PIRATES armed with machineguns have attacked a cargo ship off the coast of Sierra Leone, plundering the captain’s safe and robbing the Ukrainian crew of their belongings, Danish national radio news reported. None of the 14-man crew was hurt in the night attack. Robberies are common in the West African country, where UN peacekeeping soldiers […]

DURBAN police have arrested two Johannesburg businessmen in connection with a consignment of 11,5 tons of hashish with a potential street value of more than R1bn, which was intercepted in October. The men, aged 33 and 24, were arrested after the discovery of the hashish in a container at Durban harbour on October 21. The […]

EGYPT’S constitutional court has ruled as unconstitutional the laws stating that a woman can only get a passport with permission from her husband. The court also ruled unconstitutional laws allowing the interior and foreign ministries to look into the allocation of individual passports, saying “the rule is to issue (a passport) in line with the […]

SOUTH Africa’s elite Scorpions police unit has served subpoenas on the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and Reuters news agency to obtain raw video footage on the murder of alleged gangster Rashied Staggie. National directorate for public prosecutions spokesman Sipho Ngwema said when the directorate raided the offices of the state-run SABC, Reuters and Associated […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, East London | Sunday AFRICAN National Congress heavyweights, including Deputy President Jacob Zuma, turned the funeral of presidential aide Parks Mankahlana’s into a giant ANC local elections rally, lambasting those who had defected from the ANC or become independents. In front of thousands of mourners at the Sisa Dukashe stadium in Mdantsane, Zuma […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Sunday THE success rate of arresting, prosecuting and convicting criminals in South Africa is not good enough to deter these criminals from making a life out of crime, says KwaZulu-Natal premier Lionel Mtshali. Speaking at the opening of the new C-max prison, Qalakabusha, at Empangeni, in northern KwaZulu-Natal, Mtshali said in […]

LIBYAN leader Muammar Gaddafi has called for Muslim pilgrims to Mecca to “march on al-Quds,” the Arabic name for Jerusalem. “There should be one million or two million pilgrims at Mecca. They must march on al-Quds,” Kadhafi said in an interview with the satellite channel Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC). “Instead of walking around the […]

SOUTH African musician Johnny Clegg has been attacked and robbed of his minibus by three armed men at traffic lights in northwest Johannesburg. Clegg was unhurt in the attack, and the vehicle was recovered an hour later in the township of Alexandra and returned undamaged to him. Clegg, nicknamed the White Zulu, has had a […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Saturday A FORMER agent of the apartheid regime’s shadowy Civil Co-Operation Bureau, known only as Mr T, has revealed bizarre details of how he oversaw the hanging of a baboon foetus from a tree as part of a plot to “bewitch” Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Mr T, whose identity is being concealed […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Saturday AMID growing calls for the head of Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the government will decide next week how to act on allegations of a secret R1,5bn deal which has effectively privatised the country’s oil trading operations – and will cost the taxpayer at least R75m. Ministry official Kanyo […]