OWN CORRESPONDENT, Zanzibar | Monday ELECTIONS in Tanzania have been dumped into chaos after the polling authority in the semi-autonomous island state of Zanzibar cancelled voting in 16 of the state’s 50 constituencies following a litany of irregularities. In contrast to the smoothness of proceedings on the mainland, where polls generally opened and closed according […]

SOUTH African domestic carrier SA Air Link plans to purchase new planes as part of its fleet expansion programme. SA Air Link Chief Executive Rodger Foster said the airline has already shortlisted Embraer of Brazil, Canadian Bombardier and US-German manufacturer Fairchild Dornier as possible suppliers. Foster said the main spur for the fleet expansion was […]

SCORES of people, mostly Muslims or foreigners, are in detention in a police camp in Ivory Coast and dozens more are missing after ethnic and political clashes last week, say relatives and political sources. Aly Coulibaly, representative of the opposition Rally of the Republicans (RDR), which draws its support from the Muslim north, said that […]

GHANAIAN President Jerry Rawlings escaped with bruises after an accident in which four bodyguards travelling in his convoy were killed, officials said. The accident happened near the capital Accra when a car drove onto a motorway, causing some cars in the presidential convoy to crash. Rawlings and his wife Nana Konadu suffered light bruises and […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday FORMER South African president Nelson Mandela has pooh-poohed reports in London’s Sunday Times that he has been involved in behind-the-scenes moves to depose embattled Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe. Mandela’s representative, Zelda la Grange, told Beeld newspaper that he ”has no intention of intervening in Zimbabwe’s internal politics, nor does he […]

THE new leader of a Rwandan-backed rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has vowed to restore his movement’s credibility among the war-weary people of rebel-held eastern Congo. Adolphe Onusumba was appointed president of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), and said the rebellion’s previous leadership had failed to win the hearts and […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Mogadishu | Monday BUSINESSMEN allied to Somalia’s new president have flown a large shipment of fake bank notes into the capital to help finance the formation of the country’s first government in almost a decade. The notes arrived at an airstrip about 90 km outside Mogadishu and were escorted into Mogadishu by about […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday SOUTH African veterinary officials are extending a quarantine zone in KwaZulu-Natal in a desperate bid to fight the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease which is threatening the country’s entire meat export industry. The move follows the discovery last week that the disease, which first hit a commercial herd in mid-September, had […]

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 […]