A South African man has been killed in Iraq and is believed to have been beheaded, according to a report carried by the Johannesburg newspaper, The Star, on Wednesday. The former Pretoria Task Force policeman, who was working for an American paramilitary company, was the eighth South African killed in Iraq since January, the newspaper said.
Desperate to drive into a lake? You’ll be after a Gibbs Aquada, then. It’s the world’s first factory-produced, customer-ready, high-speed amphibian and represents a one-stop shop for all your car-dunking needs. True, you can get amphibious vehicles in kit form. And the military might be prepared to sell you something it has finished with. But they won’t do 56kph across water and come with a stereo.
The case against Donovan Samuel Moodley, suspected of murdering Johannesburg student Leigh Matthews, has been postponed to October 15. The 24-year-old from Brackenfell, Alberton, appeared briefly in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.
South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has called off its strike action, which was planned for Wednesday, after the union and Harmony Gold reached an agreement late on Tuesday. The strike, if it went ahead, would have led to at least 20 000 workers downing tools at Harmony’s gold mines, the union said in a statement.
The horror and trauma of being in Pollsmoor Prison, awaiting trial, has left him feeling like a ”piece of human garbage”, convicted paedophile Wiliam John Creasey told the Wynberg Regional Court on Tuesday. After his tearful outbursts on Monday brought his trial to a halt, he assured defence attorney Van Zyl Loots that he was sufficiently recomposed to proceed with his testimony in mitigation of sentence.
Islam Dwidar’s classmates were still taking in her shocking death — the teacher weeping outside before facing the girls, her closest friend recounting how they walked to school together each day — when the news arrived about Tahreer Abu El Jidyan.
Police say they have arrested a home affairs official and four ”middle-men” at the home affairs offices in Market Street, Johannesburg, for allegedly selling fake documents. South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Tuesday that the documents included IDs, birth certificates and passports.
Paul Bremer, who was America’s most senior official in Baghdad until the handover last June, said on Tuesday that the United States committed two major blunders which compromised the course of events in Iraq: it went to war without enough troops and it did not contain the looting and violence after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair will on Wednesday fly to the Sudan to warn the Khartoum government that it must act swiftly to end the atrocities and refugee crisis in its western region of Darfur, mainly by allowing as many as 5 000 African Union peacekeeping troops free movement into the region this month.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday suggested that the easiest way to deal with mercenaries in Africa was to shoot them. ”Mercenaries, you just shoot them. This is a simple matter, it’s not a big problem,” he said in response to a question at a news conference.