Monaco was in mourning on Thursday ahead of a funeral on April 15 for Prince Rainier, the monarch who modernised the tiny Mediterranean microstate and touched the world with his fairy-tale marriage to Grace Kelly. Rainier died on Wednesday at the age of 81 after a month in hospital battling heart, lung and kidney problems.
Billed as ”Africa’s grandest gathering”, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival has become a shining example of organisational professionalism, media excellence and technical sophistication, writes Mike van Graan.
President Robert Mugabe has defied a European Union travel ban and flown out of Harare unannounced to join world leaders attending Pope John Paul II’s funeral in Rome, state radio announced on Thursday. The trip was immediately denounced by one of Mugabe’s fiercest critics, Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo.
National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi has acknowledged that corruption is sometimes involved when dockets for criminal court cases go missing. He told Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts on Wednesday that officials could be offered up to R25 000 to lose dockets.
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Two reports issued on Wednesday reinforced concern that Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party won last week’s parliamentary election through fraud. A report by observers from the United States embassy said there were ”several patterns of irregularities”.
The number of fraudsters who have applied for amnesty regarding social grant embezzlement has swelled to 300 000, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Wednesday. A spokesperson from the Department of Health said ”drastic steps” will be taken against those who do not apply for amnesty.
Cape Town police were monitoring taxis in the city on Thursday following a decision to close some ranks to quell recent violence. Certain ranks were ordered closed on Wednesday, with the South African Broadcasting Corporation reporting that this was related to at least four recent deaths linked to disputes among local taxi organisations.
The desperate shortage of water in Butterworth in the Eastern Cape has reached such chronic proportions that residents sometimes fight one another to get at it. Others, in order to steer clear of the trouble, have resorted to storing up water in containers, and there is even a third option of buying water from self-styled water hawkers.
China’s justice system is being haunted by a ”murdered” woman who has turned up alive and well 11 years after police tortured her husband into confessing to her supposed killing. The sudden reappearance of Zhang Zaiyu has embarrassed law-enforcement authorities and strengthened calls for penal reform.
Angola’s Parliament on Wednesday passed a resolution asking the government of President Eduardo dos Santos for rapid measures to combat the outbreak of the deadly Ebola-like Marburg virus, which has now killed 159 people. It was the first parliamentary move in Angola to fight the untreatable haemorrhagic fever.