GHANAIAN President Jerry Rawlings, in a final address to the nation before elections heralding an end to his 19 years in power, called for peaceful and fair polling and pledged to hand over power to the people’s choice. Vice President John Atta Mills is facing a stiff challenge in Thursday’s election from John Kufuor of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday THE Cape High Court has granted a secret order for an inquiry into LeisureNet, the embattled health and entertainment company, according to the daily Business Report. The inquiry, in terms of section 417 of the Companies Act, was brought in secret in a bid to prevent possibly wayward directors […]

A PREGNANT 17-year-old girl sentenced by an Islamic court in Nigeria to 180 lashes for pre-marital sex will give birth within days, her family said. Bariya Ibrahim Magazu told the court in September she had been pressured into having sex with three middle-aged men from her village and produced seven witnesses who agreed to her […]

HUGH NEVILL, Johannesburg | Thursday SOUTH African politics has entered a new phase with the emergence of the Democratic Alliance (DA) as genuine opposition to President Thabo Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) in this week’s local government elections, say analysts. “What is worrying is that people have voted along class and race lines,” said Richard […]

THE body of a strangled seven-year-old boy from Eerste River outside Cape Town has been found in a suitcase under his parents’ bed. Cheslyn Hammers’ aunt found his body when she went to fetch clean towels from the suitcase. The boy’s father has been arrested for murder, while his mother thought he was visiting his […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Nairobi | Thursday CANADIAN mining firm Tiomin Resources has defended its titanium mining project in Kenya, denying claims it had acted heavy-handedly, paid bribes and covered up the presence of radioactive materials. Opposition to Tiomin’s $120m project to mine an estimated 12% of the world’s largest deposits of titanium on the southern coast […]

AN eight-year-old Zimbabwean boy was burned to death after lighting a candle for his father in an illegal petrol dump in Harare. The boy, Brian Alfenti, had been helping his father when a power cut hit the township of Zengeza. The flame from the candle, held near petrol being poured by hand into a minibus […]

ERICSSON South Africa has been awarded Telkom’s coveted QTel Gold quality certification, a South African quality standard for the local telecommunications industry. Ericsson is one of only nine of Telkom’s top 20 local vendors to have been awarded the QTel Gold certification. Several of the 35 vendors on the QTel listing are foreign companies. This […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday INVESTIGATORS in the case of apartheid chemical warfare expert Wouter Basson had no idea of the murders of hundreds of Swapo detainees and SADF members until apartheid assassin Johan Theron made a full confession “out of the blue”. Senior Superintendent Dawid Venter, who was at one stage one of the […]

ADE OBISESAN, Lagos | Thursday LATE Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha attempted to assassinate his then number two with a bomb blast at Abuja airport in 1997, a packed human rights hearing has heard. Former lieutenant-general Oladipo Diya told the Nigerian human rights panel Abacha’s agents had planted the car bomb that blew up outside […]