AN outbreak of swine fever has hit Malawi’s northern district of Karonga, threatening at least 20 000 pigs in the district alone, a veterinary official said on Thursday. Patrick Chikungwa, the district’s veterinary officer said a quarter of the pigs in the region have been affected by the disease which has killed at least some […]
THE leader of Swaziland’s main opposition, Mario Masuku, was arrested and taken to prison in Mbabane on Thursday after defying bail conditions imposed on him following a charge of sedition. Masuku, head of the Peoples United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), was charged with sedition a year ago in the tiny landlocked kingdom, ruled by absolute monarch […]
KHADIJA MAGARDIE, Johannesburg | Friday IN the wake of the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, speculation has mounted that the government is under pressure to show its commitment to ending global terrorism by pushing through draft legislation so dogged by controversy that it received mention in Amnesty International’s 2001 human rights report. […]
FIVE people were wounded, two of them needing hospital treatment, when a pet hyena broke loose in a northeast Nigerian city. The hyena, used for entertaining crowds by its owner Ismaila Ibrahim, broke its chain and attacked passers-by in the Gomari district of Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, a report by state-run Borno Radio said. […]
There have been 105 739 cases if cholera reported in KwaZulu-Natal since August 2000, the province’s health department reported this week. The fatality rate is 0.215% and 228 have died. Cholera is a bacterial infection, which is contracted by drinking contaminated water or by eating food which has been in contact with contaminated water, flies […]
AUTHORITIES in war-ravaged Burundi said on Thursday they were still holding 96 soldiers and seven civilians, suspected of playing a part in a failed coup on July 23. Twenty of those held on remand are officers, according to chief state prosecutor Gerard Ngendabanka. Loyalist troops arrested more than 500 soldiers who tried to overthrow the […]
Thabo Mohlala Residents in Zandspruit, an informal settlement in Honeydew north of Johannesburg, are living in fear after marauding hoodlums went on the rampage and assaulted “foreigners”. According to residents the attack followed a brawl at a shebeen where a Xhosa-speaking man was allegedly shot by a man of Zimbabwean origin. Other Xhosa-speaking residents then […]
Tony Twine A well-known local economist recently reminded an audience of economists and media writers that participants in currency markets are myopic and have no memory whatsoever. It was less a sideswipe at traders than a reminder that in the heat of trading room battles, the luxury of a cool, calm and holistically collected economic […]
A second Look Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela There are many troubling questions raised by Sipho Seepe’s article (“Where are the so-called leaders?” September 21 to 27), not least the question of the extent to which fear has paralysed those in leadership and silenced them from speaking out against some of the indefensible statements made from the president’s […]
Howard Barrell and Jaspreet Kindra The HIV/Aids epidemic has taken on “shattering dimensions” and now accounts for one-in-four of all deaths, according to the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) report into the virus that has been suppressed by the government. The report, in the opinion of many the most authoritative of its kind into the effects […]