OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday NEW evidence linking a major German multinational and a black empowerment company has emerged in the continuing controversy surrounding South Africa’s R43-m arms deal and government chief whip Tony Yengeni. Screened on e-tv national news, the unsigned document is said to show that German company Thyssen would pay Futuristic […]
AMERICAN authorities launched a massive public hunt on Sunday to kill off African gemsbok that are interfering with missile activities and threatening the natural environment in the state of New Mexico. The animals stem from about 100 gemsbok that were taken from Botswana’s Kalahari Desert in the 60s and 70s to create a big game […]
A COURT in the Kenyan coastal town of Kilifi has sentenced a man to three years in jail for marrying off his 10-year-old daughter to an elderly neighbour, judicial sources said on Sunday. Kenga Ngombo, a father of six, gave away the schoolgirl to the 70-year-old neighbour to settle a 6 000 shilling ($78) debt […]
EGYPTS leading Muslim clerics have banned women from acting as surrogate mothers or being impregnated by the sperm of deceased husbands, Egypt’s state-run MENA news agency reported on Sunday. Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s highest authority, and other clerics on Saturday issued a fatwa (decree) against such practices, saying they violate the […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday A MASSIVE split is looming within the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) after revelations of a plan by the partys former Democratic Party caucus to sideline DA deputy and former New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk. The letter, by top party strategist Ryan Coetzee to DA leader Tony Leon, […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Gaborone | Monday SOUTH African convicted murderer Mariette Bosch has been hanged in Botswana, Deputy Commissioner of Prisons Herman Kau told AFP in Gaborone on Monday. “Mariette Bosch was hanged Saturday morning,” Kau said. Joseph Molebatsi, police commissioner in the Botswanan president’s office, confirmed she was executed in the early hours of Saturday […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Gaborone | Monday SOUTH African convicted murderer Mariette Bosch has been hanged in Botswana, Deputy Commissioner of Prisons Herman Kau told AFP in Gaborone on Monday. “Mariette Bosch was hanged Saturday morning,” Kau said, contradicting a report from a South African official. Foreign Affairs representative Basetsane Thokoane said on Monday morning: “The lady […]
AMNESTY International has called on German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and President Johannes Rau to bring up the issue of thousands of missing people in Algeria when Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika visits Berlin on Monday and Tuesday. The German branch of Amnesty said there are more than 4_000 people missing since 1992 and “it is to […]
AT least 13 people were killed when two buses collided and plunged into a river near the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi on Sunday, state-run radio reported. It said the bus collided while crossing a bridge over river Sabaki at around 4:00 pm. Eleven bodies had been recovered from the river by dusk on Sunday […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni has come out fighting after a week of political drama and mud-slinging over a luxury 4×4 and a house he owns which he didn’t declare in parliament’s register of members’ assets, the News24 web site reports. “Whatever happens, there’ll be blood on the floor,” the […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Sunday KWAZULU-Natal’s Social Welfare and Population Development MEC Prince Gideon Zulu spent almost a third of the year between November 1999 and November 2000 at suites in Durban’s plush Royal Hotel, according to a report in the Sunday Times. Zulu’s representative, Mike Gumede, confirmed the figures were correct. He said Zulu […]
BRITAIN should re-use old graves to create more space and raise more cash for overcrowded, run-down graveyards, a report by members of parliament said. Authorities have let cemeteries get in such a state as to “shame all society” and if the public are to have affordable, accessible burial there is no alternative but to dig […]
THE auditor-general Shauket Fakie is investigating how the wife of African National Congress chief-whip Tony Yengeni, came to acquire her luxury Mercedes Benz, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. This comes a week after disclosures that Yengeni owned a Mercedes Benz ML320 4×4 which had been ordered as a staff car by a company which benefited […]
THE listing on the JSE Securities Exchange of the Airports Company of South Africa (Acsa) has been postponed for at least another three years, according to Transport Minister Dullah Omar. He said this had been agreed to by Acsa’s strategic equity partner, Aeroporti Di Roma (ADR), which owns 20% of Acsa. Reasons for the delay […]
SOUTH Africa’s youngest surviving crime victim, Courtney Ellerbeck, turned one on Friday, SABC radio news reported. Courtney became a crime statistic while still in the womb. Her mother, Leslie-Ann Ellerbeck, was shot in the stomach during an attempted hijacking in Boksburg and underwent caesarean surgery. The baby had emergency surgery a few days later after […]
MALAWI?S main opposition leader Gwanda Chakuamba has accused the government of fabricating a coup plot as an excuse to crack down on political opponents. Intelligence reports gathered by the opposition showed the government fingered Sudi Sulaimana and Colvin Kaumira in the phony coup plot to implicate the opposition, Chakuamba said. The two were among nine […]
TWO Tanzanian nationals accused of mounting a series of attacks on tourists in southwestern Kenya’s Maasai Mara Game Reserve nearly two years ago have been sentenced to hang by a Narok court. Saikara ole Kisusua, 36, and Kamakoru Suele, 25, were convicted on 10 counts of robbery with violence by Narok Senior Resident Magistrate Thomas […]
SIX South African companies are among 12 prospective core investors in four Nigerian tourism and hospitality sector enterprises. Two South African firms – Reliance Estates and Shelterpoint Properties/Protea – have expressed their interest along with Hans Gremlin Nigeria Limited in Capital Hotels, based in Abuja. Reliance Estates/Legacy Hotels and Stallion Property/Southern Sun Interest have also […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday A REPORT which recommends the formation of a Commission for Gender Equality failed to be accepted by the National Assembly this week because the African National Congress majority did not muster the required number of votes. All opposition parties voted against the report, charging that the proposed commission was […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Midrand | Friday FARM killers are being paid and trained in an orchestrated onslaught on the farming community – which includes an instruction video on how to carry out attacks – agricultural bodies suggested this week. The instruction video was allegedly found in the possession of six farm attack suspects, said Werner Weber […]
THE first day on the beat for the new Johannesburg metropolitan police force started on a bad note when three of the new officers reportedly “brutally assaulted a 28-year-old motorcyclist while his hands were cuffed behind his back”, Beeld newspaper reports. Eyewitnesses to the incident in Anderson Street in the city centre on Friday morning […]
THE medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has suspended operations in Mogadishu after an attack on its compound that left at least 12 Somalis dead and life-saving equipment looted. Four western United Nations workers were still in the hands of militiamen in the Somali capital as a result of the incident, which MSF described […]
Los angeles – Actress and fitness pitchwoman Suzanne Somers says she is being treated for breast cancer and is undergoing homeopathic treatment against the will of her doctors.
Barry Streek South Africans need to move beyond analysis, complaints and blame, and into united action to make a difference to the lives of the poorest people, Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya told a national consultative conference attended by MECs for social development and representatives of the non-government sector. Skweyiya’s remarks were made on […]
Cornelius Thomas Although jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin has nine albums to her credit and has recorded with Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn and Buster Williams, she is largely unknown in South Africa. For jazz connoisseurs who wish to know Benjamin better, though, help has arrived in the form a book, Sathima Bea Benjamin: Embracing Jazz. […]
Former KZN ‘warlord’ Thomas Shabalala’s tryst with tragedy is helping break the stigma attached to Aids Jaspreet Kindra ‘She had full-blown Aids. She was very ill one day her brother was carrying her out of the house to rush her to the hospital. He slipped, fell and injured his head. Both of them died on […]
South African rugby can only be the winner as the teams riding high on the log clash Andy Capostagno Last Saturday Rudolph Straeuli smiled. It is not that the Sharks coach is unaccustomed to smiling indeed in person and away from the limelight he can be jolly and self-deprecating it is just that he takes […]
The world is agreed. From Beijing to Berlin, London to Tokyo, Moscow to Washington, and Singapore to Buenos Aires, one condition above all others is seen as necessary for African prosperity. It is the success of South Africa. That is to say, the success of the current African National Congress government. The reasons for this […]
Barry Streek The Democratic Alliance unveiled its plans recently to “corporatise” Cape Town’s water and sanitation, electricity and solid waste disposal services in three separate units but stopped short of involving the private sector, as African National Congress-controlled Johannesburg has done with its water services. At a press conference DA councillor David Erleigh refused to […]
Neal Collins soccer Glenn Hoddle officially left Southampton on Wednesday, bound for Tottenham Hotspur, his alleged spiritual home. Great timing. On Saturday, they’ve got Arsenal at Highbury in the Premiership’s traditionally murderous north London derby. Eight days later, they’ll all trek up the M1 motorway to Manchester, for an FA Cup semi-final at Old Trafford […]
Grant Shimmin athletics It hasn’t been a good year for the organisers of the Engen Grand Prix Summer Series, generally speaking, but things could definitely get better tonight at Coetzenburg in Stellenbosch when the Grand Prix final takes place. Last year Michael Johnson, described by commentator Paul Dickenson as “the greatest athlete ever to walk […]
Parliament’s gender watchdog spends money on a jazz concert while rural women get no help Marianne Merten For more than a year gender activist Joanie Fredericks has knocked on Parliament’s doors trying to raise funds for sexually abused women in the rural Western Cape. “We’ve been trying for more than a year to establish some […]