Johannesburg | Sunday STEEL and mining giant Iscor has averted an indefinite strike but some 15_000 workers downed tools during their first shift Friday before the union accepted a new wage offer, a union spokesman said. The five-hour mass action took the form of peaceful meetings during the first shift at the three major steel […]
SACRED objects worth an estimated 885,000 birr ($104_000) were stolen last month from an Orthodox church in central Ethiopia, police said on Friday, adding that one person had been killed during the robbery. The theft took place on July 29 in a church in Girar Jarso in Oromo country, police told the national news agency. […]
ETHIOPIA has denied accusations by Somalia that it was involved in clashes in southern Somalia last week between supporters of the Mogadishu government and militiamen opposed to its rule. “(This is) mere fabrication,” a senior Ethiopian foreign ministry official told national television late on Friday. Yemane Kidane, the head of the foreign minister’s cabinet, said […]
SENIOR South African figures slammed the United States Thursday for threatening to boycott a United Nations conference on racism, and condemned the “evasive” language of draft declarations. National Assembly speaker Frene Ginwala, attending a preparatory conference in Cape Town, said she found it unacceptable that the United States, which guaranteed freedom of speech in its […]
UGANDAN police on Friday announced that they made the first arrest, of a Ugandan man, in connection with the 1999 murder by suspected Rwandan Hutu extremists in Bwindi National Park of eight western tourists and a Ugandan guide. “He is part of the group that attacked Bwindi and we are still following up some clues […]
FRED ESBEND, Port Elizabeth | Friday THE South African Human Rights Commission has expressed the “gravest concern” at the growing number of racial incidents taking place in South Africa. With the United Nations World Conference against Racism due to kick off in Durban in three weeks, three racial incidents in the Cape made media headlines […]
ZAMBIAN former deputy finance minister Newton N’guni said on Thursday that he has been arrested and charged with defaming President Frederick Chiluba. “They summoned me to the police sometime in the afternoon, where they recorded a ‘warn and caution’ statement from me. They then charged me with defaming Chiluba,” N’guni said. His arrest came barely […]
ZAMBIA’S only electricity company, Zesco, is owed about $65-million from consumers who have stopped paying their bills to protest high power tariffs, the company’s managing director said on Wednesday. Although no one has organized a formal boycott, the movement has built up steam through widespread public discontent. Zesco will now offer a 40% discount to […]
ZIMBABWE will push for an apology and compensation for the dispossession of its land by its former colonial master, Britain, at the upcoming United Nations World Racism Conference, the justice minister said on Wednesday. At the conference in South Africa later this month, Zimbabwe will insist on an “express apology by former colonial masters” and […]
MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday THE Cape High Court this week delivered one of South Africa’s first rulings on ethical and accountable conduct by state officials when it slammed as unconstitutional the actions by two state advocates in prosecuting the 1996 murder of Cape gang boss Rashaad Staggie. Cape Deputy Judge President Jeanette Traverso […]