OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday CONVICTED killer Ferdi Barnard has confessed to murdering anti-apartheid lawyer David Webster outside his Johannesburg home in 1989 on orders from the shadowy Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB). Barnard told a Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty hearing that he conducted the assassination with the help of colleague Calla Botha on […]

FOUR southern African countries have joined forces against an international syndicate of smugglers that is costing their formal economies millions of rands every year. Customs officials from Swaziland, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe have agreed to work together to smash the syndicate, which smuggles a range of goods for sale at deflated prices in the […]

A HOME science experiment ended tragically when a teenage girl was electrocuted by a garden fence in Northern Province. Elizabeth Zitha, 14, of Giyani, touched the fence without knowing that it was wired to a wall plug in the house. A powerful electric current threw Zitha a few metres through the air and she was […]

REUTERS, Abidjan | Thursday IVORY Coast’s military ruler, General Robert Guei, has completed a cabinet reshuffle prompted by an alleged assassination attempt, promoting loyalists and sacking those marked as opponents. Guei’s move came as his military junta agreed to study a series of proposals put forward by African leaders to resolve the country’s political crisis, […]

POLICE have arrested a 39-year-old shopkeeper accused of setting alight four young boys, one of whom died from his injuries, after accusing them of stealing sweets. The man, who is also an advisor to the provincial education department, apparently fetched the boys from school and took them to his shop, where he locked them up […]

DIMENSION Data Plc is to take over US information technology group TimeBridge Technologies in a R972m cash deal in its fourth takeover in the US this year, business daily Sake-Beeld reported. The group says it will invest another R108m in TimeBridge to redeem R35m of debt and boost operating capital. Didata will pay R484.65m initially […]

Own Correspondent, Johannesburg | Thursday IN a ruling which could have major repercussions on labour policies, the Constitutional Court has ordered that a man denied employment by South African Airways because he was HIV positive be offered the job as a cabin attendant with immediate effect. Judge Sandile Ngcobo, who read extracts of the judgment, […]

ESKOM is to become a fully fledged company in the first quarter of next year in terms of a draft Bill debated in Parliament recently. Stakeholders have long been aware that Eskom will be converted from a commission to a company, but enabling legislation has been delayed because of union opposition based on fear of […]

THE former Sierra Leone rebel leader Foday Sankoh has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, a prison official said. Sankoh, who has been in custody since May, reportedly took ill some three weeks ago and his condition has been described as “critical”. Sankoh, who is believed to be around 70 years old, launched a bush war […]

CLUTCHING their meagre possessions and clinging to their mothers, five Ugandan children set foot on home soil years after rebels abducted their mothers and took them to Sudan. The mothers and children were the second group to arrive at Entebbe Airport this week following the Sudanese government’s promise at a conference in Canada earlier this […]