SA PUPILS TO CHILDREN’S SUMMIT
NINE South African school pupils, representing each of the country’s provinces, will be given the chance to express their views on children’s issues at an international meeting in Accra, Ghana, from Wednesday. They will be members of a 30-strong South African delegation attending the Africa Summit of the Children and Broadcasting Forum. The gathering will address children’s rights and broadcast programming for and by children. The summit, which will be attended by delegates from about 30 African countries, ends on Saturday.
LISSOUBA VISITS NAM
Congolese President Pascal Lissouba arrived in Windhoek on Monday night for a private visit. NBC radio news said Lissouba will spend a few days in the country, during which he is expected to hold private talks with President Sam Nujoma. Prime Minister Hage Geingob and Foreign Affairs Minster Theo-Ben Gurirab met Lissouba on his arrival at Eros airport. Lissouba’s forces have been battling the militia of his rival, former military leader Denis Sassou Nguesso, since June in the Congolese capital, Brazzaville.
CRADOCK FIRE OUT
FARMERS, police and soldiers on Tuesday morning extinguished one of the massive fires which have destroyed more than 50 000 hectares of grazing land on farms between Cradock and Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape since Thursday last week. Chairman of the Cradock district farmers union, Hendrik van Zyl, said favourable weather conditions make it likely that the remaining two fires, burning on the farms Glen Lee and Groot Kom, will be brought under control by Tuesday afternoon. Van Zyl said the fires — ignited by between 12 and 14 separate lightning strikes on Thursday night — are the worst in living memory.
ZAMBIAN SIAMESE TWINS IN SA
ZAMBIAN Siamese twins Jospeh and Luka Banda, who are joined at the head, have arrived in South Africa for investigations into the possibility of an operation to separate them, the Medical University of SA said on Tuesday. The arrival of the eight-month-old twins at the Ga-Rankuwa Hospital north of Pretoria nine days ago followed a request by the Zambian health department to its Gauteng counterpart. A series of investigations by neurosurgeons from the hospital and Medunsa, Zambian specialists and a visiting American neurosurgeon are planned to try to formulate a treatment plan for the boys.
MADIBA AT JACKO SHOW
PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela and his companion Graca Machel and her three children were surprise guests at Monday night’s Michael Jackson concert at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town. Promoter Attie van Wyk said the president’s secretary, Zelda le Grange, called him at 5pm and said Mandela and Machel would be attending. “I arranged for him to meet Michael Jackson and he had snacks with the star and then we took him to his seat,” Van Wyk said. “He sat through the entire show and loved it.”
SUNDAY LIQUOR LAW STANDS
THE Constitutional Court decided on Monday not to overrule a clause in the Liquor Act preventing supermarkets from selling alcohol on Sundays and Christian holidays. The decision has been touted as an attempt to enforce controls over the distribution of a potentially harmful substance. The court said the move is not based on an observation of the Christian sabbath, but judges were divided on whether the decision infringes on the constitutional right to freedom of religion.
‘GET TOUGH ON RAPE’
GAUTENG safety and security MEC Jessie Duarte said on Monday the whole criminal justice system has to toughen up on rapists in the province. She called for more convictions and toughter sentencing in rape cases, calling the crime a “cancer”. Recently, more than 13 rapes were reported within 48 hours in Gauteng alone, most of them in Johannesburg. Duarte said close co-operation between police, justice and the community is necessary to cut down on the crime.
NIGERIAN ACTIVISTS RELEASED
A PROMINENT Nigerian lawyer and four other human rights advocates have been freed on bail following their arrests last month in the central city of Jos on sedition charges. The lawyer, Tunji Abayomi, president of the Human Rights Africa (HRA) organisation, and his four fellow activists were detained in Jos, capital of Plateau State, as they were holding a conference on democracy. The five men, who had invited students from several universities to the gathering, have been ordered to reappear in court on December 8 on charges of holding seditious documents and taking part in a banned rally, legal sources said.