percent of sexually active...

SWAZILAND: Ignoring protests will not make them go away

MANZINI Thursday, September 18, 2008 (IRIN) - Swazi police on Thursday detained trade union leaders and pro-democracy activists attempting to blockade the landlocked country's border with South Africa, to press their demands for political reform in the kingdom. "Whilst it may be within the rights of workers to engage in protest action, it is certainly unacceptable to exercise this right by disrupting the free flow of goods and services and infringing on the rights of others to conduct their...

SWAZILAND: Treatment programme woes

JOHANNESBURG Thursday, September 18, 2008 (IRIN) - Shortages of antiretroviral (ARV) and other drugs in public health facilities in Swaziland have been among a long list of grievances cited by protesters during several weeks of unprecedented political unrest ahead of parliamentary polls on Friday. Health department officials have admitted that supplies of some ARV drugs ran low in July and August, but insist that the problem has been resolved. "I can appreciate that people on treatment get...

SWAZILAND: Voters hoping to make a difference

MBABANE Friday, September 19, 2008 (IRIN) - Swaziland's humanitarian crises were uppermost in the minds of voters casting their ballots in the parliamentary election on 19 September. "I don't care about politics, I care about feeding my family. My candidate promised us food," said Charles Nkosi, a motorcar mechanic in the Mbekelweni constituency, north of Manzini, the country's commercial hub. At a pre-election rally in the drought-stricken Lubombo region in the east of the country, voters...

SWAZILAND: Bomb blast kills two

MBABANE Monday, September 22, 2008 (IRIN) - Two men were killed and a third injured after a bomb exploded on 21 September close to King Mswati III's Lozitha palace, 25kms east of the Swazi capital, Mbabane. Police suspect that the bomb exploded prematurely as it was placed at a road bridge by the perpetrators. Police said the two men killed were a Swazi national and a man said to be Indian. The man who survived the blast was a 44-year-old South African national and was taken in to police...

SWAZILAND: Go west young man or woman

MBABANE Thursday, October 09, 2008 (IRIN) - King Mswati has directed Swaziland's college graduates to leave the country to find employment, admitting that a lack of jobs at home gives them no alternative. "We can export our skills to other countries and international organisations in order to bring home foreign currencies," said the king, speaking at the University of Swaziland in Kwaluseni, 30km east of the capital, Mbabane. Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, is the...

SWAZILAND: Winning the fight against malaria

MANZINI Monday, December 01, 2008 (IRIN) - A decline in the incidence of malaria in Swaziland is being attributed to a devastating drought in the country's malaria belt. In recent years the government and international donors have embarked on a coordinated response to the mosquito-borne disease and there now is confident talk of making Swaziland malaria-free. Malarial eradication is defined as no new clinically confirmed cases. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a...

SWAZILAND: Vincent Mdluli, "HIV has ended more romances than anything else"

MANZINI Monday, December 01, 2008 (IRIN) - Vincent Mdluli, 24, lives in Manzini, Swaziland, and works as a carpenter's assistant. He told IRIN/PlusNews what happened when he found out his girlfriend was HIV positive, and how the discovery changed his life. "My friend, do you know that HIV has ended more romances than anything else? A wife tells a husband she's HIV and he leaves her. Most times it is the man who infects the woman; he has affairs outside their relationship, he gets infected,...

SWAZILAND: A cow in the field is worth two in the EU

MBABANE Wednesday, October 15, 2008 (IRIN) - Swaziland's failure to take advantage of the opportunity to export unlimited quantities of beef to the lucrative European Union (EU) market is being attributed to poor animal husbandry, high livestock mortality rates, and cultural practices that deter farmers from selling their cattle. The EU's new trade agreement with the impoverished country has opened the world's richest market to Swaziland's hormone-free beef but the lure of cash has failed to...