THE Zimbabwean government has struck 90 white-owned farms off a list of hundreds targeted for seizure under a controversial land redistribution programme, the official Sunday Mail newspaper reported. It said President Robert Mugabe’s administration had delisted the farms – among the first 804 designated for seizure earlier this year – in an extraordinary government notice […]

PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday THREE top Durban policemen have been implicated in vehicle hijacking syndicates. This week a second stolen vehicle was recovered from the palatial home of a top Durban officer charged with investigating organised crime in less than six months. In both instances Superintendent Christie Marimuthu claimed the cars belonged to family […]

UP to 10 million Tanzanians go to the polls on Sunday in the country’s second multi-party general elections to elect a president, members of parliament and local government leaders. The United Republic of Tanzania, as the country is officially called, is a union between the semi-autonomous islands state of Zanzibar – made up of Unguja […]

PULP and paper producer Sappi has invested R58m to reduce dust and bad odours emitted from its coal-fired boiler at the Ngodwana mill near Nelspruit. Sappi said the company allocated R22m earlier this year to upgrade dust removal equipment at Ngodwana and cut dust and the rotten egg smell by 60%. Sappi allocated a further […]

THE judiciary in KwaZulu-Natal is disintegrating in the eyes of the public, High Court Judge Keith McCall has told the Judicial Services Commission in Pretoria. “The general perception is that the whole system is in tatters,” he said while being interviewed as one of three candidates for the vacant position of judge president of the […]

Some Zimbabwean whites whose farms have been earmarked for compulsory acquisition are demolishing property before their departure, a senior government official has said. “Some farmers are now vandalising property on their farms to make life difficult for whoever will be settled on these properties,” a provincial governor, David Karimanzira, told the state-run daily The Herald. […]

SASOLBURG businessman Pieter Odendaal (44) has been declared fit to stand trial for the death of an employee who was allegedly dragged for about 6km behind a pick-up truck. Odendaal, who allegedly dragged Mosoko Rampuru (36) along a tarred road behind his bakkie, has been under psychiatric observation in Bloemfontein for 30 days. Protesters outside […]

SUSAN NJANJI, Harare | Friday ZIMBABWE President Robert Mugabe’s call for the country’s white settlers to face trial for genocide is a sign of his desperation in the face of growing tensions here, analysts said this week. Mugabe said whites who had fought against independence fighters in the war of the 1970s would be put […]

MALAWIAN President Bakili Muluzi, who along with South African leader Thabo Mbeki was appointed to mediate between Britain and Zimbabwe on the latter’s land dispute, says “some progress” has been made. A Southern African Develpment Community (SADC) summit in August asked the presidents of South Africa and Malawi to make representations to the British government […]

THE prices of petrol, diesel and paraffin are set to increase on November 1 because of the rand’s weakness against the US dollar, the department of minerals and energy said. The retail price of petrol will increase by two cents a litre, the wholesale price of diesel will go up by 12 cents and the […]