SOME 400 Rwandan children who took part in the 1994 genocide have gone to camps for two months of UN-backed re-education before their release, Justice Minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo said this week. Their training, financed by UNICEF (the UN Children’s Fund), includes civics lessons and workshops on justice and human rights. Between 2 000 […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday POTIONS made of bark and crushed leaves are being used successfully to treat infections plaguing Aids victims in Tanzania’s Tanga region, a Commonwealth conference on phytomedicines has heard. American David Scheinman told delegates from Africa and Europe a German doctor had stumbled on the benefits of the traditional medicines […]

THE Nigerian justice minister has been asked to explain the “abduction” of a businessman to the United States at the request of the US drugs agency. The lawyer of Lanre Shittu, a prominent car dealer, asked the Federal High Court in Abuja to summon minister Bola Ige to explain why the government allowed the US […]

HUMAN rights activists and opposition parties have called for the immediate resignation of Malawi’s Electoral Commission chairman Judge James Kalaile after he tried to dismiss massive voter apathy as “nonsense”. Kalaile said the turnout of only 14,2% of Malawi’s 5,2 million voters in the country’s first ever multi-party local government elections last month was better […]

THE ruling Avant-Garde for Madagascan Renewal (AREMA) has emerged victorious in most cities except the capital after weekend polls for new provincial administrations. Turnout in Sunday’s proportional representation elections, which will eventually lead to the creation of six provincial governments after more than a century of extreme centralism, was about 30%. Results out so far […]

ANNA BORZELLO, Gulu | Wednesday HUNDREDS of colleagues and friends of Matthew Lukwiya, the doctor who led the fight against Uganda’s outbreak of Ebola, laid him to rest, with some wailing, others weeping, but none of them holding hands or embracing. Such is the virulence of Ebola that Lukwiya’s pallbearers wore protective masks, gloves, caps […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Wednesday WITH 9,8 million votes counted in South Africa’s key local government elections, the ruling African National Congress has wrested control of 46 local councils, with the Democratic Alliance taking 18 as it made major inroads into ANC’s support base. Early on Wednesday afternoon the ANC had captured 58% of the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Wednesday WITH just over six million votes counted in South Africa’s key local government elections, the ruling African National Congress has wrested control of 24 local councils countrywide, double that of the opposition Democratic Alliance – but the DA is looking ominous in the hotly-contested Western Cape. By Wednesday morning, the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Wednesday SCAVENGERS, undeterred by the death of some 60 people in last week’s fuel pipeline fire in Nigeria, have begun scooping up fuel around another leak site. Security agents guarding the Atlas Cove Jetty, a few metres from the site of the inferno near Lagos port, stood by and watched as […]

THE bus driver in the horror smash that killed 26 British tourists and a South African tour guide on the Long Tom Pass near Lydenburg last year has applied for a State lawyer to represent him when he goes on trial. Titus Phillip Dube, 41, will appear in the Nelspruit Regional Court on January 11 […]