Telkom chief executive Sizwe Nxasana told MPs on Friday that his company "is constantly responding" to the demands for the lowering of the costs of doing business — and further announcements can be expected "in the future". Nxasana was briefing the National Assembly communications portfolio committee.
Kenyan Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi has urged Britain to formally apologise for the brutality it committed against the country’s independence fighters, Mau Mau, during the colonial period. Murungi was speaking on Thursday during the launch of a book, Britain’s Gulag: The brutal end of empire in Kenya, by Caroline Elkins of Harvard University.
United Nations peacekeeping officials sought more power to conduct aerial surveillance and electronic warfare against militia who have stepped up attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s lawless Ituri region. The officials’ request, which they said on Thursday would help prevent weapons from pouring into the eastern region, came days after peacekeepers killed up to 60 people.
A Gauteng zoo owner is suspected of laundering permits to import nine old circus and zoo lions from Brazil last week, in the face of a ban on bringing the big cats into the country. Conservation authorities are investigating whether Pablo Urban fooled Free State permit officials into facilitating the deal after Gauteng officials refused to give him permits to import the lions.
The majority of the 64 coup ”foot soldiers” imprisoned in Zimbabwe last March on their way to an abortive coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea were released on Thursday. But their future is bleak. Pomfret, their home for the 15 years — including about 700 houses, a school, churches and a cemetery where the remains of soldiers who died in combat are buried — will be razed to the ground.
Another head has rolled in the Eastern Cape agriculture department, in what is widely viewed as a government purge of ”the good guys” amid an investigation into the controversial Kangela empowerment land deal. The department’s chief financial officer, Vusi Menzelwa, was suspended on Tuesday on 13 charges, some relating to Kangela.
Laugh It Off, the brand parody company that has been locked in a dispute over freedom of expression versus trademark protection with international brewer SABMiller for the past two years, will have its day in the Constitutional Court next Tuesday. At the heart of the legal argument is the parody specialists’ T-shirt ”Black Labour, White Guilt”.
The South African Communist Party expects greater sacrifices from white farmers than from any other sector to help alleviate poverty in rural areas, farmer’s union Agri SA said on Thursday. This followed a meeting between the two groups in Pretoria on Wednesday.
All Blacks flyhalf Carlos Spencer scored one try and set-up another on Friday to lift the Auckland Blues to an 18-15 win over the Queensland Reds in a Super 12 rugby match at Eden Park. The Reds, who hadn’t beaten the Blues at Auckland in the competition’s 10-year history, led against the run of play within 10 minutes of fulltime before Spencer turned the match.
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The law treats guilt like pregnancy — in court you can’t be half guilty. But life is more complicated, making for a poor fit when the messy compromises of existence are dragged under legal scrutiny. When the Sunday Times previewed corruption-accused Schabir Shaik’s entry to the witness box, the paper speculated on which Shaik would emerge.