OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Wednesday RAGING flood waters have swept away three people, left more than 3 000 homeless and disrupted end-of-year exams in KwaZulu-Natal as torrential rains lashed the region, officials said. Richard’s Bay town clerk Tonie Heyneke said the three were telecommunications workers who were crossing the bridge over the Mzingazi River in […]

MARIAM ISA, Pretoria | Wednesday SOUTH Africa’s main inflation rates all rose more slowly than expected in October, vindicating the central bank’s decision last week to leave interest rates on hold. But hopes that there would be no need for the central bank to raise rates again in the months ahead were dampened as the […]

REGIONAL mobile operator Orascom Telecom (OT) said this week its African mobile phone operator Telecel had acquired a GSM 900 licence in Niger for $5.8m, to be named Telecel Niger. Telecel has been granted the new licence in Niger for a period of 15 years, renewable every five years. It covers data services and international […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday SOUTH African sugar and aluminium giant Tongaat-Hulett Group Ltd said this week it aimed to generate more than R5bn in annual turnover by 2004 at its Hulett Aluminium plant. Speaking at a ceremony to officially open a R2.4bn expansion of the KwaZulu-Natal province aluminium rolling plant, Peter Straude, the managing […]

ZIMBABWE’S Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) is to appeal against a High Court provisional order allowing squatters to stay on white farms they have invaded since February. High Court judge Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku ruled that war veterans and supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party could remain on the farms pending a Supreme Court ruling […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday WITNESSES are too afraid to testify against members of South Africa’s Muslim vigilante group Pagad who were arrested for the 1996 murder of a Cape Town gang boss, a court heard this week. This meant that media footage of the gruesome murder of gangster Rashaad Staggie has become essential […]

SALDANHA Steel, the 50-50 joint venture between Iscor and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), was likely to cost the partners more than R1bn each this financial year, the IDC warned last week. In its latest annual report, the IDC said Saldanha would lose R737m next year, 22% less than this year’s R945m loss, Business Report […]

THE current moratorium on the release of crime statistics will be lifted sooner rather than later, says National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. He said police management would receive a progress report from a task team overhauling the way in which the figures have previously been compiled. Safety and Security Minister Steve Tshwete approved the moratorium […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kakamas | Tuesday THE survivor of a racial attack in the Northern Cape town of Kakamas has told how two white residents shouted racial abuse and swigged brandy and beer while they chained two coloured men to a tree and beat one of them to death, The Star newspaper reported. Farm worker Dawid […]