SOUTH Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank, one of the country’s four main banking groups, said this week that Michael Pfaff had been appointed chief executive officer in place of Paul Harris. Pfaff, 39, is a chartered accountant with more than 10 years of experience in investment banking who had joined RMB in 1997. Harris, 50, would […]

JEREMY LOVELL, Cape Town | Thursday WITHIN five years, one South African will die of an Aids-related illness every minute unless action is taken now to curb Aids and treat its victims, says a leading insurance industry official. ”By 2005 there will be six million people infected with HIV/Aids and there will be more than […]

THE Zambian government will need at least $534m over the next three years for its HIV/Aids intervention programme, President Frederick Chiluba said this week. Spearheading the plea for donor funds, Chiluba said Zambia was in a “desperate situation”, adding that the amount of money appeared colossal, but it reflected the complexity and magnitude of the […]

A TRICKLE of voters marked the start of Malawi’s historic local government elections on Tuesday – Malawi’s first multi-party local government polls since former Life President Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s one-party regime was ousted in the early 1990s. The apathy followed low-key election campaigning and voter education by political parties amidst widespread reports of State intimidation […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday AN internationally renowned dog training expert believes that up to 90% of South Africa’s police dogs will have to be destroyed because they are “fear biters” and “psychologically too sick” to be rehabilitated, Afrikaans daily Beeld reported. Beeld quoted Hans Schlegel, owner of the international K9 training school in Switzerland, […]

RWANDAN authorities will launch legal proceedings to try to get more than 40 orphans adopted in Italy during the 1994 genocide returned, Foreign Minister Andre Bumaya said this week. The adoptive families, from the north of Italy, do not want to give up the 41 children, the oldest of whom is now about 10. The […]

NIGERIA has set a target of not less than $500m non-oil exports to the US to be met by the end of 2001, a top government official said this week. Nigeria has taken all necessary steps to benefit from the African Growth and Opprtunity Act (AGOA) and other preferential trade agreements, Commerce Minister Mustafa Bello […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday FORMER liberation fighter Hein Grosskopf has revealed for the first time how he planned and carried out a 1987 car bomb attack on the Witwatersrand Command army base in Johannesburg. Currently living in the United Kingdom, Grosskopf is seeking amnesty for the explosion on July 30, 1987. Twenty-six people, mostly […]

THE international human rights group Amnesty International has condemned an Egyptian court for giving prison terms to 15 Muslim Brotherhood members, saying it was a blow to freedom of expression. “Amnesty International condemns the verdict, considers the 15 men to be prisoners of conscience and calls for their immediate and unconditional release,” the London-based human […]