THURSDAY, 2.30PM The eceutive committee of the Northern Province government will follow the African National Congress line on border disputes in Bushbuckridge and Groblersdal, local government MEC John Dombo said on Thursday. If the proposal is accepted by the provincial legislature, it will mean that Bushbuckridge will remain in Northern Province, while Groblersdal will remain […]

THURSDAY, 11.30AM: SOUTH African seeds Dawn Kaiser and Bryony Joscelyne were both victorious in the women’s section of the Macmed World Masters squash championship in Johannesburg on Wednesday. Kaiser beat Barbara Sanderson of England in the 55-60 division, while Joscelyne did battle with Jenny Clarke of Australia in the 45-49 division, to win 10-8, 6-9,9-10, […]

INTERPOL ON LION CASE The investigation into lion hunting in South Africa, first exposed in the Mail & Guardian, has received a boost with the news that a team of Interpol agents will join SAPS detectives investigating the practice of hunting drugged or tame lions in enclosed areas. See M&G’s expos of canned lion hunting. […]

THURSDAY, 5.00PM UGANDAN President Yoweri Museveni, widely regarded as the key supporter of Laurent Kabila, has advised his protege not to let himself be stampeded into “unrealistic” early elections. Museveni, who has resisted elections in his own country, urged Kabila to first rehabilitate infrastructure, arrest the country’s runaway inflation, and then set up the infrastructure […]

THURSDAY, 8.30AM DELEGATES to the World Economic Forum in Harare called for a regional Southern African common market amid criticism from business delegates that the target date — eight years away — was far too slow. “No country can work on its own,” said keynote speaker Nelson Mandela. “The pressures of a global economy increasingly […]

THURSDAY, 10.30AM MONEY market players are expecting the Reserve Bank to engineer a “soft landing” for about $1-billion in poroceeds from the partial privatisation of parastatal telecoms corporation Telkom. The money is expected to enter the financial system from Thursday, and the Bank has promised to ease its impact on the money market. Without intervention, […]

THURSDAY, 5.00PM GHANA has expelled a senior United States diplomat for “activities unacceptable for a diplomat”. Nicolas Robertson, head of US Information Service in Accra, appears to have intervened in the trial of two independent newspaper editors, on charge for libel after accusing government officials of dealing in drugs to buy arms. The acting Ghanaian […]

THURSDAY, 2.30PM THOUSANDS of banking staff marched in Pretoria and on Parliament in Cape Town on Thursday in protest at the recent spate of bank robberies. During the last 10 months of 1996, there were 506 bank robberies in SA, 193 of them in Gauteng. There have already been over 50 bank robberies in Gauteng […]

THURSDAY, 2.30PM The moratorium on new police recruitment, in place since August 1994, has been suspended with immediate effect, Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi announced on Thursday. Mufamadi said an additional 5 250 new police officers and civilians will be appointed over the next three months, at a cost of R150-million. Mufamadi said the […]

The West owes the region a debt of support "not as a question of charity, but because we are entitled to it," says Mandela.