Guy Willoughby Review of the week Reviewers like to begin notices of Not the Midnight Mass by reminiscing about the first time they caught their act (except in Cape Town – Cape Town reviewers, like Cape Town police, rarely catch anything). I’ll quickly observe, then, that I first saw the famous a cappella foursome from […]

The Bushbuckridge Nature Reserve is being plundered while politicians squabble over who it belongs to, and who will take responsibility for it, reports Fiona Macleod Armed syndicates are pillaging truckloads of rare indigenous trees from a 7E000ha game reserve on the border between Mpumalanga and Northern Province while politicians and conservation authorities squabble about who […]

FORMER president Nelson Mandela left South Africa for Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday night to launch the “Cities without Slums” initiative. His spokeswoman Zelda la Grange said Mandela was invited by the World Bank and the United Nation Centre for Human Settlements. Mandela is scheduled to address a meeting on Thursday at a hotel in Berlin […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Thursday 4.30pm THE five-yearly congress of Zimbabwe’s governing Zanu(PF) party opened on Thursday with President Robert Mugabe blaming the country’s economic woes on sabotage by foreign-owned companies and banks operating in the country. Mugabe said steep price rises and shortages of commodities such as fuel and foreign currency are artificial and […]

AN Angolan journalist charged with defaming the country’s president appeared in provincial court on Wednesday and asked to have the case against him dismissed. Rafael Marques, a columnist for independent weekly newspaper Agora, was arrested and jailed six weeks ago for an article he wrote called The Dictator’s Lipstick, which compared President Eduardo dos Santos […]

SWISS-based ferrochrome and vanadium producer Xstrata said on Tuesday that it has reinstated 369 dismissed workers after resolving an industrial dispute at its mine in Thornecliffe. All workers who were fired on the basis that the company reserves the right to discipline employees involved in acts of violence will be re-employed.

GHANA drew 1-1 with Greece in a friendly played as part of Greece’s preparations for the preliminary rounds of the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea. The match is the first of three to be played in the week. The Greeks were more aggressive at the start of the game taking the lead with […]

SYNTHETIC fuel producer Sasol said on Tuesday it had approved an R835-million capital budget to build a new butanol plant with a capacity of 150000 tons a year. Sasol said in a statement basic engineering for the plant is likely to be completed by March 2000 and the plant is expected to enter production during […]

SOUTH Africa plans to increase the capacity of the showpiece FNB Stadium in Johannesburg from 80000 to 110000 if South Africa are chosen to host the 2006 World Cup. A bid committee spokesman said minimal expansion and upgrading is needed at eight other venues and new stadiums are planned for Brakpan near Johannesburg, Cape Town, […]

SOUTH Africa has been appointed as one of the three countries auditing the United Nations, new Auditor-General Shauket Fakie announced on Tuesday. This will result in a yearly foreign income of about R10-million for the country, he said at a news conference in Pretoria. The UN contract is four times the size of the one […]