MPUMALANGA’s sacked deputy speaker, Cynthia Maropeng, and three co-accused admitted to using almost R1-million in State funds to buy themselves houses and other personal items on Wednesday. Maropeng, legislature secretary Wilson Ngwenya, legislature finance director Jomo Siboza and former legislature secretary Alfred Mahlangu signed the admissions as part of a bid to speed up their […]

FOURTEEN people were killed and 11 were injured when a lorry packed with people and produce plunged off a bridge into a river near Calulo in Angola’s Cuanza-Sul province, LUSA news agency reported on Thursday. Most of the casualties in the Luime river accident were travelling traders on their way to the town of Dondo […]

THE cash-strapped government of Lesotho on Wednesday finalised the sale of 80% of its government vehicle pool to a South African company in the kingdom’s latest privatisation venture. The government’s R80-million deal with Imperial Fleet Services was signed in the kingdom’s capital Maseru. The sale includes the transfer of about 1200 vehicles which will now […]

DEMOCRATIC Party Chief Whip Douglas Gibson said on Friday that statements to the effect that the DP will support the draft Firearms Control Bill in its present form are unmandated and factually incorrect. It was reported earlier this week that the party had decided to support the legislation. Gibson said in a statement that the […]

Mail & Guardian reporter Get those stories out of your bottom drawer – or start writing now! The South African Internet literary journal, LitNet, which has been a notable success in Afrikaans and is now expanding into English, is running an online creative writing workshop and is calling for stories. WriteAgain, sponsored by Penguin publishers […]

David Beresford Another Country South Africa is about to ban discrimination, which, considering this country’s track record in the 20th century and previously, seems a reasonable thing to do. In fact, it is to be outlawed from February 4 2000. This can be stated with the certainty of constitutional edict, the founding document of our […]

In the week the SABC showed graphic footage of the carnage in Sierra Leone, a Port Elizabeth businessman has been accused of fuelling the civil war in that country. Peter Dickson reports A Canadian probe into the diamond trade in Sierra Leone has accused a controversial Port Elizabeth businessman of peddling weapons and mercenaries in […]

system? Serjeant at the bar Last week the British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, found himself under the political cosh. He introduced a Bill to restrict the right to trial by jury such that in a range of cases the choice of a jury trial would be given to the presiding magistrate. The Bill passed through […]

We can only estimate, but we think the slaves may number 100E000. We have freed 20E000 so far. Some slave masters have hundreds of slaves – chattel slaves. They are kept like cattle. Others are kept in what the government euphemistically calls peace camps. International aid organisations are aware of these camps. They send food […]

TANZANIAN Defence Minister Edgar Majogo left Dar es Salaam on Friday for talks in the Burundian capital Saturday on border security, Radio Tanzania reported in a broadcast monitored in Nairobi. The radio said Majogo was accompanied by top government and military officials. The team is also expected to discuss the ongoing conflict in Burundi between […]