The government of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe on Friday issued a chilling threat against Western journalists working in the Southern African country. The information ministry warned journalists, including Jan Raath of the Times and Peta Thornycroft of the Daily Telegraph that the government might be forced to act against them.
Defeated Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba was sheltering in the South African embassy in Kinshasa on Friday after a day of clashes between his guards and DRC troops. At least two civilians were killed and a dozen wounded on Thursday in the violence in the capital Kinshasa.
A complete meltdown in troubled Zimbabwe appears inevitable, neighbouring South Africa said on Friday while rejecting rising international calls to condemn President Robert Mugabe’s regime. "It is difficult to see how a total meltdown won’t take place," South African Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad told reporters in Pretoria.
The death toll from blasts at a military armoury in Mozambique’s capital Maputo triggered by high temperatures had risen to 72, Health Minister Ivo Paulo Garido said on Friday. The blasts began on Thursday. President Armando Guebuza called off a visit to South Africa on Friday because of the disaster.
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Lou Vincent found his form as New Zealand made it three World Cup wins out of three in Group C with a 114-run success against Canada at the Beausejour Cricket Ground in Gros on Thursday. Vincent’s 101 was the centrepiece of New Zealand’s World Cup record score of 363 for five.
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Paceman Billy Stelling returned a career-best 3-12 and Ryan ten Doeschate hit a half-century to help The Netherlands race to an easy eight-wicket World Cup group-A win over Scotland on Thursday. Ten Doeschate hit an unbeaten 68-ball 70 and added 103 for an unbroken third wicket stand with Bas Zuiderent.
Britain is making contingency plans for the post-Mugabe era in Zimbabwe in the belief that the president — under increasing pressure from within his own party as well as from the opposition and a plummeting economy — may not last the year. A senior Foreign Office official said that 2007 would be ”a pivotal year … There will be significant change this year.”
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Pakistan’s cricket coach Bob Woolmer was strangled in his hotel room after the team’s shocking World Cup loss to Ireland and police are investigating it as murder. ”The official report from the pathologist states that Mr Woolmer’s death was due to asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation,” said police commissioner Lucius Thomas said in a statement.
In an age in which people assume character by observing idiosyncrasies, Bob Woolmer’s laptop had taken on profoundly different meanings for fans spread out across the vast spectrum of the game’s politics. Many admired it as a sign of his openness to change, and his attention to detail. Others derided it gently in public and viciously in private.
African auctioneers are celebrating after the Johannesburg High Court granted Tirhani Auctioneers an order interdicting Transnet and Aucor from conducting an auction of Spoornet rolling stock. The case hinged on a BEE score, which Tirhani said had been unfairly awarded to Aucor.