Yearly Archives: 2001

A UN official responsible for monitoring basic legal freedoms has denounced threats made against judges and their families in Zimbabwe. “Harassment, intimidation, attacks, and threats against an independent judiciary and its judges will in fact be seen as direct assault on the rule of law,” said Dato’Param Cumaraswamy, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the […]

A WAR veteran and MP working on the election campaign of the leading challenger to President Yoweri Museveni has been released a day after his arrest by military intelligence officers. An army spokesman confirmed the release of Major Okwir Rabwoni, who was dragged out of a VIP lounge in Entebbe international airport for questioning by […]

RESIDENTS in Johannesburgs Soweto township killed two men and a teenager, and injured a woman, for stealing chairs from a church. Police said residents from Pimville caught the four as they were trying to take away the chairs. The victims appeared to have been hit by bricks, whips and stones. Their naked bodies were later […]

SA PRISONERS’ Organisation for Human Rights president Golden Miles Bhudu has been suspended following allegations that he misspent more than R200 000 in donor funds intended for an HIV/Aids programme at the Johannesburg Prison. Bhudu is apparently refusing to heed the order, and the organisation’s board of trustees is now threatening to seek a court […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Nairobi | Thursday ALTHOUGH there are now government-sponsored human rights commissions in nearly half the countries in Africa, the basic rights of African citizens are not generally better protected, says Human Rights Watch. In 1989 the only human rights commission was in Togo. Today there are 22, the New York-based group said in […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe marked his 77th birthday with an astonishing attack on the opposition, Britain and foreign-owned oil companies – who he blames for crippling the economy – and says he will retire only when his old white opponents are “thoroughly beaten”. In an interview on state television, Mugabe […]

A YOUNG boy and his grandmother had their left legs blown off in separate incidents after stepping on anti-personnel landmines at Halili village near Rundu in Namibia. The woman said she heard a blast, followed by her grandson’s screams. While trying to reach him by another footpath she stepped on another landmine.

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday UNITED States pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is to start distributing the drug Diflucan free to HIV and Aids patients at government hospitals and clinics in the next few weeks, the health department and Pfizer said this week. The department removed the final stumbling block to the distribution by approving Diflucan for […]

VICTIMS of repression under Chad’s former president Hissene Habre have applauded legal attempts in Senegal to reinstate torture and murder charges against the ex-dictator, who is now in exile in Senegal. An appeals court in Dakar said it would rule on March 6 on whether Habre, who ruled the north-central African nation from 1982 to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday SOUTH African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has given billions of rand to the poor and to middle income earners in tax reforms in a bittersweet budget designed to kickstart the rural economy and create much-needed jobs. Manuel said an ambitious privatisation plan would go ahead, and announced targetted tax […]