BILLITON won an interim court order on Tuesday preventing workers from embarking on a planned strike at is Alusaf Hillside plant in Richards Bay,on Wednesday, SABC radio news reported. The order willdelay the strike until November 25 when the case will be heard. Billiton spokesman Mohammed Seedat said Billiton wants to resolve the problem through […]

SOUTH Africa’s World Cup squad are becoming video addicts. It was through repeated watching of videos that coach Nick Mallett came up with the strategy that enabled fly-half Jannie de Beer to kick a world record five drop goals as the Springboks downed England at the weekend. Mallett on Monday put his team through another […]

BUTTERWORTH, the former industrial capital of the Transkei crippled by service payment protests and a municipal workers strike last year, has now run out of water. Businesses, schools, homes and the hospital have been without water for a week, it was learned on Wednesday, after the town’s three municipal water pumps were reported “broken”. The […]

ASIAN midday spot gold was quoted lower on Tuesday from the opening price as the market looked for the price to test support at $295, traders said. Gold closed lower overnight in New York, hitting a three-and-a-half-week low that triggered stop-loss selling. Traders said gold’s drift lower in recent days is a correction from its […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday 8.00pm SOUTH Africa’s influential trade union federation Cosatu on Tuesday warned that the free trade deal with the European Union could worsen high unemployment levels. The 17-union Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) told three parliamentary committees that it was “concerned about tariff liberalisation exacerbating the job crisis […]

ZIMBABWE on Wednesday accused rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo of several ceasefire violations. The army said in a statement that late on Tuesday rebels “started closing in under the cover of mortar and artillery fire” on southern African forces at Ikela in Equatorial province. It reiterated that southern African forces supporting DRC President […]

ONE of the Free State’s main roads, the Ficksburg-Clocolan road, is in such a state of disrepair that it will probably be converted to a gravel road by the end of the year. Other roads in the province are to follow.

FORMER US Senior Open champion Simon Hobday will make a welcome return to the local golf scene when he tees it up in the Cullinan Senior Championship at the Cullinan Country Club on Thursday. Although Hobday should start favourite for the 54-hole Vodacom Senior Tour event he will face serious competition from a trio of […]

RUSSIA and Libya signed a deal on Tuesday for the construction of a branch of a major gas pipeline in the North African state. Under the $182-million contract between Russian firm Zarubezhneftegazstroi and Libya’s National Oil Corporation, the 117-kilometre section of the Khums-Tripoli pipeline will be completed in January 2001. It will be part of […]

NICOLE MORDANT, Johannesburg | Wednesday 7.00pm THE Reserve Bank said on Wednesday that a run on FBC Fidelity Bank, which followed South Africa’s largest corporate collapse, does not threaten the financial system and will not scare off investors. Deputy Reserve Bank Governor Timothy Thahane said that although the Bank took troubled FBC Fidelity Bank Holdings […]