OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Sunday UNITED States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Saturday reaffirmed the United States’s commitment to uplifting Africa, saying the next American president had an responsibility to create a better life for all the continent’s people. “Africa is not optional to the United States. We have a responsibility and national interest […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday A RUSTENBURG woman who died on June 22 this year could be the first victim of the human form of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE or mad cow disease) in South Africa, Beeld newspaper reports. Variant Creutzfeldt Jacob disease (vCJD) has already killed 89 people in Britain and Europe since it […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday THE ANC top brass has been sent scrambling for cover and are refusing to renounce comments by the party’s KwaZulu-Natal chairman S’bu Ndebele, who threatened vengeance against Africans, coloureds and Indians who voted against the ANC this week, the Sunday Times reports. Ndebele, a member of the KwaZuluNatal provincial Cabinet, […]

SWAZI farmers have been warned that their cattle would be shot dead on sight and incinerated if the animals strayed across international borders into South Africa. The warning is the latest measure in an increasingly desperate attempt to contain foot and mouth disease outbreaks in Mpumalanga province and at Swaziland’s largest abattoir. Farmers were warned […]

SENIOR ANC members and Eastern Cape MECs are expected to attend the funeral of Nomayise Hani, mother of former SA Communist Party leader Chris Hani, in Cofimvaba in the Eastern Cape. Hani, fondly known as Ma Hani, died in the arms of her daughter-in-law Dimpo Hani on November 23 at the age of 83 after […]

THE bail application of a Johannesburg doctor accused of raping his 16-year-old daughter has been postponed to January 4 next year because the docket was not in court and the investigating officer was busy elsewhere. The doctor, who may not be named to protect the identity of the victim, was arrested in November and was […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Saturday INDIAN communities in South Africa have shunned the African National Congress (ANC) in this week’s local government elections, pushed by a perception that the ruling party cares only about black people, analysts said. The community, with many families here for generations, numbers about 1.2 million people, or close to […]

A WHITE Zimbabwean farmer was forced to drive a gang of self-styled war veterans to President Robert Mugabe’s official residence in Harare after initially harassing him and accusing him of planting on a section of his farm they are occupying. The militants demanded an audience with Mugabe, saying the government was not supporting them sufficiently […]

PALESTINIAN gunmen opened fire on an Israeli car near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank on Friday, killing a woman and wounding two other Israelis, the army said. A witness who arrived at the scene shortly afterwards told Israeli television that Palestinian gunmen opened fire as their vehicle overtook the […]

THE main opposition candidate in Ghana’s presidential election has taken an early lead, preliminary official results from a handful of constituencies showed on Friday. John Kufuor, running for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), was ahead in all of the seven constituencies, out of 200, for which preliminary results were declared by the Electoral Commission following […]