Human Rights Day - 21March

This is a three-day weekend here in South Africa. The national holiday, Human Rights Day, commemorates the killing of apartheid pass law protesters on 21 March 1960 in Sharpeville (famously) but also here in Cape Town in Langa. Here is a short video of President Zuma's visit to last year's event in Langa.

In more recent Zuma news, the South African president met this past week with the leaders of the power-sharing government in Zimbabwe in an effort to move forward their contentious negotiations. I was pleased to see Zuma address this long-standing issue, and I was also both pleased and amused that he came under criticism for all the plastic bottles of water seen on the table in the pictures of the meeting leaders.

In far more sobering news, reports this week offered grim tales of the devastating effects of poaching on South Africa's precious rhino population (link has news story and video clips). My encounters with these creatures (both species) in the HluhluweUmfolozi Park back in 2008 were the most memorable of the trip.

On the topic of news, I've just discovered the World News (WN) Network's website. According to its website, WN "was founded in 1995 and launched online in 1998, with the primary objective of being the most comprehensive, one-stop news resource on the Internet. Today, World News has over 20,000 global thematic and regional news sites - enhanced by the web’s most comprehensive multilingual search engine." Seems cool at first glance.