THIRTY-TWO fighters of the Angolan rebel movement UNITA have been freed under a government amnesty announced on November 10, the eve of the 25th anniversary of independence in the war-torn southern African country. UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, rejected the amnesty offer, but small numbers of rebel fighters have surrendered their weapons and handed themselves […]
THE Gambian government has denied claims by a United Nations panel that it is involved in trafficking so-called conflict diamonds, thereby aiding rebels in Angola and Sierra Leone. The panel fingered a number of west African countries, including Gambia, for providing a conduit for diamonds being used by rebels to fund their armed actions in […]
MORE than 100 suspected rapists were arrested during December in Gauteng after police stepped up action against sex offenders. Police said most of the victims were children who had been attacked by a family member or someone close to them. In the past four months, 14 rapists have been sentenced to between 10 and 25 […]
A LARGE crowd packed into an Islamic court in northern Nigeria to watch as two men found guilty of drinking alcohol were given 80 lashes each. The crowd burst into chants of “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”) as the men, 22-year-old Nugu Abdullahi and 63-year-old Sa’adu Aminu, were given their punishment. Since the introduction of […]
AN audio and lighting engineer faces possible imprisonment for allegedly insulting Zimbabwe’s president during a holiday music show. State prosecutors said Stephen Schadendorf, 35, turned spotlights on a portrait of President Robert Mugabe during a song construed as critical of Mugabe, prompting thousands of music fans to cheer and clamor for Mugabe’s ousting. Schadendorf was […]
AFRICA’S energy ministers will gather in Algeria for a five-day conference in April to prepare for an Africa-US ministerial meeting on renewable energies later this year. Algeria’s energy minister Chakib Khelil told a news briefing that the energy ministers will discuss development of the energy sector as well harmonising their legalisation to spur cooperation between […]
ANGOLA is planning to construct a $40m commercial port in the oil-rich province of Cabinda, the Angolan state news agency Angop reported. Cabinda governor Jose Amaro Tati said he was hoping to raise money for the port from the national government, adding that there was major interest from the companies that service the petroleum base […]
ZAMBIA’S opening of a gate on the Kariba dam has caused floods in the far north of neighbouring Mozambique, but there is no immediate risk of a repeat of last year’s flood disaster, says Radio Mozambique. The state-owned radio said about 10 000 people had been affected, and people living in low-lying areas were being […]
BARRY BAXTER, Gaborone | Thursday FIVE foreign judges will decide this month whether to hang a South African woman who is on death row in Botswana for a love-triangle murder. Marietta Bosch, 49, was sentenced to death in the Botswana High Court in February last year for the June 1996 murder of Maria Wolmarans, her […]
MORE than 3.2 million Sudanese are facing serious food and water shortages due to the combined disruptions of civil war and drought, the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) said this week. The Rome-based WFP said: ”If prompt action is not taken now, there is a danger that the tragic scenes of 1998, in which […]