OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 4.00pm. EFFORTS by United Nations special envoy Issa Diallo to meet with Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi are being thwarted by the government’s stated inability to guarantee his safety, leaving him effectively stalled in the capital, Luanda. The country’s peace accords negotiated four years ago in Lusaka, Zambia, are threatened […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 11.30pm AN ESTIMATED 300 Botswanan Defence Force troops have arrived in Lesotho. Elijah Legwaila, senior permanent secretary in the office of Botswana President Festus Mogae confirmed the deployment and said: “Our troops arrived in Lesotho [on Tuesday] and will remain there until the situation is stabilised. The situation in Lesotho […]

LEONARD NDZHUKULA, Delmas | Tuesday 9.30pm. THE country’s top criminal psychologist, police deputy director Micki Pistorius, has been sent to the small Mpumalanga farming town of Delmas this week to speed up investigations into a suspected serial killer in the region. Police have recovered three severed heads and three headless bodies, not neccessarily matching, from […]

President Nelson Mandela has vowed to support United States President Bill Clinton even if everybody else deserts him.

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 3.30pm. THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa on Tuesday said that the second one-day sympathy strike in support of a three-week old strike in the motor retail industry was a raging success. In the Eastern Cape, the Delta Motor Corporation said it has been forced to close its […]

MICHAEL METELITS, Johannesburg | Tuesday 6.00pm. DESPITE the release Tuesday of domestic consumer price information from Statistics South Africa, formerly the Central Statistical Service, international trends again dominated the JSE and other local markets. Those trends were positive, as a number of markets bounced back from Monday’s carnage. The CPI 12-month rate was 7,6%, which […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Tuesday 3.30pm. FOUR board directors on Mpumalanga’s Parks Board (MPB) are threatening the province’s environmental affairs MEC, Fish Mahlalela, with a multi-million-rand libel suit. MPB board director Rupert Lorimer said on Tuesday that Mahlalela’s dismissal of the board earlier in the day implied that its directors were either dishonest or implicated […]

MICHAEL METELITS, Johannesburg | Monday 5.00pm. MOST markets moved in thin trading Monday, as the Jewish New Year and the impending public holiday on Thursday kept volumes down. In a local trading vacuum, international pressures directed market activity, and the news out of Asia was bad, as the Nikkei plunged over 350 points and other […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape TownLEONARD NDZHUKLA, Delmas | Monday 7.30pm. THE National Assembly has approved legislation designed to co-ordinate government’s approach to environmental management. However Environment Minister Pallo Jordan has agreed that it is a watered-down version of what was originally envisaged. Democratic Party MP Mike Ellis said that the National Environment Management Bill is a […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday 4.00pm. THE two members of Parliament who engaged in a fist fight on the floor of the National Assembly last Thursday were suspended from Parliament on Monday. Eastern Cape National Party leader Dr Manie Schoeman, who has admitted to landing the first blow, was suspended from Parliament for five […]