Bishop Seoka: Mine owners failed to talk
THE tragic events at the Marikana mine, where 44 people,
including 34 miners, were shot dead by police (
News, 24 August), show that South Africa has forgotten the
skill of dialogue, the Bishop of Pretoria, the Rt Revd Jo Seoka,
has said. Addressing a conference in London on Sunday, hosted by
the Bench Marks Foundation, Bishop Seoka said: "Talking would have
alleviated the tension from the start, and the carnage we saw
happen on that fateful day . . . would not have occurred." On
Tuesday, South African police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at
striking miners at Anglo American Platinum, who were protesting
against a union-brokered deal to end a six-week walkout.
Tyndale fights contraception ruling
A LAWSUIT has been brought by Tyndale House, a Christian
publisher, against a US government mandate that requires employers
to offer health-insurance plans that include free contraception.
Government guidelines exempt a religious employer that has "the
inculcation of religious values as its purpose", that primarily
employs and serves people who share its religious tenets, and is
non-profit-making. Tyndale, however, is regarded as a for-profit
organisation. Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal representative
of Tyndale, said that contraception as defined in the legislation
included emergency-contraception drugs which, it argued, "cause
abortion". The US government says that nearly 99 per cent of all
women use contraception at some point in their lives, but that more
than half of all women between the ages of 18 and 34 struggle to
afford it.
Like clockwork
PARISHIONERS have discovered why an employee of Rolex comes to
wind the clock of Holy Trinity, Geneva, each week. The founder of
the company, Hans Eberhard Wilsdorf, who died in 1960, was a member
of the congregation, and left instructions that Rolex should wind
the clock in perpetuity - and also left enough money to pay for
it.