A group of women gathered outside the Louis Trichardt Magistrate’s Court in Northern Province on Wednesday demanding that stiff sentences be handed to three people accused of painting a teenaged girl white. The accused – Thelma Strydom, Julia Munyai and Albert Mbezi – were not asked to plead on charges of theft, assault and crimen […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, Cape Town | Thursday ATTEMPTS to bring South Africa’s black majority into the economic mainstream have failed and must be replaced by a new law to force the pace, says leading businessman Cyril Ramaphosa. “Black people remain at the periphery of the economy. They need access to funding and markets,” says […]

THULANI MTHETHWA, Mbabane | Thursday SWAZILAND’S royal advisory council warned that it would forcibly close the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) branch if it persisted in publicly criticising the kingdom’s political system. Misa’s Swaziland national director Comfort Mabuza said members of the Swaziland National Committee appeared to be annoyed with a prominent article in […]

The opposition Movement for a Democratic Change (MDC) accused the Zimbabwean government of “harassment” and “intimidation” following a raid on its offices on Thursday morning. Zimbabwe police raided a number of MDC offices, ostensibly searching for illegal weapons. Paramilitary police armed with automatic weapons blocked the entrances to the MDC headquarters just outside Harare, the […]

LIFE insurance giant Sanlam said its half-year earnings jumped 18%, and that it looked set to achieve its target of 10% growth for the year. Headline earnings per share rose to 45.1c in the six months to June 30, from 38.1c in the same period last year, boosted mainly by growth in its personal finance […]

LABOUR’S Job Creation Trust Fund is ready to start spending R62 million collected from one-day salary donations collected by three major labour federations. The fund, created at the 1998 Presidential Job Summit, collected money from members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the National Council of Trade Unions and the Federation of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday LIGHT snow fell on Table Mountain on Wednesday night, a representative of the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company said on Thursday. The company’s operations supervisor, Sedick Sabra, said a light dusting of snow was still on the mountain top early on Thursday, but was rapidly melting. The last time […]

An opposition alliance in Mauritius appears headed for a landslide victory in the general elections according to early results released on Tuesday. With about one third of the votes counted, the alliance looks poised to sweep all 60 of the National Assembly seats being contested. The race is chiefly between an alliance of Prime Minister […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday The Democratic Party’s Patrick Hill has taken over as metropolitan mayor of Cape Town after William Bantom was forced to resign from the New National Party after being caught with a pornographic video in his office. NNP provincial leader Gerald Morkel admitted on Tuesday that he had made “an […]

THOUSANDS of Mauritians took to the streets to celebrate the landslide victory of the opposition alliance, which could result in a first non-Hindu prime minister for the Indian Ocean island. Electoral Commissioner Irsam Rahman said the alliance between the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM) and the Mouvement Socialiste Mauricien (MSM) had won 54 of the 62 […]