OWN CORRESPONDENT, Vosloorus | Sunday South African soccer hung its head in shame yesterday as crowd violence forced the final of the African Women’s Championship to be abandoned. Three people were injured and were admitted to the nearby Natalspruit Hospital, in Katlehong on the East Rand. Violence erupted just after the Nigerians had scored their […]

ONE of Mozambique’s most outspoken independent journalists, Carlos Cardoso, has been assassinated in central Maputo. Cardoso, the editor of the independent daily newspaper Metical, was ambushed near his city centre office by unknown assailants just before 6pm on Wednesday. Cardoso has been very vocal in his criticism of hardline factions within both the ruling Frelimo […]

TANZANIA has become the 36th country to ban imports of meat and meat products of cloven-hoofed animals from South Africa following the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in KwaZulu-Natal. It is not known how much meat Tanzania imports from South Africa, but a supermarket owner in the Tanzanian capital, Rashid Mohamed, said South African meat […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Sunday ABOUT 2000 men marched through central Cape Town this weekend to protest the high rate of abuse of women and children in South Africa, estimated to have among the highest rates of rape in the world. Church bells pealed in support as the men marched to parliament led by […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Saturday DOCTORS said on Friday they had found an “abnormality” in the blood of 82-year-old Nelson Mandela, but that it presented no threat to his life. Mandela himself, frail, but beaming, said: “I feel good … I know that I’m not going to die tonight.” Doctors Michael Kew and Michael Plit […]

THE government of Namibia has declared a dead Rwandan refugee persona non grata (undesirable) and ordered his deportation more than a year after his burial. Wabalinda Deo Gahizi was among a group of 17 “undesirables” from neighbouring countries declared personae non gratae by Home Affairs Minister Jery Ekandjo, The Namibian newspaper reported. Gahizi won a […]

FIFTEEN people drowned when a packed minibus collided with another vehicle and plunged off a bridge into the Lagos lagoon, police and medical services said. The conductor of the bus, who was hanging on to the outside of the vehicle, swam to safety. Thousands of bright yellow minibuses ply the streets of Lagos as a […]

Evaristo Cumbane, Own Correspondent | Saturday SEVEN South African pathologists have arrived in Mozambique to help investigate the death of at least 80 prisoners in the northern province of Cabo Delgado earlier this week. Mystery deepened on Friday over the deaths amid reports that they suffocated, possibly in smoke linked to traditional fighters believed to […]

Former South African President Nelson Mandela has received the International Freedom Award from a museum at the site where US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

TANZANIAN President Benjamin Mkapa retained most of his key ministers except the finance minister in a new cabinet unveiled this week. Mkapa, whose Chama Cha Mapinduzi party won last month’s disputed polls, named former 1980s trade minister Basil Mramba the new Minister of Finance, in place of Daniel Yona, who took charge of poverty eradication. […]