SHAMILA Batohi, who led the evidence during the King inquiry into cricket match-fixing, has been appointed head of the elite investigating unit, the Scorpions, in KwaZulu-Natal. Batohi is currently the deputy director of public prosecutions in Durban. Batohi succeeds Chris Macadam, who now heads up the human rights unit in national director of prosecutions Bulelani […]

A GUIDED missile from a Russian warship sank the Russian submarine Kursk, killing all 118 people on board, a German newspaper has reported, citing a report from the FSB domestic intelligence service in Moscow. The report, which the Berliner Zeitung daily said that FSB chief Nikolai Patruschev had handed to President Vladimir Putin, said the […]

THE prisons service wants anti-apartheid cleric Allan Boesak, in jail for fraud, put under house arrest instead. Boesak is preparing an appeal against his conviction after he was jailed for three years in May. He is not eligible for parole until December 2001, but the prisons service argues that further incarceration would serve no useful […]

POLICE have advised parents to be ”extra vigilant” and to keep their children at home at night after a series of gruesome paedophile murders on the crime-ridden Cape Flats. Five young girls, the youngest just five years old, have been found murdered on the Cape Flats in the past month. But police have ruled out […]

ELLIS MNYANDU, Johannesburg | Sunday THE Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), a coalition partner in the ANC-led South African government, has asked the government to prioritise job creation in its spending plans even if it means slashing defence budgets. ”After all, virtually every survey shows that our people see joblessness as the single […]

FORMER South African President Nelson Mandela has urged Australia’s white majority to take the initiative in promoting racial harmony, saying it would be hard for disadvantaged Aborigines to force change. Australia’s small indigenous population simply did not have the weight of numbers that blacks in South Africa had when they struggled against and eventually triumphed […]

SOUTH Africa has sold arms and ammunition to Pakistan despite announcing a freeze last October after a military coup led to the country’s suspension from the Commonwealth, a government official said. ”These were signed contracts. Due to the nature of the arms being sold, it was decided to allow the contracts to be completed,” said […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, New York | Saturday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe has vowed to press ahead with his much-criticised seizure of white-owned farms and launched a blistering attack on the world’s powerful nations, saying they should not be allowed to recolonize Africa by stealth. Mugabe’s fierce speech to a special United Nations Millennial Summit […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, Cape Town | Saturday CAPE Town’s faceless bombers have struck for the eighth time this year, blowing up a car outside the popular Obz Cafe in the suburb of Observatory, a popular student hangout. No injuries were reported and damage was minimal. The bomb exploded barely 12 hours after anti-terrorist magistrate […]

Recommendations on the size and shape of tertiary institutions could spell the end of black universities, writes Dolina Dowling At the beginning of this year the Council on Higher Education (CHE) was asked by Minister of Education Kader Asmal to develop a set of concrete proposals to “ensure that our higher education system is indeed […]