OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, Cape Town | Thursday ATTEMPTS to bring South Africa’s black majority into the economic mainstream have failed and must be replaced by a new law to force the pace, says leading businessman Cyril Ramaphosa. “Black people remain at the periphery of the economy. They need access to funding and markets,” says […]

The opposition Movement for a Democratic Change (MDC) accused the Zimbabwean government of “harassment” and “intimidation” following a raid on its offices on Thursday morning. Zimbabwe police raided a number of MDC offices, ostensibly searching for illegal weapons. Paramilitary police armed with automatic weapons blocked the entrances to the MDC headquarters just outside Harare, the […]

Three Tutsi parties from Burundi agreed to sign a peace accord, mediator Nelson Mandela said after talks.

LABOUR’S Job Creation Trust Fund is ready to start spending R62 million collected from one-day salary donations collected by three major labour federations. The fund, created at the 1998 Presidential Job Summit, collected money from members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the National Council of Trade Unions and the Federation of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday LIGHT snow fell on Table Mountain on Wednesday night, a representative of the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company said on Thursday. The company’s operations supervisor, Sedick Sabra, said a light dusting of snow was still on the mountain top early on Thursday, but was rapidly melting. The last time […]

More than 100 dangerous awaiting-trial prisoners were erroneously released from Pollsmoor Prison in the Western Cape, the correctional services department confirmed.Murder, robbery, rape and arson suspects did not qualify for the government’s early release programme to bring down overcrowding in South Africa’s prisons. The government plans to release 11 000 awaiting-trial prisoners countrywide by Friday, […]

NAVY and police divers have found the bodies of two fishermen who drowned when their trawler sank off the west coast, joint taskforce spokesman Piet Paxton said. The Pokki M, a 65-ton fishing trawler with a crew of nine sank shortly before 4pm on Tuesday. The trawler was heading for home when she capsized and […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday SOUTH Africa has ranked 34th out of 90 countries in a Transparency International (TI) survey on perceptions of corruption. The 2000 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released Tuesday, showed that South Africa had almost retained its position since 1998 when it ranked 32nd out of 85 countries. The least corrupt country […]

Radio 702 will invite Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to appear on talk show host John Robbie’s show again. The African National Congress on Tuesday accepted 702 owner Primedia’s apology for the way Robbie’s interview with the Minister ended last week. Robbie told her he had never heard “such rubbish” and told her to “go away” […]

An opposition alliance in Mauritius appears headed for a landslide victory in the general elections according to early results released on Tuesday. With about one third of the votes counted, the alliance looks poised to sweep all 60 of the National Assembly seats being contested. The race is chiefly between an alliance of Prime Minister […]