A Mozambican NGO has managed to collect more than 800Â 000 weapons used in the country’s 16-year civil war, Vista News reported on Tuesday. This was revealed by the head of the Mozambican Christian Council’s Transforming Swords into Ploughshares project, Bishop Dinis Sengulane, in a report published by Radio Mozambique.
South African intelligence agencies are concerned that people involved in international terrorism are spending time in the country, an intelligence official said on Tuesday. Barry Gilder, coordinator of the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee, said that agents are watching certain individuals and organisations who might be involved in international terrorism.
South Africa’s manufacturing output rose by an unadjusted 6,2% in volume terms year-on-year in January, compared with 5% in December, official data showed on Tuesday. Compared with December, manufacturing production in volume terms decreased by a seasonally adjusted 0,5%, Statistics South Africa said.
Poetry is a pleasure which comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, writes Roy Hattersley.
A commando unit based at the Cranborne Barracks in Harare was responsible for the brutal torture of Morgan Tsvangirai and other opposition leaders on Sunday, according to a police officer who witnessed the assault. The officer said the beatings were carried out by drugged soldiers disguised as police officers.
Murdered seven-year-old Sheldean Human should not be forgotten, and her death should be used as an instrument for ”change in our communities”, mourners said at a memorial service in Pretoria on Tuesday. Sheldean, a grade two pupil at Laerskool Tuinrand, was found murdered on March 5 after she went missing from her Pretoria Gardens home on February 18.
Violence erupted outside the Protea Magistrate’s Court in Soweto when hundreds of pupils threw stones at police transporting five men accused of murdering 14-year-old Thato Radebe to the Johannesburg prison, police said on Tuesday. ”They climbed over the Nyala [armoured police van], hit it with spades and threw stones at it,” said Constable Sefako Xaba.
Zimbabwe’s problems should be solved by the people of that country, the South African Foreign Affairs Department said on Tuesday. ”We have constantly maintained that the solutions to the problems of Zimbabwe will be resolved by the people of Zimbabwe,” spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said.
Eight Cape Town traffic officials face criminal charges over what the city said on Tuesday are 229 ”potentially fraudulent” learner’s licences and roadworthy certificates. The irregularities, all committed during the last three months of 2006, were uncovered by the city’s internal investigators and the police.
Unidentified gunmen on Tuesday ambushed an Ethiopian military convoy south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, sparking a heavy gun battle, wounding at least nine, witnesses said. ”An Ethiopian military convoy that was leaving the airport has been ambushed by gunmen. They used machine guns and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades],” said Ali Hassan Nur, a resident.