Yearly Archives: 1999

A GROUP of some 200 supporters of vigilante group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs and the fringe Muslims Against Global Oppression staged a peaceful placard protest at the Cae Town Waterfront on Sunday, in protest at last week’s police action against Muslim protests around the visit of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. On Friday, at […]

THE BOTSWANA pula is undervalued, says the Bank of Botswana but not by the 24% against international currencies that a report by Stockbrokers Botswana claims. The bank has also indicated it is unlikely to change its policy of linking the pula to the South African rand. It sells 90% of its manufactured goods to South […]

THE United States embassy building in central Nairobi, which was the scene of the August 7 1998 bomb blast in which over 250 people including 11 Americans died, will be demolished ”n the near future”. US ambassador to Kenya Prudence Bushnell was on quoted Sunday by the Nairobi-based Sunday Standard as confirming that the building […]

TANZANIA has joined Inmarsat, the satellite telecommunications group, becoming its 85th member, the company said on Friday. Tanzania is the 14th African country to join the group. Tanzania’s joining Inmarsat ”illustrates the persistent need for mobile communications by satellite, and for computers, which are essential for growth and development in this region,” said Shola Taylor, […]

THE Prime Minister of Burkina Faso, Kadre Desire Ouedraogo, has resigned along with his government following President Blaise Compaore’s inauguration for a new seven-year term. Compaore, who was re-elected on November 15, approved the resignation of the government late on Friday in the capital Ouagadougou. Compaore is expected within the next few days to appoint […]

THE National Party has lost its appeal against a decision by the press ombudsman that the Mail & Guardian was justified in publishing details of a police investigation into its leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk. The article, NP leader in bizarre sex probe reported that a Western Cape criminal, John Hermanus, had laid charges of sodomy […]

Chiara Carter Moves by a South African company to create a free trade zone on a tiny island off the West Coast of Africa have been slammed by environmentalists. West African Development Corporation (Wadco) has won a contract to operate a free trade zone stretching across a third of the island of Principe – a […]

One million rounds of bullets tipped with uranium were fired during the Gulf War. They slice through tanks. And this is what they do to humans. Maggie O’Kane reports on Iraq’s deformed children, victims of a war they never knew The movement inside her body is strange: different from her three other children. As Suad […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD There are many clubs for travellers. There’s the mile-high club, that exclusive group of people who have copulated 10 000m above ground. Then there are numerous frequent-flyer clubs. Well, I’ve just joined what should be called the deportation club. It was not by choice and certainly does not have […]

Chiara Carter and Marianne Merten In the mythology of the Cape Flats’s Americans gang, the six white and seven red lines on the stars and stripes flag represent crisp banknotes stained in blood. Criminologist Don Pinnock says this representation, integrated into the gang’s initiation ritual, illustrates key elements of Cape gangsterism – money, violence and […]