THE EMBATTLED Leandra town council in Mpumalanga has lost its telephones to suspension after failing to pay a R24000 phone bill. The town got a reprieve from Rand Water, which reinstated previously suspended water service, but the town’s lack of funds is catching up with it. The council has until January 31 to pay the current water bill and some of the arrears, but the fact that the Receiver of Revenue has frozen the council’s bank accounts for owing R600000 in income taxes, has not helped matters. “The frozen account has put us at a disadvantage where we can’t pay bills for things like telephones,” explained town clerk Hennie Rossouw.
SA STUNTMAN ON TRIAL
A SOUTH African suspected of gunning down a British accountant in 1991 is to return to England voluntarily to face trial, police said on Sunday. Neville van der Merwe (28) was arrested in Los Angeles on September 28 after a seven year manhunt while he was working as a Hollywood stuntman and personal trainer. Police in Kent, southeast England, said officers will be going to California to bring him back in the next few weeks. Van der Merwe is suspected of carrying out a contract killing of Simon Law (35) whose body has never been found. Van der Merwe was allegedly sent from South Africa with an accomplice, Glen Chait, to wipe out Law. Chait was arrested in South Africa several years ago but committed suicide in 1996 before he could be extradited.
JOURNALIST KILLED IN FREETOWN
AN American journalist was killed and a Canadian journalist wounded by rebel gunfire in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown on Sunday as west African diplomatic initiatives got under way to end the fighting. Myles Tierney (34) an American television cameraman with the Associated Press news agency, was shot dead while Ian Stewart (32) the Canadian director of the AP’s Abidjan regional office, was seriously wounded in the centre of the Sierra Leone capital, journalists accompanying them reported. Witnesses said the journalists were with Sierra Leone’s information minister, Julius Spencer, escorted by several vehicles of the west African intervention force Ecomog, when they came under rebel fire after stopping at a crossroads.