Political bickering and name-calling continued on Monday as the African National Congress (ANC) lashed out at a ”malicious attack and hurling of insults” by Young Communist League national secretary Buti Manamela. ”No serious-minded individual will accord respect to such insults as contained in their statement,” said ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama.
Major world powers condemned North Korea after it said it successfully conducted a nuclear test on Monday, and called for United Nations-sponsored sanctions that could further impoverish the isolated communist state. Pyongyang’s chief ally China denounced the test as ”brazen” and urged it to avoid action that could worsen the situation.
South Africa is set to seize two more white-owned farms, one of them run by a church, to fast-track land reforms to rectify apartheid-era imbalances, a top land official said on Monday. ”The minister [of agriculture and land affairs] has signed the notices of expropriation and they have been sent,” chief land claims commissioner Tozi Gwanya told the media.
At least 13 people were killed and 46 wounded when a car bomb exploded in a busy market in north-east Baghdad on Monday, police said. The car was parked on the side of the street in Shalal market in the mainly Shi’ite Shaab district. It went off as shopkeepers were closing to break their day-long Ramadan fast.
A leading member of Lesotho’s Cabinet resigned Monday and launched a new party to challenge the Lesotho Congress for Democracy’s decade-long grip on power in elections next year. Science and Communications Minister Tom Thabane, an ex-foreign minister, said the government of the tiny Southern African kingdom had lost its way.
South Africa and China have signed an extension to the memorandum of understanding in the labour field agreed to in 2002. Briefing the media at Parliament after the signing ceremony on Monday, Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said the agreement focused on human resources development, job creation strategies and cooperation in the International Labour Organisation.
A senior South African diplomat has been transferred back home from South Africa House in London following allegations of misdemeanour by his son, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Monday. According to the Sunday Independent, the official’s 12-year-old son was under investigation by British police for taking a ”spray gun” to school.
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels reiterated a threat on Monday to keep fighting one of Africa’s longest insurgencies unless international arrest warrants for their top commanders are scrapped. The government and rebels signed a long-awaited truce in August, supposed to give both sides breathing space while peace talks aimed at ending their 20-year rebellion continue.
Judgement in the bail application of senior Scorpions advocate Portia Kgantsi was reserved in the Randburg Regional Court until next Monday. For the prosecution, advocate Herman Broodryk on Monday argued that the severity of charges against Kgantsi warranted the state’s opposition to bail.
The Free State Rugby Union offices in Bloemfontein have been swamped by hundreds of Cheetahs and Blue Bulls supporters since early on Monday morning trying to get tickets for the Currie Cup final over the coming weekend. ”The phones actually started to ring on Saturday just after the Cheetah-Sharks game,” Piet de Necker, spokesperson for the Free State Cheetahs Company, said.