Yearly Archives: 2001

A SMALL group of demonstrators gathered outside the Belfast Magistrate’s Court in Mpumalanga when a local businessman, his friend and a widow appeared on various charges of child sex abuse. The demonstrators placed placards against the court’s fence, some of which read: “No bail for child abusers”. The widow is accused of forcing her son, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Sunday AN explosion went off early on Sunday at the building housing the printing press of Zimbabwe’s only independent daily, staff at the paper and witnesses said. The blast happened at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday according to residents in Harare’s Southerton neighbourhood. The blast came two days after militant war veteran […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bhuj, India | Sunday SOLDIERS digging through the ruins of crushed buildings on Sunday pursued the faint voices of survivors of India’s devastating earthquake, bolstered by the rescue of three people pulled from the rubble 36 hours after the disaster struck. But with more than 6_000 confirmed dead and authorities saying the toll […]

LEADING Tanzanian opposition politician Ibrahim Lipumba has been arrested after the government claimed to have discovered plans by his party to “wreak havoc” across the country. Lipumba, chairman of Tanzania’s leading opposition party, the Civic United Front (CUF), was arrested with at least 50 other members of the party. The CUF is planning nationwide demonstrations […]

A UN expert has criticised the Zimbabwe government for the alleged intimidation of judges in the ongoing debate over land reforms in the southern African country. “The deterioration in the rule of law and the undermining of the independence of the judiciary is a matter of grave concern to the international community,” Dato’Param Cumaraswamy, a […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Davos, Switzerland | Saturday FRUSTRATED with what he sees as the failure of western aid programs in Africa, South African President Thabo Mbeki has emerged as one of the architects of a plan to boost private sector investment and develop more home-grown solutions to the continent’s deep economic and social problems. Mbeki and […]

MALAWI President Bakili Muluzi has denied weeks of public speculation that he intends changing the country’s constitution and running for a third term in office in 2004. Malawi information minister Clement Stambuli said Muluzi would honour existing constitutional restrictions limiting presidents to two consecutive five-year terms. Stambuli tried last week to defuse growing civil society […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kinshasa | Saturday THE Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) new president, Joseph Kabila, has boosted hopes for an end to his country’s complex civil war, vowing in his inaugural address to work for peace – after which, he said, democratic elections would take place. General Kabila took the oath of office on Friday, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Los Angeles | Saturday A CALIFORNIA appeals court has upheld a civil jury’s finding that ”Trial of the Century” defendant OJ Simpson was liable for the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend, saying in effect that Simpson committed two deliberate, vicious murders. Simpson, a former football star turned actor, was acquitted of […]