WEDNESDAY, 4.00PM DEMOCRATIC Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila has deployed troops in Goma in the northeast of the former Zaire to smother seething unrest which threatens to spill over into open conflict. Clashes between Kabila’s army and the well-armed Tutsis who helped it topple the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko last May are costing […]

WEDNESDAY, 5.00PM PUBLIC service workers can expect salary adjustments backdated to July 1 after the Public and Allied Workers Union (Pawusa) and government negotiators reached agreement in Pretoria this week. The agreement comes after the government made available a further R169,3-million for additional salary increases and brings the salary ranges of teachers and police in […]

TUESDAY, 2.00PM INVESTORS took a more cautious stance on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on Monday, keeping an eye on international trends and biding their time until the futures close-out later this week. “It was a sleepy market … There is no direction at all … and although the futures guys were active, there was nothing […]

TUESDAY, 3.30PM POLICE early on Tuesday arrested National Consultative Forum leader Sifiso Nkabinde and 17 of his supporters in connection with violence in the Richmond area in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands over the past few months. Nkabinde was arrested when a 500-strong contingent of police and soldiers raided his home in Mogoda near Richmond at dawn. […]

TUESDAY, 1.00PM LIFE assurance group Old Mutual lifted total assets under management by 19% to R235,9-billion in the year to June, according to group MD Gerhard van Niekerk. The increase translates into a 23,9% increase in the excess of assets over liabilities to R29,3-billion, which will be paid to policy holders when Old Mutual demutualises […]

TUESDAY, 1.00PM SAPPI Limited has become the world’s largest producer of coated wood-free paper by acquiring a 91,5% stake in KNP Leykam, Europe’s leading producer of coated wood-free paper and lightweight coated paper.In a R3,5-billion deal with Dutch group NV Koninklijke KNP BT, Sappi will hold a 26% market share in the US coated wood-free […]

TUESDAY, 1.00PM TELKOM’s legal woes with the South African Callback Association (Sacba) operators have become even more entangled, with allegations that the telecoms parastatal has approached corporates in South Africa to use a callback service run by Telkom itself. A corporate source claims that Telkom is considering setting up a callback facility through a third […]

TUESDAY, 1.00PM SOME of South Africa’s 50 central farm co-operatives are likely to convert into companies as storage and other contracts provided by agricultural control boards are phased out by January. In a scheme similar to the the conversion of KWV into a company by December, the registrar of co-operatives, Louis du Toit, says that […]

TUESDAY, 12.30PM: OLYMPIC double gold medallist Peny Heyns, who is back in South Africa for a month, said the pressure of being an Olympic medallist has made her lose focus and she will have to make changes to her training methods. “You get involved in a lot of other things like sponsorships and so on,” […]