The dolomite caves at Sterkfontein, which are a world heritage site, have given scientists fresh hope that they will eventually be able to answer why and when the humans and apes parted company on the evolutionary path.The first fossil of an adult P robustus ever discovered was found at Sterkfontein in 1936.Dr Keyser’s find was made in 1994 but was not revealed until yesterday.. Zimbabwe’s police commissioner promised to use more sweeping powers to end the political violence that has killed more than a dozen people since February. Zimbabwe’s police commissioner promised to use more sweeping powers to end the political violence that has killed more than a dozen people since February.
Commissioner Augustine Chihuri said he would enforce a law that forbids party officials to bus supporters to rallies unless the events were officiated by presidents of political parties. Police must also have ample notice before the start of any large public gathering or rally, he said.Meanwhile farm leaders said a second farm worker died from injuries allegedly suffered during an attack by ruling party militants on Tuesday on a banana estate near Harare.Mr Chihuri dismissed opposition claims that the police have incited some attacks and sat passively watching others, saying instead that the ruling party and the opposition shared responsibility.”The police do not cause violence,” Chihuri told reporters and officials from different parties. “It is you and your supporters who think politics is violence, and go about and do violence. You should stop it and cease to accuse police of creating violence.”Mr Chihuri accused party officials of inciting attacks by making inflammatory statements and “drowning supporters in alcohol to make them more vicious and callous.”In a statement read before a closed-door meeting with officials from the ruling party, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and officials from several smaller parties, Commissioner Chihuri said there had been 194 acts of political violence since January.Seven people had been killed, he said, adding that both the ruling party and the MDC had been involved in killings. The murders of a black policeman and two white farmers were not related to politics, he said, but to the two-month-old occupation of white-owned farms by black squatters, which he called a separate issue.Reports from farm officials, opposition leaders and others indicate that at least 13 people have died from violence related to the country’s political crisis, including the land occupations.The violence started when armed squatters led by men claiming to be veterans of the bush war that led to Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980 moved onto white-owned farms after ruling party-backed constitutional referendum was defeated in February.Squatters now occupy 1,000 farms and say they will not leave until they are assured they will receive land.

About 4,000 white farmers own nearly one-third of Zimbabwe’s productive farm land.Mr Chihuri urged calm as parliamentary elections, expected to be called in May, approach.”Exercise restraint, patience and tolerance, and above all, hold the sanctity of human rights,” he said.Zimbabwean officials were holding talks on the land crisis with British officials in London on Thursday. British authorities have offered to pay up to 36 million pounds for land reform over the next two years if Zimbabwe ends the occupations and agrees to a fair transfer of land.. “Cricket civilises people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe – I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen.”

“Cricket civilises people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe – I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen.”
The voice behind such fine sentiments was not that of Andy Flower, captain of the Zimbabwe cricket team, which spent its first full day in Britain yesterday as part of a three-month tour. Nor were they the words of Dan Stannard, the team manager, who will try and steer his team through what must be a difficult tour.The words belong instead to Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, and the man widely blamed for his country’s current misery and for creating this unenviable position for his cricket team. “All the guys are worried,” Flower said at a press conference at Lords earlier this week.

“It is not ideal because we have farmers in the squad and we are all thinking about what has happened.”It is frustrating to watch television pictures from thousands of miles away but that will not be an excuse for our on-field performance.”Putting aside the team’s performance in the two Test matches against England and a triangular one-day series involving the hosts and the West Indies that are scheduled, it is little short of a miracle that the team is here.The tour was given the go-ahead only last week, following high-level talks between the Foreign Office, the England and Wales Cricket Board and the Zimbabwe Cricket Union.Then there is the team itself: a third of the players have families who have been forced to leave their farms. Three players – Gary Brent, Dirk Viljoen and Bryan Strang – have farms themselves. A fourth player – Heath Streak, the team’s best bowler – has yet to join the team after his father and mother had to flee their 30,000-acre farm to the north of Bulawayo when a neighbour was shot last week. He will join the players later today.To some, the fortunes of a cricket team touring Britain while the player’s home country sinks deeper and deeper into violence and murder may appear unimportant. But the concerns of the team as it prepares to play against Hampshire today, echo the concerns being voiced in Zimbabwe.”The situation at home is always in our conversations and in the players’ minds,” Mr Stannard said yesterday evening, as the team arrived at the De Vere Grand Harbour Hotel, in Southampton.”[Five players] have close links with the farms. They are obviously worried about their families back home but hopefully it will turn out okay – we must think positively.

Now we are here, the cricket is to the fore.”Gary Brent, another of the team’s bowlers, has left his family at its farm at Norton, 50 miles from Harare.”It’s serious where my folks are in Norton, there is activity there It’s a dreadful concern while I am so many miles away I’ve been ringing and e-mailing them all the time. It is very difficult but we try not to talk about it so much because it is so depressing.”And there are other voices. It would be naive and wrong to pretend that cricket in Zimbabwe is anything other than a sport dominated by the white minority. But observers such as Matthew Engel, the editor of the cricketer’s almanac Wisden, believe that the sport has, in recent years, done what it can to attract black players and supporters.There are four black players in the touring party, among them the pace bowler Henry Olonga, the country’s first black Test cricketer. Yesterday he said he hoped that some good could emerge from the growing anarchy at home. “It is about time that something happened in Zimbabwe and it is exciting that loads of people are standing together to campaign for greater transparency and more open government,” he said.”I just hope that it does not get more violent Change is needed but it could take a while.

If that change comes from free and fair elections then everyone will be happy but none of us want it to spill over into violence.”Although Olonga sounded a political note, the approach of the team over the next three months will be to try and keep a low profile and avoid any diplomatic or political issues.One situation they will be unlikely to avoid, though many might wish they could, will be the invitation to dinner with Zimbabwe’s High Commissioner, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi. A High Commission spokesman confirmed yesterday that an invitation would “normally” be made.In the meantime, the team that was not granted full membership of the International Cricket Council until 1992 will be trying to concentrate on the sport. “We have to think positively and hope things do sort themselves out, and if problems do arise in the future then we will deal with them,” said Flower. Though Zimbabwe only have what has been described as a “shallow” squad, they do have the ability to cause an upset – as they have proved to England in the past.It would be asking too much of them to fulfil Mr Mugabe’s apparent dream of creating a nation of gentlemen..