OWN CORRESPONDENT, Warri | Sunday 10.00pm. YOUTHS from the Ijaw community in the Niger Delta stepped up attacks on a rival group this weekend, raiding their ancestral home, kidnapping residents and seizing police weapons, witnesses said on Sunday. Ode-Itsekiri, the traditional birthplace of the Itsekiri people of the Niger Delta, was razed in a pre-dawn […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Johannesburg | Sunday 9.00pm. FORMER president FW De Klerk is engaged in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from publishing an interim report which implicates him in apartheid-era bombings, the Sunday Times reports. De Klerk will apply for an interdict in the Cape High Court to stop […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 4.30pm. THE much-debated Broadcasting Bill was bulldozed through Parliament on Friday with a small concession made in that several amendments put forward by opposition parties were preserved. The National Party, Democratic Party, Freedom Front and Inkatha Freedom Party all voted against a motion of desirability on the bill, signalling […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Friday 9.00am. THE government will raise its low-cost housing subsidies by R1000 across the board from next April, Housing Minister Sankie Mtembi-Mahanyele announced on Thursday. The increase is to offset the effects of inflation and a consequent rise in the price of building materials. Speaking at the Institute for Housing of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Sunday 8.300pm. A STRIKE by thousands of municipal workers over non-payment of their October salaries turned violent on its second day on Saturday. On Friday workers found their pay had not been credited despite an announcement by a Harare city council spokesman on national radio that by Saturday they would be […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Kinshasa and Lusaka | Sunday 10.30pm. AUTHORITIES in the Democratic Republic of Congo have confiscated the passport of opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, who was due to fly to Brussels at the weekend. DRC immigration officials gave no explanation for the confiscation. During his trip, Tshisekedi was to have addressed the European Parliament. Tshisekedi, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bulawayo | Sunday 7.00pm. SOUTH African police have found the container truck in which 18 Zimbabweans died of suffocation in Botswana on Tuesday, the Matabeleland North Province police commander, Alfred Musengi, said on Sunday. Musengi said the truck, believed to be South African, was found abandoned in that country. He added that police […]

KATE BURLING, Walvis Bay | Friday 10.30pm. WALVIS Bay’s future as the industrial heart of Namibia is being blighted by sour industrial relations, wildcat strikes and a cavalier attitude towards the process of tripartite negotiation, a senior Swapo MP warned yesterday. Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry Wilfried Emvula delivered his stern message to some […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 10.00pm. SOUTH Africa’s Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin and European Union commissioner Joan Deus Pinheiro met at Midrand near Johannesburg at the weekend to give troubled trade talks a push. South African and EU negotiating teams have being holding talks on a proposed free trade accord for over three […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 2.30pm. PARLIAMENT on Friday afternoon approved Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma’s widely contested Tobacco Products Control Amendment Bill, which bars all tobacco advertising and smoking in public places. The strict anti-smoking legislation pushes South Africa into the ranks of the world’s most smoker-unfriendly countries. Parliament’s ratification of the bill brings […]