AFP AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Beijing | Tuesday CHINA is to announce a reduction in some of the debts of the poorest African countries during the first China-Africa Cooperation Forum in Beijing, say senior officials – but the eight countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan will not benefit from the debt reduction scheme. Vice Minister […]

LAND Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza has signed an R11m settlement agreement with representatives of 350 families of the Chatha community in Keiskammahoek in the Eastern Cape, whose families were forcibly removed from their land in 1962. Didiza commended the Chatha community for opting for a development settlement instead of cash compensation only. Half of the […]

REUTERS and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday A MASSIVE detonation of commercial explosives at a house in a quite Pretoria residential suburb killed four people and critically injured two others, police said. Pretoria policeman Captain George Francis said the owner of the house worked for a rock-blasting company: “It may be an accident, we don’t […]

A LIGHT aircraft belonging to a French aviation club has crashed into the Mediterranean Sea off Libya after a mid-air collision during a rally. The fate of the two on board the aircraft, which went down 30km from the Libyan coast, was unknown. State TV said the single-propellor, two-seater aircraft was on its way from […]

AFP, Windhoek | Tuesday FULL-SCALE warfare will resume in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) if Ugandan-backed rebels do not halt their advance on a strategic town seen as the gateway to the capital Kinshasa, Namibia has warned. Namibian President Sam Nujoma told reporters after a mini-summit with DRC President Laurent Kabila, Zimbabwe President Robert […]

A TRADE delegation from Gauteng led by Premier Mbhazima Shilowa has arrived in the US to establish joint ventures between local information technology companies and their US counterparts. According to the Gauteng Economic Development Agency (Geda), the aim is to increase access to US and other foreign markets for local companies. “It is not easy […]

HEALTH Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has acknowledged that MPs enjoy subsidised access to the anti-Aids drug AZT, which the state has decreed should not be given to HIV-infected people at public hospitals. The Sunday Times reported that the parliamentary medical aid scheme, which also serves provincial legislatures, pays R35_ 000 for anti-HIV therapy and provides AZT […]

BUCHIZYA MSETEKA AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday STRIKING miners at the world’s top platinum producer Anglo American Platinum (Angloplat) will march on the firm’s headquarters on Wednesday to press for higher wages, their union said. As the strike dragged into its 23rd day, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which is representing strikers at […]

SOUTH Africa’s Competition Tribunal has approved four outsourcing deals concluded by telecoms operator Telkom aimed at cutting its non-core activities ahead of a 2001 initial public offering. It said the deals, some of which had initially faced opposition from workers concerned about their jobs, were subject to a stay of retrenchments by all parties in […]

IVORY Coast’s junta leader, General Robert Guei, is said to be alive and well after rumours circulated in Abidjan that he had been involved in a serious road accident. Sources said three paramilitary gendarmes had died and a dozen were injured in a road accident after they had been on presidential security duty along a […]