Gavin Evans Hezekiel Sepeng comes fourth: the rolling picture says it all. Disorganisation, bad timing, leaving it too late – the fate of South Africa’s sole black medal prospect on the track was set well before the losing line. And as with Sepeng so with South Africa’s entire Olympic bid. Eight years ago in Barcelona […]

‘illegal’ Thuli Nhlapo Ignoring the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s (Cosatu) campaign to create and sustain jobs in the textile industry, the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) promotional clothing is imported and believed to have entered the country illegally. Shereno Printers, which won a contract to print 100E000 T-shirts for IEC staffers to wear in […]

ED STODDARD, Sasolburg | Friday BLACK protesters and police have clashed outside a Sasolburg court after a magistrate remanded a white man accused of dragging a black employee to his death behind a truck for psychiatric tests in a secret hearing. Businessman Pieter Odendaal, 44, had been scheduled to appear before a Sasolburg court this […]

FOUR southern African countries have joined forces against an international syndicate of smugglers that is costing their formal economies millions of rands every year. Customs officials from Swaziland, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe have agreed to work together to smash the syndicate, which smuggles a range of goods for sale at deflated prices in the […]

A HOME science experiment ended tragically when a teenage girl was electrocuted by a garden fence in Northern Province. Elizabeth Zitha, 14, of Giyani, touched the fence without knowing that it was wired to a wall plug in the house. A powerful electric current threw Zitha a few metres through the air and she was […]

THE former Sierra Leone rebel leader Foday Sankoh has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, a prison official said. Sankoh, who has been in custody since May, reportedly took ill some three weeks ago and his condition has been described as “critical”. Sankoh, who is believed to be around 70 years old, launched a bush war […]

ESKOM is to become a fully fledged company in the first quarter of next year in terms of a draft Bill debated in Parliament recently. Stakeholders have long been aware that Eskom will be converted from a commission to a company, but enabling legislation has been delayed because of union opposition based on fear of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday YOU’RE not even safe from the taxman’s prying fingers in cyberspace. For the first time, tax returns will require full disclosure of sales and purchases made over the Internet. The SA Revenue Service has moved to close a loophole that may have seen billions of rands slip out of country, […]

Own Correspondent, Johannesburg | Thursday IN a ruling which could have major repercussions on labour policies, the Constitutional Court has ordered that a man denied employment by South African Airways because he was HIV positive be offered the job as a cabin attendant with immediate effect. Judge Sandile Ngcobo, who read extracts of the judgment, […]

LUNGA MASUKU AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Manzini | Thursday SWAZILANDS’S police have threatened to use force when workers embark on a crippling nationwide strike to protest against a controversial industrial relations law. The Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) called for a work stoppage on September 28 after the government failed to meet a deadline to […]