OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Cape Town | Thursday THE family of a British teenager watched in horror as she was crushed to death by the cable car mechanism on Table Mountain, moments after she had apparently ignored warnings not to enter a restricted area. Cara Weaver, 14 – described by family members as fun-loving and sporty – […]
AN audio and lighting engineer faces possible imprisonment for allegedly insulting Zimbabwe’s president during a holiday music show. State prosecutors said Stephen Schadendorf, 35, turned spotlights on a portrait of President Robert Mugabe during a song construed as critical of Mugabe, prompting thousands of music fans to cheer and clamor for Mugabe’s ousting. Schadendorf was […]
A LARGE crowd packed into an Islamic court in northern Nigeria to watch as two men found guilty of drinking alcohol were given 80 lashes each. The crowd burst into chants of “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”) as the men, 22-year-old Nugu Abdullahi and 63-year-old Sa’adu Aminu, were given their punishment. Since the introduction of […]
MORE than 100 suspected rapists were arrested during December in Gauteng after police stepped up action against sex offenders. Police said most of the victims were children who had been attacked by a family member or someone close to them. In the past four months, 14 rapists have been sentenced to between 10 and 25 […]
THE Gambian government has denied claims by a United Nations panel that it is involved in trafficking so-called conflict diamonds, thereby aiding rebels in Angola and Sierra Leone. The panel fingered a number of west African countries, including Gambia, for providing a conduit for diamonds being used by rebels to fund their armed actions in […]
THIRTY-TWO fighters of the Angolan rebel movement UNITA have been freed under a government amnesty announced on November 10, the eve of the 25th anniversary of independence in the war-torn southern African country. UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, rejected the amnesty offer, but small numbers of rebel fighters have surrendered their weapons and handed themselves […]
MORE than 3.2 million Sudanese are facing serious food and water shortages due to the combined disruptions of civil war and drought, the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) said this week. The Rome-based WFP said: ”If prompt action is not taken now, there is a danger that the tragic scenes of 1998, in which […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday CAPE TOWN police and health officials have been left dumbstruck by the devastation wrought on a suburban home by more than 1_000 rats thought to have been taken from a laboratory and kept as pets. Gwynneth Quick, 39, is under psychiatric observation while exterminators gassed the rodents, which had […]
SOUTH African Breweries says it would be interested in acquiring the brewing units of Britain’s Bass after Britain blocked Belgian Interbrew’s 2.3 billion pound Bass takeover. But an SAB spokesman in London said the South African brewer would only consider such a move, which follows the decision of the British competition authority to block the […]
MANOAH ESIPISU, Lusaka | Thursday ZAMBIAN President Frederick Chiluba’s ruling party has taken its first formal step towards his election for a currently unconstitutional third term – and political analysts say he is likely to stay in power. Chiluba appears to be behind an orchestrated campaign by his Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) to persuade […]