The Otago Highlanders gave hope to prospective play-off opponents of the Canterbury Crusaders when they beat the league leaders 26-14 in Super 14 rugby on Saturday. The 12th-place Highlanders scored three tries to one in a late-season upset to finish a mediocre year on a high note.
Mozambique’s power utility Cahora Bassa Hydro Electric (HCB) plans to boost power output from the Cahora Bassa Dam by up to 1 000 megawatts in order to meet local and regional power demands. A new study will seek to evaluate the dam’s potential to increase output, said HCB CEO Paulo Muxanga on Saturday.
About a hundred members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and other organisations picketed the gates of Parliament in Cape Town on Saturday morning to protest against rising food prices and call for freedom in Zimbabwe. The event was to have been a march through the city.
Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai will not return to Zimbabwe on Saturday, fearing an assassination attempt, an MDC spokesperson said. Tsvangirai had been expected to return home on Saturday ahead of a run-off election scheduled for June 27.
The Stormers are planning to hit the Lions’ defence hard where it is likely to hurt most in Saturday’s Super 14 clash at Ellis Park. The fragile Lions’ defence have leaked 41 tries this season, and after 12 matches they have conceded a staggering 345 points — almost 29 points per game.
Disgraced former 100m world-record-holder Tim Montgomery was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison on Friday for his role in a check fraud scheme that also led to the downfall of Marion Jones. Montgomery was once considered the world’s fastest man before being banned from athletics as a dope cheat.
Blue Bulls flyhalf Burton Francis put on a match-winning kicking display as the Blue Bulls edged out the Free State Cheetahs 25-21 to be crowned Vodacom Cup champions at Loftus Versfeld on Friday. It was a relieved Carel Hoffman, Blue Bulls captain, who accepted the trophy and R1-million winners’ cheque.
Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was to return home on Saturday bidding to deliver a knockout blow to weakened President Robert Mugabe in a run-off election scheduled for June 27. Mugabe acknowledged on Friday that he had suffered an electoral disaster in losing a first-round poll against Tsvangirai on March 29.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi has accused Europe of deliberately provoking the drowning of illegal African migrants as they try to reach Europe by sea, the official Jana news agency reported on Friday. ”Dozens [of migrants] die and hundreds drown or are drowned deliberately,” the official Libyan news agency quoted Gadaffi as saying.
Suspected Taliban militants have released Pakistan’s envoy to Afghanistan more than three months after he was kidnapped in Pakistan’s Khyber tribal region, a senior government official said on Saturday. Pakistani television channels said the envoy, Tariq Azizuddin, had been freed in Afghanistan.