IN BRIEF US MINESWEEPER FOR NAMIBIA
THE United States is to deliver a vehicle designed to scoop landmines out of piles of dirt to Namibia — one of 15 countries receiving US demining assistance in early 1998 — the Pentagon said on Tuesday. A special forces team, scheduled to arrive in Namibia on Thursday, will train Namibian demining teams in the use of the “berm processor”. The US effort to help clear mines, which began in 1993, has lowered the number of Cambodian civilians being killed mines by 50%, and cleared 20 000 square kilometres of Mozambican land.
SOWETO VOICELESS
THE community broadcaster Voice of Soweto has been ordered by the Independent Broadcasting Authority to close on January 19, after failing to comply with several licence conditions. These include providing the IBA with audited financial statements, maintaining a properly constituted board, and making the studios accessible to the community — the studios are in the Johannesburg CBD. An IBA spokesman said the authority’s monitoring and complaints department had made numerous attempts to assist Voice of Soweto in complying with licence conditions and had warned of possible penalties.
CHOLERA HITS DRC PRISON CAMP
A CHOLERA epidemic sweeping through a prison camp holding some 4 000 one-time Kabila loyalists in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has killed more than 200 people and infected 1 000 others, aid agencies said on Tuesday. Cholera has spread as the camp and the nearby city of Kisangani struggled to find fresh drinking water in the aftermath of flooding two weeks ago. On Tuesday, some cases of the disease were found in Kisangani, prompting fears that the epidemic will spread further.
ROW OVER BANDA’S WILL
RELATIVES of Malawi’s late president Hatings Kamuzu Banda walked out when a reading of his will showed that he has left most of his fortune to his former “official hostess”, Cecilia Kadzamira, local media reported on Wednesday. One of Banda’s nephews, Fred Kazombo, said no male relative has been given anything and charges that the will is a fake, saying he will ask the government to intervene. Almost all Banda’s property, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has been bequeathed to Kadzamira, said Kazombo, who was once imprisoned by Banda for two years before being released without charge.
FORMER SUDAN REBELS UNITE
FACTIONS in south Sudan that earlier made peace with the government have agreed to unify all troops under the South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF), an official statement said on Wednesday. The statement from former rebel Riek Machar, now chairman of the South Sudan Co-ordination Council, came as press reports spoke of defections from the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to government ranks. Machar meanwhile alleged that unnamed factions had burned down villages in the south and had “committed other hideous practices against southerners in some states.” He gave no details.
AIDID ORDERED OUT
A MEETING of the National Salvation Council (NSC), grouping 26 Somali factions, agreed on Tuesday that warlord Hussein Mohamed Aidid should withdraw his militia from the southern Somali town of Baidoa before a reconciliation conference there on February 15. The NSC, which does not include Aidid’s faction, met in Addis Ababa for three days to review a peace agreement signed by 43 factions — including most of those in the NSC — in Cairo on December 22. The Cairo meeting resulted in a decision to hold a conference in Baidoa from February 15 to set up a federal state and a three-year transitional government, ending seven years of civil war.