ZIMBABWE’S opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is to launch unprecedented impeachment proceedings against President Robert Mugabe ”mainly to force a public debate about the president’s behaviour”. The MDC, which is posing the strongest challenge yet to Mugabe’s 20-year rule, holds 57 of the 150 seats in parliament, meeting the one-third requirement to propose impeachment, […]

SWAZILAND’S constitutional affairs and justice minister, Chief Maweni Simelane, has stunned the House of Senate by defending a man who mutilated his wife’s genitals in a fit of jealousy. Simelane was responding to senate calls for a retrial of 55-year-old Philemon Dlamini, who was let off with a R120 fine by a traditional court for […]

AN Inkatha Freedom Party local government election candidate was shot dead after a campaign meeting at the weekend. Justice Thula Mthimkhulu Radebe, 58, was gunned down by two men at his supermarket in Vosloorus on the East Rand. Nothing was taken from the shop. – AFP

MALAWI’S Supreme Court has upheld the results of the June 1999 presidential election here, ending a 16-month dispute over the vote’s outcome. The opposition had argued in its legal challenge that President Bakili Muluzi did not win the election because he failed to win votes from more than half of the eligible electorate. – AFP

PHILLIP NKOSI, Nelspruit | Tuesday SUSPENDED Mpumalanga Parks Board (MPB) chief Alan Gray, who faces 77 criminal charges for allegedly embezzling R2m of taxpayer funds, has been paid his full salary of R44000 per month – over R1,1m – since he was suspended in September 1998. Gray will this week finally face an internal disciplinary […]

ONE death and a further 11 cases of the gruesome Ebola disease have been reported in northern Uganda, bringing the total number of known infected people in the outbreak, which has killed 55 people, to 160. No cure exists for Ebola, a viral infection which causes fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and eventual severe haemorrhaging of internal […]

THE Nigerian government is planning to set up a trust fund to use unclaimed share dividends to help develop small and medium-sized enterprises. Following a practice adopted in Britain and the United States and other countries, dividends unclaimed for a number of years will revert to the treasury. It is estimated that some two billion […]

THE numbers of certain wildlife species in tourist-popular northwestern Botswana are dropping because animals are being trapped in fences erected to control disease. The decline in animal numbers could threaten tourism in the area, said a report. Attacks by carnivorous animals on herbivores trapped against the fences, as well as poaching, are among other factors […]

JOHN GROBLER, Rundu | Tuesday NAMIBIAN and Angolan security forces are carrying out illegal detentions and torturing prisoners in round-ups along their joint Kavango River border designed to crack down on Angolan rebels, local sources and human rights activists say. Namibian police refuse to confirm or deny the existence of Operation Eagle, and insist that […]