OVER 100 para-military customs officers graduated from advanced training at Boane, 30km from Maputo, Mozambique, this week as part of the country’s crackdown on contraband smuggling. The 104 officers are the second batch of new customs officers trained at the centre this year to upgrade security at the country’s border posts with South Africa, Swaziland, […]

TOP SA soccer club Kaizer Chiefs will end a six year, self-imposed exile from Pan-African soccer competitions by playing in the 2000 Caf cup. Also entering with the league runners-up are champions Sundowns and cup winners SuperSport United.

THE national Miss Gay SA beauty contest, due to be held in the Nelspruit civic centre on Saturday night, is receiving international media attention after a report earlier in the week that a conservative church is calling for its cancellation. Now international press have picked up on the story with CNN due to conduct interviews […]

CELLULAR telephone company MTN announced that it is to invest R54 million into cricket development over the next seven years, making it the game’s biggest national development sponsor, and the biggest sponsor of national schools cricket. The programme, the single biggest development sponsorship in the history of South African sport, will run until the end […]

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has been appointed as the first chairman of the Commonwealth. The new position was created by the organisation at the end of its heads of governemnt meeting in Durban on Monday. Mbeki will hold the position until the next Commonwealth meeting in 2001. Traditionally the head of state of the host nation […]

THE Pretoria High Court came to a grinding halt on Wednesday morning after an anonymous caller threatened to blow up the court building unless the trial of apartheid chemical head Wouter Basson was adjourned. Police said an anonymous caller told court security that three bombs had been planted on different floors in the court and […]

BRITAIN’S Lennox Lewis has been recognised as undisputed world heavyweight champion after the resolution of a cash row between his backers and the International Boxing Federation (IBF). “Thankfully, the lawyers representing us and the IBF have worked it out and Lennox is now recognised as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world,” Lewis’s manager Frank […]

BUSINESS tycoon Harry Oppenheimer on Tuesday offered a reward for information about the theft of body parts of the landmark “Leaping Springboks” statue in central Johannesburg. The thieves sawed off the heads and feet of virtually all the springboks in the sculpture, leaving behind only the forlorn-looking torsos of the animals. The statue was donated […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday 4.35pm FORMER president Nelson Mandela warned on Wednesday that a proposed consumer-led boycott of diamonds could ravage southern African economies. ”If there is a boycott of diamonds, the economies of especially two countries, Namibia and Botswana, will collapse and we want to avoid that,” Mandela said. Human rights organisations such […]

MOZAMBIQUE has cancelled plans for a massive game park and resort complex dreamed up by a now-deceased American millionaire businessman, James Blanchard III. Blanchard, who died earlier this year, had planned to raise $800-million for the project. The elaborate scheme, approved by the government in 1996, called for a five-star hotel, floating casinos and a […]