Malawi president Bingu wa Mutharika on Thursday demanded the resignation of a top prosecutor for withdrawing corruption charges against the nation’s former president. Director of Public Prosecutions Ishmael Wadi last week unconditionally dropped all 42 counts of corruption, fraud and abuse of office filed by the Anti-Corruption Bureau against former president Bakili Muluzi.
Chelsea skipper John Terry has been appointed as England’s new captain, the Football Association said on Thursday. Terry takes over the armband after David Beckham stepped down from the role in the wake of England’s World Cup quarterfinal defeat on penalties by Portugal last month.
Immigration officers have threatened to go on strike after an unresolved dispute over salary levels, the Public Servants’ Association (PSA) said on Thursday. ”The department [of home affairs] should accept sole responsibility for the situation, as well as the impact of the strike, which will cripple all points of entry into the country,” said PSA deputy general manager Manie de Clercq.
Johannesburg metro police will clamp down on motorists not displaying number plates on their vehicles. ”Many motorists remove their number plates in order to avoid being caught for speeding through speed cameras,” metro police spokesperson Wayne Minnaar said on Thursday.
Lectures scheduled to resume at the University of Pretoria’s Mamelodi campus have been suspended, university management announced on Thursday. ”The cancellation of classes follows the assurance by several student groups that classes would resume on Thursday as normal. However, things have not turned out so,” said Mamelodi campus director Edwin Smith.
Sasol is increasing its investment in community energy centres by R8-million, bringing the total to R23-million, the company said on Thursday. Sasol, in partnership with the Department of Minerals and Energy, has already launched three centres, and two more will now follow in Mafikeng and Qunu.
About 150 Ethiopian troops, including a senior commander, have deserted the country’s army and escaped to Addis Ababa’s arch-foe nation Eritrea, officials said on Thursday. They said the desertions, which still remained unexplained, were the first to hit the Ethiopian military, but Asmara attributed them to a growing disenchantment with the ruling party.
Somali Islamic militia on Thursday announced plans to seize control of the central regional capital of Galkayo, sparking a massive deployment by their rivals and raising the spectre of renewed bloodshed. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a hard-line cleric designated a terrorist by the United States, said his militiamen have been invited to set up an Islamic court in Galkayo.
The body of an initiate buried in a secret mountain grave could be exhumed in a criminal probe into the cause of his death, the North West provincial government announced on Thursday. Justice Naane’s father, Kereng, insisted that his family needed to bury him to have closure, said government spokesperson Cornelius Monama.
South Africa’s power parastatal has reported that during the last financial year, ending March 2006, R16-million worth, or 144km, of power line was stolen. The annual report — which was tabled at Parliament on Thursday — notes that these losses were considerably down on the previous financial year when 374km of line was stolen, worth nearly R40-million.