HISTORY will be made on Thursday when Gill Marcus takes over as deputy governor of the Reserve Bank. Marcus will be the first woman in the country to occupy such a post within the bank. She succeeds Chris de Swardt who retired on Wednesday. She is reluctant to comment on any future policy shifts: “In […]

MPUMALANGA Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu has dismissed reports that he will be meeting with Public Protector Selby Baqwa on Friday to explain his public defence of lying as a political technique. Mahlangu’s new spokesperson, Sefako Nyaka, said the planned meeting on Friday was actually between a junior official from the premier’s office and representatives from the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Canberra | Thursday 4.30pm. RUGBY union superstar Jonah Lomu on Thursday dismissed suggestions he could be tempted to switch codes if he continues to be overlooked by the New Zealand All Blacks. Melbourne Storm rugby league side plan to cast their eye over Lomu when the New Zealand A side plays the Australian […]

THE two men accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing on Wednesday failed in their effort to persuade judges that a newspaper article was in danger of prejudicing their forthcoming trial. Lawyers acting for Abdel Basset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah had argued that a front page story in the Sunday Times a month […]

ZIMBABWEAN Vice-President Joshua Nkomo died on Thursday morning, state media report. State radio and Ziana news agency reported that the 83-year-old died in the early hours of Thursday at the Parirenyatwa hospital in Harare, where he was admitted several weeks ago suffering from prostate cancer.

A JOHANNESBURG High Court judge on Wednesday dismissed an application for an urgent interim interdict by two former Civil Co-operation Bureau agents who wanted the book “Dangerous Deceits” banned from being distributed or sold because it contained “defamatory” passages. The book, written by Frank Welsh and published both in South Africa and abroad, implicated the […]

MINING company Consolidated African Mines (CAM) Wednesday reported an attributable profit of R132,5 million for the past financial year. This came after a loss of R178,6 million for the nine months to March 1998, the company said in a statement. CAM owns 64% of JCI Gold and has shares in the prominent Western Areas and […]

TUESDAY, 1.00PM: SOUTH Africa and its Southern African Customs Union partners meet in Gaborone, Botswana on Tuesday in a bid to restart failed talks over a revamped customs union. The talks, initiated in 1994 by the South African government, collapsed after members failed to agree on the institutional framework and polices which would form the […]

NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed a 49-member government on Wednesday, in a key step to launching his political programme a month after taking office. As widely predicted, Obasanjo named former chief of defence staff retired general Theophilus Danjuma as defence minister and former central bank governor and agriculture minister Adamu Ciroma as finance minister. Northerner […]

NORTHERN PROVINCE premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi on Wednesday rejected calls by the opposition for a referendum in Bushbuckridge on whether the region’s provincial borders should be redrawn. Dismissing the United Democratic Movement call for a referendum as a “non starter”, Ramatlhodi told the legislature that overwhelming support for the African National Congress by voters during the […]