Cape Town’s hidden jazz history is coming alive due to research undertaken at the District Six Museum Helene Dancer Jazz vocalist Maxine Tyler left Cape Town’s ill-fated District Six in 1963. Before she moved, she made a recording that she never heard. Last year, on her return to Cape Town, Tyler listened to her own […]

EMELIA SITHOLE AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maputo | Friday MAPUTO Mining and metals group Billiton plc says it needs to spend an extra $1.5bn to $2bn to expand its Hillside aluminium plant in South Africa and the Mozal aluminium smelter in Mozambique. ”The investment needed will be large … Billiton is now engaged in feasibility studies […]

DARREN SCHUETTLER AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday FINANCE Minister Trevor Manuel has summarily blocked a $3.7bn merger between Gold Fields Ltd and Canada’s Franco-Nevada that would have created the world’s third biggest gold miner, leaving both parties stunned by the surprise ruling. ”We don’t understand the reasoning yet. Hopefully we will be able to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT AND REUTERS, Cape Town | Thursday DEFENCE Minister Mosiuoa Lekota is to forward Auditor-General Shauket Fakie’s special report on South Africa’s controversial R30-billion arms deal to Cabinet for further action after Fakie recommended a probe into alleged irregularities in the deal. Lekota gave no indication whether he would personally support Fakie’s recommendation that […]

THE Nigerian government has agreed to sell the country’s only naval training vessel, the MV Trainer, which has fallen into disrepair, Information Minister Jerry Gana said. The government decision follows the recommendation of a committee set up by ministry of transport, he said. The naval ship was originally sold off in 1979 for $785000 to […]

THE Nigerian government has approved a $10bn development plan for the state-run telecoms company NITEL, casting doubt on its place in the country’s slow moving privatisation programme. Communications Minister Mohammed Arzika said NITEL would be asked to provide 625.9bn naira over four years in internally-generated revenue for investment and find an additional 500bn naira from […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe spent more than US $500000 (R3,5m) of his struggling country’s cash by taking a delegation of 47, including his wife and three children, on a trip to the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York earlier this month, according to reports. Quoting from official correspondence the […]

STEVEN MANN AND REUTERS, Cape Town | Thursday DOES President Thabo Mbeki believe that HIV causes Aids? Quizzed about the issue for the umpteenth time in Parliament, Mbeki has again resorted to verbal gymnastics to avoid giving a definitive answer to the question. “The programme of the government in this country is based on the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday GOVERNMENT has created three home-grown mutant superheroes as the stars of a campaign to raise awareness of the effects of alien vegetation, which drain billions of litres of water from South Africa’s reserves each year. Bionic Bug, Mechanical Man and Chemical Can will be the heroes of AlienBuster Week, which […]

TWO men in balaclavas have held up a police station in the Northern Cape, getting away with R370000, embarrassed police have reported. The robbers held up the lone policeman at the Groblershoop station, waited till his colleague returned from investigating a case, then locked them both in a strongroom. They took the money – intended […]