Burundi’s peace process facilitator, South African former president Nelson Mandela, has expressed concern over the slow progress on ceasefire talks in Burundi.

ITALY says its bulging rice stores could be used soon to feed the hungry in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Italy is the European Union’s biggest rice producer by far. Italian rice millers have urged Brussels to send its huge costly intervention stocks to feed the world’s hungry. The Pavia-based Italian Rice Millers’ Association (AIRI) has said […]

SOUTH Africa’s largest retail wholesaler, Metro Cash and Carry (Metcash), has agreed to pay the South African Revenue Services (SARS) R128m to settle a tax dispute. The retail group said the settlement of the tax claim did not constitute an admission of wrongdoing on its part. SARS last year had issued VAT assessments against Metcash […]

NAMIBIA’S economy will accelerate in the months ahead and is likely to expand by six percent by the year 2002, the country’s finance minister Nangolo Mbumba said this week. ”We hope to see growth of six percent by 2002 but we need to get some projects off the ground first,” Mbumba said. ”We see four […]

GHANAIAN security officials have arrested and charged a television presenter who criticised President Jerry Rawlings for going on his knees at a political rally at the weekend to canvass votes for a parliamentary candidate. Felix Odartey-Wellington, 29, described Rawlings as fraudulent and ”a con man who wants to pull the wool over our eyes.” The […]

SOUTH African diamond miner Trans Hex reported a 18.3% increase in headline earnings per share (excluding exceptionals) to 80.3 cents in the six months to September 30, the company said this week. Trans Hex – the world’s second largest alluvial diamond producer after De Beers – raised its dividend 16.7% to 14 cents. The company […]

THREE people have died of Ebola in the north Ugandan district of Gulu during the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 90 since an epidemic broke out in mid-September. Eleven people with the highly contagious viral disease were admitted to hospitals in Gulu town during the same period. All the deaths, save for […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday CONFLICT is looming between government and South Africa’s traditional leaders (amakhosi) over proposed changes to the law governing local authorities, which the leaders have rejected as “annoying and insulting”. Saying the law seeks to reduce their powers, Nkosi Mpiyezintombi Mzimela, chair of the Coalition of Traditional Leaders, said the amakhosi […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Mbabane | Wednesday THE United States has rescinded a decision to impose trade sanctions against Swaziland after the tiny kingdom amended a controversial labour law the International Labour Organisation (ILO) deemed restrictive. The US embassy in Mbabane said the outgoing administration of President Bill Clinton had decided to keep Swaziland in the Generalised […]