Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWE Home Minister John Nkomo said this week that white farmers and not pro-government war veterans are behind the recent upsurge in violence in the countryside. “No war veterans have been causing any problems on the farms,” Nkomo said late on Wednesday. “It is true the farmers have been attacking properly and […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Thursday HIGH telephone costs in South Africa have limited the growth of the local Internet industry, international survey company Nielsen NetRatings reported on Wednesday. Nielsen NetRatings said in a statement that an estimated 1,5-million South Africans now had home Internet access, but that users only spent an average of four hours […]

A NIGERIAN snake charmer, Umaru Daura, picked up a 100 000 naira ($900) reward in Kano on Tuesday after slaying a snake reputed to have killed 34 people. Daura walked into the state government headquarters in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, Tuesday afternoon with the corpse of a slim 1,5-metre long snake. The killer snake, […]

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki acknowledged in a television interview to be aired on Monday evening that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is not listening to him. Interviewer Tim Sebastian of the BBC’s “Hard Talk” told Mbeki: “He’s not listening is he?”, to which the president replied: “Well he hasn’t.” Mbeki has engaged in “quiet diplomacy” in a […]

Luanda | Thursday ANTI-personnel and anti-tank landmines killed 110 people and injured 140 others during June in six of Angola’s eighteen provinces, a UN report said on Wednesday. About 500 000 people are trapped in areas littered with landmines or where fighting continues to rage in the 26-year civil war, the report said. Estimates vary […]

Some 272 000 people fled fighting between rebels and government forces in Angola from January to June this year, a UN report said on Tuesday. Displacement of civilians mostly peasant farmers occurred in 10 of the troubled southern African country’s 18 provinces, the report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) […]

Cape Town | Wednesday NEW mortality statistics have shown that violence rivals Aids as a threat to South African society, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told a news conference on Wednesday. But her assertion, backing up President Thabo Mbeki, is at odds with UNAids figures which suggest that annual deaths due to Aids are nearly 10 […]

A GROUP of armed men made off with a haul of cash, diamonds and precious metals from a Swissair freight container shortly after it was unloaded at Johannesburg airport in South Africa last week, the Swiss airline and a German newspaper report said on Monday. Between five and seven gunmen, according to witnesses, raided the […]

SAKHILE MOKOENA Pietersburg | Thursday CIRCUMCISION schools should be regulated without “assassinating” African culture and customs, urged Pan Africanist Youth Congress (Payco) leader in the Northern Province, Matome Mashao, on Thursday. His call follows the cancellation of a provincial circumcision indaba, or meeting, that was to be held on Tuesday but was scuppered when traditional […]

A 79-YEAR-OLD Northern Province farmer and his elderly wife have been briefly hospitalised after three armed men ambushed and beat them on Sunday night. The knife-wielding attackers reportedly lured Hermanus Johannes Oosthuizen out of his smallholding house near Pietersburg by taunting his dog at 10pm on Sunday night. “His 71-year old wife, Gerbrecht, heard his […]