OWN CORRESPONDENT, LUANDA | Tuesday ANGOLAN rebel leader Jonas Savimbi on Monday welcomed the Catholic Church’s peace initiatives in the southwest African country and said that war was “absurd”. “After the liberation war against the Portuguese I hoped for a quiet life,” Savimbi said in a letter faxed to Reuters. “But unfortunately it didn’t happen.” […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, London | Monday MORE than 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa — equivalent to every child in Britain under the age of 15 – have been orphaned by Aids, according to a report Monday by the British charity Christian Aid. By 2010, that figure will have risen to 43 million children, by which […]
NORTHERN Province Premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi is taking legal action against Democratic Alliance (DA) co-leader, Michael Holford, who accused him of not declaring his assets. Ramatlhodi said at a press conference on Monday that Holford did not attempt to verify facts before accusing him of corruption and misconduct. Holford accused Ramatlhodi in the weekend press of […]
MINING firm Billiton said on Sunday its investors had thrown their weight behind its proposed US$28bn merger with Australia’s BHP. Billiton said votes representing more than half of its share capital had already been received and nearly all were in favour of the merger proposal that will be put to a shareholders’ meeting on Tuesday. […]
A DIVING team located a school of coelacanths – an elusive prehistoric fish known as a “living fossil” – in Indian Ocean waters off eastern South Africa on Monday and is filming them, SABC radio reported. Coelacanths, a 400 million year-old species, were thought to have become extinct 70 or 80-million years ago until one […]
IN an official visit to Colombia, South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Monday signed an agreement with his South American counterpart Gustavo Bell to cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking. The document shows both countries’ intent to establish a bilateral committee of top-level officials enjoined to find solutions to the drug problem and […]
THE South African Communist Party (SACP), which is part of the ruling alliance in government, cautioned on Sunday against rushing ahead with privatisations. The government hopes to raise 18 billion rand from the proceeds of the sale of state assets in the 2001/02 fiscal year, led by an initial public offering for telecoms utility Telkom, […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, PRETORIA | Tuesday SOUTH Africa’s central bank governor Tito Mboweni said on Monday in Pretoria the rand is not a one-way bet despite its steep depreciation last year. “Notwithstanding the volatility in the exchange rate of the rand, we are convinced that there is every reason to be confident regarding the future path […]
ZIMBABWE’s government faced renewed pressure this week to devalue the country’s embattled currency with warnings that attempts to prop up the Zim Dollar were seriously harming exports. Leading Zimbabwean economist Eric Bloch said on Tuesday that the country’s fiscal policy had overvalued the Zimbabwe Dollar (Z$) by up to 50% against the currencies of major […]
VORACIOUS caterpillars are ravaging plantations and smallholdings in Cameroon’s Eastern and Southern Provinces, eating almost all the plants and crops they reach, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. “Not a single green plant is spared, from bananas to cocoyams to groundnuts,” said a plantation owner reached by telephone in the Ngomedzap region, about 100km south […]