News stories by Mantoe Phakathi, page 4

MAPHUNGWANE, Swaziland, Jun 15 (IPS) - The overcast sky is a sign that it might rain, and Happy Shongwe, a smallholder farmer from rural Maphungwane in eastern Swaziland, is not exactly happy.

MBABANE, Apr 09 (IPS) - For more than a decade after 1992, when Swazi gold miner Benson Maseko, 50, fell ill with chest pains and a nagging cough, he did not seek treatment.

MBABANE, Mar 25 (IPS) - Every day for the last four years, 52-year-old Tintfombi Msibi has had to walk past the borehole in her village of Ekuphakameni, one of the driest rural villages in southern Swaziland, to a dirty stream two kilometres away to collect drinking water.

MBABANE, Mar 22 (IPS) - Every day for the last four years, 52-year-old Tintfombi Msibi has had to walk past the borehole in her village of Ekuphakameni, one of the driest rural villages in southern Swaziland, to a dirty stream two kilometres away to collect drinking water.

MBABANE, Feb 18 (IPS) - As the Swazi government struggles to guarantee a no-cost nationwide primary school system, it finds itself sparring against school principals over the question if it is a lack of funds or an abundance of corruption that is standing in the way of its success. 

DOHA, Dic 04 (IPS) - Qatar may be one of the richest countries in the world, but it has something in common with its African counterparts – food insecurity.

DOHA, Nov 28 (IPS) - The skyscraper Qatari capital city of Doha is a far cry from Cecilia Kibe's home in Turkana district, a remote area in Kenya inhabited by mostly nomadic communities and pastoralists hit hard by the effects of climate change.

MBABANE, Oct 13 (IPS) - Swaziland’s King Mswati III is under immense pressure following the constitutional crisis that has resulted from his cabinet’s refusal to resign after the House of Assembly passed a vote of no confidence.

MBABANE, Jul 31 (IPS) - Swazis should not see the ongoing nationwide one-month teachers’ strike as a movement capable of overthrowing the political regime here, despite the fact that civil servants and nurses have joined the action, according to political analyst Dr. Sikelela Dlamini.

It is midmorning at the Kanungu Health Centre IV and the queue of patients grows as more people start to arrive for treatment at this rural facility more than 400 kilometres outside the Ugandan capital of Kampala.