AN Antonov cargo plane has crashed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing all 21 passengers and six crew members on board, according to state television and sources at the national aviation authority. State television reported that 13 bodies had so far been recovered from the wreckage. The plane crashed on Saturday afternoon 63km […]
ABOUT 40 000 people in Mozambique’s central province of Sofala face starvation because peasant farmers have lost almost all of the second planting season, says a government spokesman. “The population of Chiramba and Sena in the Sofala districts of Chemba and Caia respectively might go hungry in the next few months,” Chemba’s district administrator Framcisco […]
PRESIDENT Pierre Buyoya of Burundi arrived in South Africa on Monday night to discuss attempts to end seven years of civil war in Burundi. Buyoya is likely to meet former South African president Nelson Mandela, now the chief mediator of Burundi’s peace process. He is expected to be in South Africa for four days. Mandela […]
THE ANC has accused its rival Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) of being behind an attack on the home of ANC MP Prince Zeblon Zulu at Nongoma. While police claim yesterday’s attack was motivated by robbery, ANC Nongoma general-secretary Philemon Ntuli said the attackers were IFP supporters attending a rally in the vicinity of Zulu’s home. […]
SWAZILAND claimed this week the international community had turned a deaf ear to its calls for food aid for thousands of people faced with starvation in the wake of devastating floods earlier this year. An estimated 14 000 rural Swaziland villagers have already run out of food and thousands more are at risk unless the […]
And the Oscar for best actor goes to … the weather. (Or, why we are all such suckers for a natural disaster explains John Patterson.
Sechaba ka’Nkosi The embattled Law Society of the Transvaal this week deferred a long-awaited election of its office bearers to 2001 in a move that could stall the transformation of one of the last remaining apartheid-era institutions in South Africa. The society’s bizarre decision comes in the wake of mounting calls for change from many […]
Maggie Davey T he first Caine Prize for African Literature has been awarded to Leila Aboulela for her story The Museum, which appears in the Heinemann collection Opening Spaces: An Anthology of Contemporary African Women’s Writing, edited by the Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera. One of Aboulela’s strengths, mentioned by the judging panel and borne out […]
Howard Barrell The multiparty South African parliamentary delegation that observed the Zimbabwean elections in June is approaching consensus that the poll was credible and reflected the will of the people. But, because of the violence that marked the run-up to Zimbabwe’s elections, the delegation is unlikely to characterise them as having been “free and fair”, […]
Nawaal Deane Magnus Heystek, the finance guru, has appeared in the Johannesburg High Court in the latest round of litigation involving a multimillion-rand family trust. Clive Berman, the father of the beneficiaries of the trust, last week sought to interdict the trustees from using funds from the trust to finance their litigation with him. Berman […]