WEDNESDAY, 5.00PM: SELF-confessed Inkatha Freedom Party hit squad member Brian Gcina Mkhize has told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he was one of a Caprivi-trained hit squad sent to kill African National Congress leaders in Esikhawini township near Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal in 1991. Mkhize, who is serving a 20-year sentence for two murders in 1994, […]
WEDNESDAY, 6.00PM: THE trial of former state president PW Botha adjourned on Wednesday afternoon after calling only one witness, Truth and Reconciliation Commission executive secretary Paul van Zyl. Van Zyl said the reasons for the TRC wanting Botha to appear before it in person were that it would be able to include better evidence, get […]
TUESDAY 1.00PM: DEPUTY president Thabo Mbeki arrived in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday for a three-day visit intended to improve trade and political relations. Mbeki was invited to South Korea by acting prime minister Kim Jong-Pil and will be meeting President Kim Dae-Jung. ”Essentially what we want to do in South Korea is sensitise the […]
THURSDAY, 5.30PM: SOUNDING like a repentant prodigal son, President Robert Mugabe on Thursday launched Zimbabwe’s second economic reform programme, pledging never to repeat the mistakes which saw the country degenerate into economic chaos. LEWIS MACHIPISA reports that the ambitious new Zimbabwe Programme for Economic and Social Transformation envisages an annual growth of six percent over […]
MONDAY, 12.15PM: A CLOSE confidant to Hard Livings gang leader Rashied Staggie, Leon “Chippy” Achilles, was shot in Woodstock, Cape Town on Sunday in a spate of Easter weekend gang-related killings. Achilles died instantly when shots were fired from a passing Nissan Sentra at his stationery car. A second man in the car with Achilles […]
Ann Eveleth United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa said this week he would ask Judge Willem Heath’s corruption watchdog to probe the involvement of close associates of Thabo Mbeki in the privatisation of tourism parastatal Aventura. Holomisa said Deputy President Mbeki and his entire office “should have recused itself” from a Cabinet committee set up […]
John Updike’s new novel is dividing the critics. He spoke to Joanna Coles Waiting for the lift with John Updike at his Park Avenue hotel, he catches sight of himself in the chrome doors, his face a beige pancake from an earlier television appearance. “Oh dear,” he giggles brightly, his jaunty green eyes staring back […]
Dawood Dithato When Sir Ketumile Masire retired last week, the bitter pill of leaving Botswana’s highest office after 18 years was considerably sweetened. The size of the former president’s retirement package comes as another indication that his departure from public life was not the magnanimous gesture it was widely heralded to be, but a negotiated […]
This week two new councillors took office at the IBA. Ferial Haffajee profiles the new kids on the block The two thirtysomething councillors add to an Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) that has grown younger and younger since it was established in 1994. It is led by lawyer Felleng Sekha, herself just on the cusp of […]
Mercedes Sayagues It used to be that every morning when Zimbabwe’s only English-language daily, The Herald, was delivered to my home, I would read it at leisure over coffee, or take it to the office for a mid-morning perusal. A quick read was enough, since the government-owned Herald served a bland porridge of watered-down local […]