The Independent Electoral Commission on the weekend assured voters that the election will take place by July 31 this year. IEC acting chairperson Brigalia Bam said that even if the NNP and DP succeed in changing the Electoral Act to allow all ID books — not just those with barcodes — to be used, Parliament […]

THREE people were killed and one injured when a light aircraft crashed on a farm outside Heilbron in the Free State on Saturday evening. The dead were identified as Gert van der Merwe (48) his wife Katy (59) and their son Corrie (24) who was piloting the aircraft. A friend, Gerhardus Labuschagne (22) sustained a […]

MEDICAL researchers seeking an Aids vaccine were lambasted on Monday by South African Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma for ignoring the region where the disease is most prevalent. “About 70% of the cases of Aids in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa, but world research into a vaccine is not into the type of virus found […]

FOUR people were killed late Sunday and 35 wounded, several of them foreigners, when two bombs exploded in a nightclub and restaurant district of Uganda’s capital Kampala, police said on Monday.A senior security source said the bombs were the work of an urban terrorist wing of the Allied Democratic Forces rebels. The wounded included an […]

LEKA, the flamboyant exiled pretender to the Albanian throne, was granted R15000 bail on Monday after being arrested on arms charges. Leka was arrested with three other men at his Johannesburg home on February 5 after police found a large quantity of firearms, ammunition, anti-personnel mines and rocket launchers. Transferred from his jail cell to […]

MINING production fell 1,0% in 1998 compared to the previous year, Statistics South Africa said on Thursday. However, mining production for the fourth quarter of 1998 reflected an increase of 5,7% after seasonal adjustment compared with the third quarter of 1998. This increase was mainly due to the contribution of platinum mines. The value of […]

MOZAMBICAN police foiled an attempt to smuggle 180 cartons containing over 36__000 packets of contraband cigarettes into South Africa from Maputo on the weekend. Police found the boxes of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes hidden in the roof panels of a passenger train bound for Johannesburg from Maputo. They immediately arrested three suspected smugglers and two other […]

INTERNATIONAL rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday reaffirmed South Africa’s BB+ long-term foreign currency rating and said the country’s outlook remains stable. Although the rating is one notch below investment grade, it was widely interpreted as positive by the markets as a possible downgrade had been expected. SA has investment grade ratings from Moody’s […]

ALFRED LIBOMBO, Maputo | Monday 1.00pm. A PILOT binational agreement to promote the free movement of people and goods between Mozambique and South Africa has become bogged down in bureaucratic red tape and budget cuts, Mozambique’s national roads director, Lucas Nhamizinga, said on Monday. Confirming that the 1997 agreement has still not been implemented, Nhamizinga […]

BELGIAN Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene will arrive 24 hours later than he was expected in South Africa — meaning he will miss a concert of Belgian singer Helmut Lotti in Johannesburg on Sunday. Dehaene was unable to leave Brussels on Saturday evening as scheduled because of a technical problem with the military plane on which […]