OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Friday US Secretary of State Colin Powell has blamed President Robert Mugabe for much of Zimbabwe’s woes and called for tougher action to stem the crisis in that country. Powell told journalists in Pretoria he had discussed the Zimbabwe situation with South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma in bilateral talks […]

FORMER Zambian cabinet and deputy ministers recently dismissed by President Frederick Chiluba, on Thursday apologised to the nation for causing untold suffering to Zambians over the last 10 years under Chiluba’s leadership. Addressing a national development review forum in Lusaka on Thursday, the spokesperson of the group, former Labour minister Edith Nawakwi admitted that the […]

WHITE Zimbabwean farmers have offered to give the government one million hectares (almost 2.5m acres) of land for resettlement by poor black farmers, in a bid to jumpstart talks to end more than a year of violence on farms. The proposal also calls for ending any litigation against the government, provides financing for newly resettled […]

INCUMBENT Chadian President Idriss Deby is well ahead of the other candidates and will be elected in the first round, his party, the Salvation Patriotic Movement and its allies told a press conference in Ndjamena on Thursday. The party officials told journalists that Deby had reportely won seven of the eight districts of the capital […]

SA diamond giant De Beers said on Thursday it had suspended all activities in Angola due to a dispute with the Luanda government over its contracts and legal rights in the country. In a statement De Beers said it had “reluctantly” decided to discontinue operations because of a decree by the Angolan government to override […]

ANGOLAN rebels killed 17 people in two ambushes in the centre and south of the country, the Roman Catholic radio station Ecclesia reported on Wednesday. Ten passengers were shot dead when men said to be members of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) attacked a lorry at Cacuso in the northern […]

Glenda Daniels Boiling oil was an everyday feature in the 22 years of loyal service in kitchen worker’s Peter Mudogwa’s life at Wimpy Cresta. But he didn’t know it would one day kill him. Mudogwa, a member of the South African Commercial and Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu), was burnt by boiling oil while […]

Anthony Holiday It needs no sage to see that, while the letter of parliamentary democracy in South Africa remains perilously intact, the spirit of that institution is already ailing. The symptoms of the disease are manifest, not only in the frictive partisanship which has infected the functioning of the parliamentary portfolio and oversight committees or […]

Fred Esbend Despite the fact that Port Elizabeth is on the brink of financial collapse with municipal service arrears standing at a staggering R600-million, the Nelson Mandela metropolitan municipality has upgraded its executive mayor’s flying status from economy to business class. Nceba Faku’s upgrade comes at a time when the metropolitan council, which incorporates Uitenhage […]

TANZANIA?S third modern large-scale gold mine has started commercial production ahead of its official commissioning in mid-July, a company official said on Friday. “Gold is now pouring out at the mine … all is going on well,” said Roy Meada, general manager of Kahama Mining Corporation Limited, owners of the mine in the remote village […]