Yearly Archives: 2001

MOLTEN lava from east DRC’s Mount Nyamuragira, which erupted February 6, is helping Rwandan troops in the area to dislodge Hutu extremist militias. Kigali has long justified its support of rebels in the DRC with the need to counter the threat posed by extremist groups such as the Interahamwe which helped carry out the 1994 […]

SOUTH African maize futures fell sharply on Monday as rains swept across key grain growing belts, offering hope to despairing farmers, cooperatives said. The weather bureau predicted scattered thundershowers for the maize-growing North West province and heavy falls in the north-east of the Free State province, another key maize producing region. “The crisis we had […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Tuesday HUNDREDS of subsistence farmers in KwaZulu-Natal have threatened violence and Zimbabwe-style land invasions if they are moved from land near Mandeni they claim as theirs, but whose title is held by descendants of the first white Zulu chief, John Dunn. “If the land affairs minister says the people must be […]

THE Namibian government said on Monday it would provide food relief to more than 21 000 San families living in the country’s northeastern Caprivi region, which has been ravaged by a famine. Emergency Management Unit Deputy Director Gabriel Kangouua said 537 tonnes of food would be distributed from about 160 points in the region in […]

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni took his re-election campaign to northern Uganda this weekend but seemed to make little impression in an area that has been ravaged by war and is traditionally hostile to him. Several thousand people turned out to see him at a rally in the northern town of Gulu but there was little enthusiasm, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, San Francisco | Tuesday A WORLDWIDE network of no-fishing zones may be the last, best hope of replenishing the Earth’s depleted stocks of fish and other marine species, an international team of scientists reports. Overfishing, pushed by a hungry world’s demand for seafood, has moved species of fish toward extinction, the researchers say, […]

TWO South African labour department officials have been suspended and face internal charges relating to a factory fire in which 11 workers burnt to death last year. “We have reason to believe there was ineptitude and dereliction of duty,” Labour Department Director General Rams Ramashia said, adding that two senior managers were to be charged. […]

SUBSISTENCE fishing from thousands of dugout canoes along southern African lakes is threatening stocks and the livelihood of communities, a senior Southern African Development Community (SADC) official said. “They are really hammering the resources until they are no longer sustainable,” said Shaibu Mapila, the Malawian co-ordinator of the SADC inland fisheries sector. Mapila was briefing […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, London | Tuesday ZIMBABWES main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, believes a presidential election will be called in his country in August as the government deteriorates into panic. Meanwhile, diplomatic relations between Britain and Zimbabwe deteriorated as the Foreign Office confirmed it had called in the Zimbabwean high commissioner over the expulsion and intimidation […]

A 39-year-old Briton caught last week with a large amount of cannabis and cash in his truck while trying to leave Morocco was sentenced on Monday to two years in prison. Geoffrey Richard Cousins, a farmer living in Yvers, France, was arrested on February 12 in Tangier when a police search of his vehicle turned […]