FIENIE GROBLER and NOMBUSO DLAMINI, Durban | Wednesday KWAZULU-Natal traditionalists are reverting to virginity testing to control sexual behaviour and HIV/Aids but Western doctors and social workers believe it is a degrading custom that encourages the rape of young girls. Gender and human rights activists are increasingly denouncing the practice the public inspection of girls’ […]

Pretoria | Wednesday SOUTH African inflation rose to 4,6% in December compared to 4,3% in November, the government’s statistics service noted on Tuesday, blaming the rise on annual increases in food, health, fuel, transport and power prices. Statistics South Africa said the annual percentage change in the consumer price index CPIX, excluding the interest rate […]

A SEVEN-year-old lioness named Lea who spent the first years of her life in an Italian zoo eating pasta left Rome on Thursday headed for South Africa where she is to be released into a game park. “She’s a real kitten, she even eats pasta,” one of her keepers told the Italian Telenews agency before […]

Lagos | Wednesday A MOB in Nigeria’s main city of Lagos lynched three policemen who killed a bus driver and conductor after they refused to pay extortion money at a police checkpoint, witnesses said on Wednesday. The crowd attacked the policemen late on Tuesday after they shot dead the bus driver and his conductor in […]

PETER CUNLIFFE-JONES, Lagos | Wednesday IN a country where building maintenance has rarely been a priority and concern for public safety often appears minimal, the disaster in Lagos this week was an accident just waiting to happen, analysts said on Wednesday. “I can hardly find a justification for keeping materials of such an explosive nature […]

A SOUTH African man who was arrested after he allegedly tried to set the country’s high commission offices in Kenyan capital Nairobi on Monday, had been declared a habitual criminal in this country, the Department of Foreign Affairs said. Representative Ronnie Mamoepa said on Tuesday night the man approached the embassy in November last year […]

THE case of three commandos who allegedly forced a youngster to eat his own faeces last year resumed in the Potgietersrus Regional Court on Monday, SABC television news reported. The three were arrested and granted R1 000 bail each following the incident. A police inspector on Monday testified on what condition he found Piet Mameila. […]

FRANCE and Nigeria have struck an agreement on three statues that were smuggled out of Nigeria and are currently on show in Paris’s Louvre museum, France’s minister for European affairs, Pierre Moscovici, said Tuesday. Nigeria has agreed to allow the 1,500-year-old terracotta figures to remain in Paris on a 25-year renewable basis in return for […]

THE Health Department said on Tuesday it had assigned an inspector to ascertain whether the consignment imported by the Medicines Sans Frontiers complied with its authorisation terms. The company was last year granted permission by the Medicines Control Council to import five generic drugs that were not registered in South Africa in terms of section […]