Dissident General Laurent Nkunda likes to think of himself as a saviour. This might explain why, as we drive to church on Saturday morning, his security detail includes not only standard issue Kalashnikovs and RPGs, but also a keyboard and eight hymn-singing soldiers.
It’s not just Bin Laden’s deputy turning up on channel as-Sahab last week promising to pulverise the United Kingdom’s honours committee for knighting Salman Rushdie, nor the self-same Ayman al-Zawahiri vowing revenge over the Red Mosque a couple of days later.
Five years is not such a long time for the armies that eyeball each other along the demilitarised zone cutting the Korean peninsula in half. Their guns have been on a hair trigger for more than five decades. In fact, the frozen battlelines are such a feature of the landscape that part of them is now a Cold War theme park.
Tokyo Sexwale’s star is on the rise. He has secured a foothold in at least four major provinces where senior party leaders have been lobbying for his election as ANC president. A “national coordinating committee”, led by Gauteng finance minister Paul Mashatile and national executive committee member Enoch Godongwana, has been meeting once a month since Sexwale announced in May that he would be available for nomination.
Togara Sanyatwe was buried in the West Park cemetery on the edge of Bulawayo at 83 years of age. The headstone reveals nothing more about his life, but he would already have been considered an elder of his community at the time those who now lie around him were being born. They include Zah Zah Ngwenya, who was just 28 at the time of her death on the same day as Sanyatwe.
Placed fifth in the recently-completed Premiership log, Tottenham Hotspur provided scant evidence of challenging the big four of English soccer for major honours in the coming season while completing a comfortable enough 2-1 victory over Kaizer Chiefs in the opening Vodacom Challenge game.
Sergio Garcia was on the cusp of his first win in a major on Sunday taking a three shot advantage into the final round of the British Open. Only 40-year-old American Steve Stricker could keep anywhere close to the Spaniard and he needed a course-record equalling 64 on Saturday to do that.
The man allegedly behind bizarre internet sex claims against prominent South Africans will probably be transferred from Kroonstad to Cape Town sometime this week, said police. Juan Duval Uys (39) was arrested at the home he shared with his mother in Kroonstad on Saturday after a months-long investigation.
All Blacks selectors sprung two surprises in the World Cup squad announced on Sunday with the recall of Andy Ellis and Sione Lauaki at the expense of Piri Weepu and Troy Flavell. Richie McCaw will captain the squad in which selectors have gone for a 16 forwards, 14 backs split, but only named a 29-man squad.
A miner was found dead underground at AngloGold Ashanti’s Moab Khotsong mine, near Orkney, at 2am on Sunday morning. The body of a second miner had been located underground at 9am and rescue workers were in the process of recovering it, said AngloGold Ashanti spokesperson Steve Lenahan.