BBC News OnlineSaturday,
7 April, 2001
South Africa to import Cuban teachers
A spokesman for the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, has announced that
Cuban teachers are to be brought to South Africa, to relieve shortages in the
country.
The spokesman, Bheki Khumalo, said that Cuba was a fast track answer to the
problem of not having enough qualified teachers.
Many South African teachers left the profession in the late 1990s when the
government introduced measures to correct the racial imbalances caused by
apartheid; other have since left for better paid posts in Europe. Cuba already
has an agreement to supply medical staff to South Africa, and has sent some four
hundred doctors to work there.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
Buena Vista violinist dies after show
April 9, 2001.
Violinist Pedro Depestre Gonzalez, who plays with the Cuban group Buena
Vista Social Club, has died after collapsing on stage in Basel, Switzerland.
Depestre, 55, collapsed after performing a solo at Sunday's concert and
could not be revived.
Following his death, the group cancelled a planned concert Monday in
Cologne, Germany.
Depestre was due to play with Cachaito Lopez at the Royal Festival Hall as
part of the La Linea festival this weekend.
That concert will go ahead as planned.
The Buena Vista Social Club are a group of Cuban musicians gathered together
by Ry Cooder in 1997 for one last album of music that had long since gone out of
fashion in Cuba.
Now the musicians - some of whom are in their seventies and eighties - have
sold at least four million copies of their album.
They were also featured in a 1999 film by the German director Wim Wenders.
As well as playing with the Buena Vistas, Depestre plays solo violin on the
track Mariposita de Primavera, on singer Omara Portuondo's last album.
Portuondo is due to play in London on 12 April.
He is one of the stars of the Buena Vista show along with singer Ibrahim
Ferrer and virtuoso pianist Ruben Gonzalez.
But there are usually about 18 musicians onstage at a concert, each applying
an individual touch to the collective. | 