Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe vowed on Wednesday to win next year’s elections and said nobody could ever force him into exile. ”I want to say here that I am not going anywhere. Here I was born. Here I grew up and here I shall die and will be buried,” he told veterans of the country’s 1970s war of liberation.
Implats, the world’s second-biggest platinum producer, posted a 75% rise in annual headline earnings per share on Thursday, at the top end of expectations, lifted by higher output and strong metals prices. South Africa’s Impala Platinum Holdings said headline EPS jumped to R13,12 for the 12 months to end-June from R7,50 the previous year.
A steaming, bubbling toilet which caused a paraplegic prisoner to suffer burns to his buttocks and private parts will cost the ministers of Public Works and Correctional Services R35 000 in damages. Prisoner Augustino Banze (36) said in papers before the Pretoria High court he went to the toilet at 8.30am on October 16 2004.
Relations between Russia and Britain were facing fresh turbulence on Wednesday after a billionaire oligarch wanted by the Kremlin for tax evasion was reported to have escaped to London. Mikhail Gutseriyev — the former head of one of Russia’s largest private oil firms — disappeared from Russia last week.
A reduction of crime since 2006 was the result of a clamp-down conducted by the Johannesburg metro police and the South African Police Service, metro police said on Wednesday. Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said more than 1 000 illegal firearms had been confiscated and armed robbery in the inner-city had been reduced by 63%.
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) president Willie Madisha has made public affadavits telling his side of the story relating to the missing R500Â 000 donation to the South African Communist Party (SACP). Madisha and a witness say they delivered the money to SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande in 2002.
<b>Laying down the law</b>:The HIV-prevalence rate in Madagascar may be lower than that in Southern Africa countries, but the levels of stigma and discrimination are just as high. Activists and government officials are hoping that a recently introduced law will alleviate the problem.
Two security guards at Gauteng finance minister Paul Mashatile’s Johannesburg home threatened Mail & Guardian photographer Lisa Skinner when she took pictures of the property. Skinner this month visited the well-protected house in Kelvin, north of Johannesburg, to take pictures for a story the M&G is investigating.
Plans to open up parts of Tsitsikamma — South Africa’s premier marine protected area — to recreational fishing appear to have been shelved for the moment. The proposal drew criticism from environmental groups such as the WWF, which called it a ”parochial and political decision to appease highly vociferous local stakeholders”.
A race for succession is taking shape in the IFP with progressive members of the party’s youth wing calling for it to formulate a succession plan ahead of the anticipated resignation of president Mangosuthu Buthelezi when his term ends in 2009. Buoyed by a belief that the term ending in 2009 might be Buthelezi’s last as party president reformists within the party and its youth wing have begun lobbying for a deputy president.