AT least 13 people including two children were killed and more than 30 wounded on Monday in heavy fighting in Mogadishu, witnesses said. More than 40 people have been killed since Thursday in almost daily battles between a shifting array of warlords and businessmen backed by heavily armed militiamen. Witnesses said Monday’s conflict, now in […]

AN operation to control an infestation of quelea birds in southern Ethiopia has been launched by the Ministry of Agriculture. With a spray aircraft and support team provided by the Desert Locust Control Organisation (DLCO) and pesticide donated by the government of Japan, control operations in Konso and Derashie have so far destroyed 5,1-million birds. […]

AT least 70 people were killed and 15 wounded when armed men attacked the north Angolan diamond-mining town of Chinguvu, close to the Congo border, Lusa reported on Monday. Quoting an unnamed military source who identified the attackers as Unita, the news agency said about 100 rebels were involved in the Saturday assault on a […]

THE Governor of Angola’s Cunene Province, Pedro Mutindi, has been flown to the Roman Catholic Hospital in Windhoek after sustaining “serious injuries” in a landmine blast near Ondjiva. Hospital sources told The Namibian that Mutindi was flown in on Sunday and is in a “critical condition” in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. “He has been […]

AT least six people have died of cholera and about 200 others have been admitted to health centres in Dar es Salaam over the last week. “Between 10 and 30 people contract the disease daily,” said Deo Mutasiwa, Dar es Salaam Regional Medical Officer, warning that the water-borne viral disease was spreading at an alarming […]

SUE THOMAS, Pretoria | Wednesday SOUTH African Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said on Tuesday the government’s hands were clean in a multi-billion dollar arms deal and he distanced the state from alleged irregularities involving sub-contractors. “There were no irregularities in the documents that crossed my desk,” Lekota told a panel investigating the R43-billion deal involving […]

AN Mpumalanga farmers’ union has joined the labour department in an intensive drive to enforce labour laws on farms. The Onderberg Farmers Union’s made the commitment following recent labour department raids on 15 farms in the Onderberg region, east of Nelspruit. Farmers were found to be using child labourers, illegal immigrants and forcing workers to […]

SOUTH Africa plans to license two rivals to state-controlled fixed-line monopoly Telkom from next May, the Business Day reported on Wednesday. The newspaper said the final telecoms policy directives, due out next week, were ”understood to call for both a second and third national operator to enter the market in May”. If approved by Communications […]

MAURITANIA’S first president, Moktar Ould Daddah, on Tuesday returned home looking tired and weak after 23 years of exile in France. Daddah, the northwest African country’s first leader after independence from France in 1960, arrived in the capital Nouakchott on an Air France flight from Paris. The 77-year-old, who needed assistance walking from the aircraft, […]

South Africans, both black and white, heaped praise on revered African statesman Nelson Mandela on Wednesday.