Kathryn Smith Consumers entering or exiting various shopping meccas in Johannesburg and its immediate peripheries last Saturday morning were likely to be accosted by a different sort of panhandler. The sort that gives you something. Pupils from Alexandra, Soweto and Hillbrow formed colourful chorus lines (in costumes designed by Preston van Wyk from World’s End […]
David Beresford Another Country Some years ago, trying to get an interview with the Rain Queen, I was persuaded to have a lesser sangoma (male) throw the bones for me in a hill-side kraal near Duiwels Kloof, in the northern Transvaal. I was seated in a position from which I could look out the door […]
Julia Hartley-Brewer More than 500 years after Leonardo da Vinci sketched his design, a Briton has proved that the Renaissance genius was the inventor of the first working parachute. Adrian Nicholas, a 38-year-old skydiver from London, fulfilled his life’s ambition to prove the aerodynamics experts wrong when he used a parachute based on Da Vinci’s […]
THE Tanzanian government has stopped importing chloroquin because of the increased resistance of the malaria-causing parasites to the drug. Deputy Health Minister Tatu Ntimizi has said. Ntimizi told parliament at Dodoma in central Tanzania on Tuesday that government-owned medical stores were no longer mporting chloroquin anti-malarials. Official records show that Malaria is Tanzania’s leading killer […]
Moses Isegawa’s first novel has drawn lavish praise. Soon to visit South Africa, he speaks to Brenda Atkinson In Abyssinian Chronicles (Picador), debut novelist Moses Isegawa has written an opus to which the usual superlatives apply: it is a rich and perfectly measured tale of contemporary Uganda, a story that grips with the ambiguous allure […]
THE UN Security Council has approved a resolution banning trade in diamonds mined from rebel-held areas of Sierra Leone. Diamonds are the main source of revenue for the Revolutionary United Front, which had taken 500 UN peacekeepers hostage in May. Resolution 1306, proposed by Britain, passed with 14 votes and one abstention from Mali. The […]
IN an attempt to spread its influence further into Southern Africa, the Development Bank of Southern Africa has signed a US$10m loan with Zambia’s Copperbelt Energy Corporation. This is the first loan to a private power company. The 12-year loan will finance the extension of the company’s electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure in the mineral […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg. TELKOM is to implement a R1.2bn regional telecommunications network, for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) with the first phase rollout expected to be completed by the end of 2001. The entire project should be completed in five years, while it is intended that links between Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Botswana and between […]
THE world’s largest diamond company, De Beers, has decided to follow a strategic review in marketing and planned acquisitions. It wants to boast its own gems and run more foreign mines. Hence the $175m hostile bid for Canadian miner, Winspear. Although De Beers controls up to 70% of the world trade in rough gems and […]
A CRIMINAL court in Senegal has dismissed a case against the former president of Chad, Hissene Habre, who faced charges of complicity in torture and crimes against humanity. Habre has been in exile in Senegal since being overthrown in a coup 10 years ago. Early this year, seven human rights groups filed a criminal complaint […]