smuggling Jan Breytenbach, a legend in the former SADF, describes how he discovered that senior officers were using ivory-smuggling routes for their own corrupt ends Jonas Savimbi’s headquarters was at a place called Jamba, a sort of squatter camp 10km south of the Biongue omuramba (flood plain) and about 15km south of the Luiana River. […]

Trevor Lawson Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the motorway in your lead-free petrol, fuel-efficient, catalytic-converted car, along comes a report which suggests that your exhaust pipe is just the tip of a very noxious pollution iceberg. According to a report by a British environmental group, vehicles, like people, decay […]

Africa may have contributed little to greenhouse gases, but that hasn’t made it immune to global warming, writes James C McKinley All year long, the weather across Africa has been freaky and extreme, a product, meteorologists suspect, of the El Nio phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean. In East Africa, the year began with drought and […]

THURSDAY, 1.00PM: BAFANA BAFANA coach Clive Barker is not worried by the presence of spies who frequent their training sessions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Barker said this after taking his charges through their paces at the Special Security Forces Stadium in the Saudi capital on Wednesday. “We are not concerned with the spying because it […]

THURSDAY, 6.00PM: The security policemen who beat Black Conscious Movement leader Steve Biko to death twenty years ago did so because they had heard that he had beaten up a policeman some months before, George Bizos, advocate for the Biko family, said on Thursday. In his final summing up before the Truth Commission, Bizos called […]

THURSDAY, 11.00AM: THE European Commission on Wednesday finally gave conditional approval to JCI’s proposed acquisition of Anglo American’s 26% stake in British multinational Lonrho, setting the stage for Lonrho’s bid to take over the troubled SA mining house. One of the conditions set is a repetition of last April’s demand by the commission that Anglo […]

All the players participating in the Nelson Mandela Tribute tennis tournament said they are here for a very serious reason and that is to do well in the tournament.

THURSDAY, 4.00PM: ONE of the central leaders of this week’s trade union strikes in Zimbabwe was attacked and severely wounded by a group of men — and women — wielding an axe. Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions secretary-general, Morgan Tsvangirayi, was rushed to hospital unconscious on Thursday, with a deep gash on his forehead, after […]

THURSDAY, 11.00AM: SOUTH Africa’s largest financial institution Old Mutual said on Wednesday it has acquired Capel-Cure Myers Capital Management, one of the largest private-client stockbrokers in the United Kingdom. The deal, for an undisclosed sum, significantly boosts Old Mutual’s offshore strength, more doubling its assets under management outside Africa to R83-billion. Analysts speculate the deal […]

THURSDAY, 1.00PM: SOUTH Africa were restricted to 174 for nine by New Zealand in their one-day cricket international at the Bellerive Oval in Australia on Thursday. Tight bowling and good fielding by the Kiwis made things difficult for the visitors. South Africa started brightly, but two dismissals from direct-hit run-outs spelled danger for Hansie Cronje’s […]