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 […]

SUDANESE government bombs killed 18 civilians in southern Sudan on Monday, according to joint charges by rebels, aid workers and a visiting senior US official. Susan Rice, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, lambasted the Khartoum regime after a two day “humanitarian assessment” visit to the south. Echoing a statement released by rebel […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday SOUTH African police announced the arrest on Monday of the owner and the manager of a factory in which 11 workers burnt to death three days ago after being locked in. The workers were killed late Friday when a fire raged through the ESS Chemicals factory near Johannesburg. A senior […]

BRIAN LIGOMEKA, Blantyre | Tuesday ALMOST six percent of Malawi’s population, or 600000 people, are beggars and rely on handouts to survive, a report claimed this week. Malawi’s Council for the Handicap (MACOHA) said in a statement the beggars were largely handicapped or homeless villagers who had been forced into the country’s cities and towns […]

SOUTH Africa’s African Bank Investment Ltd (Abil), one of the country’s four main microlenders, has unveiled a 26% rise in annual earnings per share and expects returns to rise this year. The group said that its headline earnings per share jumped to 121.9 cents from 96.7 cents in the year to September 30 – which […]