ANGOLA will sell 49% of its shares in the commerical branch of the national oil company Sonangol – the first time private investors are allowed to buy shares in Sonangol, which has been entirely state-owned since the company was created in 1976. Sonangol coordinates oil exploration and drilling by foreign companies within Angola, and its […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday THE former editor of Zimbabwe’s main state-controlled newspaper has admitted he suppressed stories that showed President Robert Mugabe’s government in a bad light in the run-up to parliamentary elections in June. “We went out of our way and abandoned all professional ethics as you know them,” former editor of the […]

THE European Union has awarded Zambia a $26m loan facility to help small and medium scale miners, Zambian Finance Minister Katele Kalumba said this week. The loan facility, to be managed by the European Investment Bank, will be available to five Zambian banks and leasing companies, Kalumba said after signing the agreement with the European […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Monday AGGRIEVED staff at the KwaZulu-Natal Education and Culture department are to confront their MEC, Faith Gasa, after she branded them a “bunch of reptiles” and threatened to fire them for their part in an evil spell that her predecessor is alleged to have put on her. The nervous MEC is […]

REBEL attacks in Guinea have killed 360 people since September and many more have been wounded, an official said here at the weekend. Interior Minister Moussa Solano said 15 attacks had been carried out by rebels, destroying hundreds of homes. The minister did not identify the aggressors, but said that they “are not only Guineans.” […]

REUTERS, AFP and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki will chair a presidential summit in Mozambique to try to salvage a peace deal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – but even as regional leaders gathered in Maputo for Monday’s talks, fresh fighting erupted between the opposing parties in the […]

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has withdrawn from the public debate on the causes of Aids after admitting he had created confusion, but has not backed down from his controversial stance which questions the orthodox scientific view that HIV is the cause of Aids. Mbeki has sided with dissidents who claim other factors, including poverty and malnutrition, […]

MALAWI President Bakili Muluzi has hit back angrily at Britain’s tough remarks over a high-level corruption scandal in Malawi. Britain’s recent remarks come amid allegations that $2m in government contracts to build schools were wrongly awarded to Muluzi supporters, who in turn made campaign contributions for last year’s general elections. Muluzi said he was an […]

REUTERS, Johannesburg | Monday THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) is considering demutualising as part of a major restructuring exercise to boost liquidity and improve the market’s efficiency. The JSE is the world’s 19th largest exchange, with market capitalisation of some $250bn, but it ranks 34th in liquidity terms. It will now implement further measures from […]

All the people aboard a Saudi plane hijacked to Baghdad were freed on the weekend and the hijackers taken away by Iraqi authorities. The passengers and crew streamed off the Saudi Arabian Airlines plane, hijacked on a Jeddah-London flight, a little over three hours after they landed at Baghdad’s Saddam International Airport. The four hijackers, […]