ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe this week added three new seats to the Supreme Court by appointing three judges seen as stalwarts of Zanu-PF. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said the additional judges are needed to handle litigation by white farmers “who are contesting and indeed frustrating the government’s land reform programme”, according to the report. White […]

BASILDON Peta, the secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ), yesterday said the suspension of the accreditation of British Broadcasting Corporation correspondents in Zimbabwe should be condemned by the international community. Peta said it was unfortunate that Professor Jonathan Moyo, the Minister of State for Information and Publicity in the Presidents Office was behaving […]

LIBERIAN President Charles Taylor announced a general amnesty on Thursday for all treason suspects abroad and anti-government dissidents in the northern county of Lofa, news media reported. “On this day I announce …(I) wish to grant general amnesty to all Liberians outside of the country that have been charged with treason — from Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf […]

Cairo | Monday A COURT here on Monday rejected a lawsuit aimed at annulling the marriage of a leading Egyptian feminist on grounds she had abandoned her Muslim faith. The Cairo Family Affairs Tribunal rejected the complaint against novelist Nawal al-Saadawi, saying the lawyer who lodged it had failed to follow proper legal avenues. The […]

WAR veterans on occupied commercial farms have turned in fellow invaders to the police after discovering they are bogus ex-combatants receiving monthly gratuities for the past four years. Last week, two suspected phonies, Paul Mugwagwa and Nathaniel Sibanda, were arrested by the fraud squad after they were exposed by their colleagues in Marondera. In 1997, […]

D’ARCY DORAN, Lagos | Monday MTN will launch its GSM network in Nigeria for billed subscribers on August 8, while pre-paid subscribers will be able to join the network around August 25, company executives said on Friday. ”We really do mean business and we are ready to launch,” Brian Gouldie, chief operating officer of MTN, […]

FIFTY-FIVE Guineans who had been abducted by Sierra Leonean rebels have arrived home with accounts of death, rape and forced labour, state television in the West African country said on Sunday. The television showed pictures of the 55 dishevelled civilians, more than a third of them children, who had been released by the Revolutionary United […]

FIRST results from Sunday’s presidential elections on the African islands of Sao Tome and Principe pointed to a likely run-off between the two top candidates, electoral officials said. Businessman Fradique de Menezes, a former foreign minister, appeared to have an edge over Manuel Pinto da Costa, who ruled the former Portuguese colony as a Marxist […]