Brutal unrest across Kenya over President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election left about 150 people dead on Monday — some hacked to death — taking the overall toll to at least 185 killed in four days. Police opened fire on some protesters and looters and many people were killed with machetes as ethnic tensions mounted.
Millions staged midnight parties at icon landmarks around the world to see in 2008 but bomb attacks and security fears quickly darkened New Year festivities. More than one million people lined Sydney harbour for fireworks that set off the global party and hundreds of thousands packed Hong Kong streets and historic European venues.
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/ 31 December 2007
Close to 130 people were killed in Nairobi and in western Kenya overnight during clashes that erupted following President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election, police said on Monday. The deaths brought the confirmed toll from poll-related violence since Thursday’s ballot to 149.
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/ 31 December 2007
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The state has identified a list of 218 witnesses it intends calling to testify in its case against African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma. Attached to the indictment, filed in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, the list of witnesses includes Independent Democrat party leader Patricia de Lille and former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein.
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/ 31 December 2007
Communities should heed African National Congress president Jacob Zuma’s call to use 2008 as the year to intensify the fight against crime, the South African Communist Party (SACP) said on Monday. ”All South Africans, especially the working class, should use the year 2008 as a launching pad to reclaim our streets,” the party said.
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/ 31 December 2007
The year ahead will present South Africa with new tasks and challenges arising from decisions adopted at the recent national conference of the African National Congress, President Thabo Mbeki said in his New Year’s message on Monday. South Africans should respond to the challenges ”bearing in mind the national goal our country has set itself”.
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/ 31 December 2007
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As tensions between the camps of former African National Congress (ANC) president Thabo Mbeki and his successor, Jacob Zuma, reach boiling point over the decision to charge Zuma, the newly elected ANC president has retreated to his Nkandla homestead ahead of the party’s January national executive committee meeting.
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/ 31 December 2007
Sydney staged a spectacular curtain-raiser to the New Year on Monday with a massive fireworks display watched by more than one million people lining the harbour of Australia’s largest city. Organisers had promised the traditional fireworks show this year would be ”artistically risky”.
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/ 31 December 2007
The Tanzanian high commissioner to South Africa — who was beaten unconscious on Friday evening by robbers — is sedated and breathing with the help of a ventilator in Pretoria East Hospital’s intensive-care unit, doctors said. Dr Linda Ezekiel said Emmanuel Mwambulukutu was in a stable but critical condition.
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/ 31 December 2007
The registrar of medical schemes, Patrick Masobe, has threatened to take private hospitals to the Competition Commission if they fail to justify their price increases planned for next year, Business Day reported on Monday. Private hospitals traditionally raise tariffs on January 1 after negotiations with medical schemes, whose members constitute the bulk of their patients.