ALISTER BULL, Prague | Tuesday GRUDGING debt relief and stingy overseas aid mean poor nations struggle to make themselves heard on the global stage and initiatives to ease poverty have not cut the odds stacked against their fragile economies, says South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. Speaking on the eve of the IMF/World Bank’s annual […]

THE South African government is likely to offer incentives for people to hold onto shares in state telecoms firm Telkom when it is floated next year, Public Enterprises director general Sivi Gounden said. ”We are looking at loyalty bonuses for shareholders,” he said. ”It is a model we think will revolutionise the culture of savings […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Sunday IN the latest twist to a confusing series of claims and counter-claims between Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and police over a hand grenade attack on the party’s headquarters, a Harare policeman has appeared in court for his alleged involvement in the bombing. Lazarus Nkomo, who is said […]

ANC Women’s League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has denied newspaper reports claiming that a Chinese beer company is to sponsor her birthday party to the tune of R350_ 000 in a so-called “cash-for-contacts” deal. The Sunday Times said the “cash-for-contacts” deal by Tsingtao Beer was put together by a promotions company owned by Madikizela-Mandela’s daughter, Zinzi […]

AFP AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Baghdad | Monday IRAQI President Saddam Hussein has taken delivery of a copy of the Koran he ordered written in his own blood to thank God for escaping unscathed from his long political career. The special edition of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, took three years to finish and was […]

RESCUE workers are continuing to work around the clock in a bid to free two miners who have been trapped underground since Friday following a rockfall at the Kloof Gold mine outside Carltonville on the West Rand. A mine official said proto teams had not managed to make contact with the men and that the […]

SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki has joined leaders from ten other nations in the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), in the Togo capital, Lome to discuss the growing political tension in the Ivory Coast. Trouble in Ivory Coast began when its ruler, General Robert Guei, decided to run for office, after telling the nation in […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT AND AFP, Cape Town | Saturday A SOUTH African court has for the first time awarded a person symbolic compensation for the distress suffered after being forced from their home by the former apartheid regime. The Land Claims Court this week ordered that 75-year-old Ronald Hermanus, a coloured man, be paid R6 000 […]

ROSE-MARIE BRUBALLA AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday SOUTH AFRICA’S elite Scorpions crime-fighting unit has joined the hunt for a ship that may have brought a potentially disastrous livestock disease into the country, a government official said. The move comes as government officials fight to contain the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that could cost South […]

GRAVE robbers have dug up the bones of a former deputy minister of the apartheid regime to create a powerful “cure” for Aids, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. “All that is left of Hannes Rall, a deputy minister of transport in the apartheid government, are a few bones in a plastic bag at a police […]