OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maseru | Sunday 9.00pm. A MAN was beaten to death and four more seriously injured by an enraged crowd at a Lesotho Congress for Democracy rally on Sunday. The rally in Maseru, attended by around 5000 people, had already been scattered by an earlier shooting in which one person was injured. Several people […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kampala | Sunday 9.00pm. THE Ugandan government has confirmed that Ugandan troops now control several airstrips in the easter Democratic Republic of Congo. Regional Cooperation Minister Amama Mbabazi said on Sunday that Uganda was holding the airstrips to prevent Sudan from using them to deliver supplies to Ugandan rebels. “The best achievement has […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kampala | Friday 7.00pm. THE Commonwealth has announced the lifting of santions against Nigeria and a partial return to the fold of the organisation’s most populous member-state. At the end of their two-day conference at the Commonwealth secretariat, members of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (Cmag) said they had reached their decision “in […]

to die Zanemvula (Zakes) Mda has happy memories of growing up among a community of South African exiles and Lesotho locals in the small town of Mafeteng. Last week he returned to find a smouldering ruin Chris Hani used to frequent this restaurant. His father, known to us only as Ntate Hani, owned it in […]

Chiara Carter Nomaindia Mfeketo, the new mayor of Cape Town, tackles the social side of her work with zest because she wants to make sure every function she hosts tackles the city’s “apartheid divisions”. Mfeketo, who became mayor last week, acknowledges the criticism often levelled at Cape Town: that little has changed since 1994 and […]

Michael Metelits The big news this week was the retention of investment grade ratings by Moody’s Investor Services for South Africa’s foreign currency debt and deposits. Moody’s action is a stamp of approval on local macro-economic policy. Their ratings, and those of other international agencies, are the first level of information used by international investors. […]

These days, the Market Theatre management claims, people book tickets because they want to and not out of some obligation to the place that, once upon a time, changed South African culture. If you pop into the theatre now you’ll find a video monitor fixed to one of those pillars laden with brass plaques. The […]

airwaves Ferial Haffajee Allister Sparks is an unlikely Ted Turner. Other than the grey hair, the local journalist has until now had little in common with the American media magnate. Now Sparks is the driving force behind SABC-Africa, a 24-hour news channel going head-to-head with Turner’s CNN for supremacy of the African airwaves at least. […]

Alex Sudheim `Comedy is the new rock ‘n roll” goes the catchphrase of the moment. Young standups across the country are provoking audiences with a scabrous brand of humour that gleefully pokes and digs at society’s guilty secrets. As with the early days of rock ‘n roll, there is a spirit of anarchic, anti-establishment zeal; […]

The battle for Kindu is crucial to the course of the Congo war, writes Ann Eveleth and Howard Barrell This week’s battle for the mid-eastern town of Kindu in the Democratic Republic of Congo marks a turning point for the two-month-old civil war. A victory for the rebels would open the way for them to […]