SOUTH African financial services group Corpcapital Bank has received approval to set up a company to strip and market the components of domestic government bonds for the first time. South Africa’s Bond Exchange (BESA) had given the go-ahead to list the special purpose company, Stripco Ltd, to acquire the debt, break it up into interest […]

SIERRA Leone’s government forces have captured three bases from the West Side Boys, the maverick militia who held British soldiers hostage for over two weeks, state radio said. The West Side Boys seized 11 British soldiers and a Sierra Leonean officer on August 25. They released five Britons shortly afterwards, and British troops freed the […]

TWELVE people died in Algeria, including seven Muslim rebels, in the latest wave of clashes with security forces, local newspapers reported. A group of unidentified men shot dead five civilians and burnt their bodies in the town of Bou Ismail, 60km west of Algiers, while army soldiers killed seven Muslim rebels and captured two others […]

REUTERS, Mexico City | Wednesday A THIRD of the world’s six billion people live in a state of extreme poverty, a state of “brutal inequality” that mars the dawn of the new millennium, says the United Nations. In a preview to a report on world population, the UN Population Fund representative in Mexico said one […]

DEFENCE Minister Mosiuoa Lekota says he cannot rule out racism as a motive for the shooting of a naval officer by a subordinate at Simon’s Town. “It’s not impossible that it was racial,” he said, adding that racism was endemic to South African society. However, South Africans were generally quick to resort to extreme violence […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT AND ELLIS MNYANDU, Johannesburg | Wednesday ORGANISED labour in South Africa has uncovered the deepest cracks yet in the ruling alliance with the African National Congress (ANC) government, saying it would not be reduced to “rubber-stamping” ANC-formulated social and economic policies. “The relationship is dangerously undefined. Government takes decisions without effective alliance participation,” […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pietermaritzburg | Wednesday GOVERNMENT is considering compensating farmers for losses following the outbreak of foot and mouth disease on a pig farm at Camperdown in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, which has already seen Namibia banning all pork imports from South Africa and Botswana and the European Union weighing their options. Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, New York | Wednesday SOUTHERN African foreign ministers have expressed deep opposition to proposed US legislation to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe if democratic reforms and changes to a controversial land reform program are not implemented. In a meeting here with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the foreign ministers from the […]

AFP, Johannesburg | Wednesday THE Anglican Church in South Africa has waded into a huge Aids controversy, saying history will rank the current lack of action by the government against the disease as a crime against humanity on the same scale as apartheid. Cape Town archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, the head of the church, issued a […]