ZIMBABWE?S government hospital doctors launched an indefinite strike on Friday over non-payment of on-call allowances. ?We have withdrawn all services,” said Aspect Maunganidze, vice president of the Hospital Doctors Association. Health Minister Timothy Stamps was quoted by state television declaring the strike illegal, and adding if anyone died, the doctors would be held responsible. Maunganidze […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Ivory Coast | Saturday WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) director for Africa Ebrahim Mailick Samba on Friday said he personally favoured cheap generic drugs to fight the HIV/Aids pandemic. Ending a five-day fact-finding mission to the Ivory Coast, Samba said he backed the easy access to cheap medicines as “I am primarily a doctor […]
TWO Mozambicans were injured when a truck hit a landmine in flood-stricken central Mozambique on the road between the port city of Beira and the inland town of Caia, a United Nations official said on Friday. UN media coordinator Frances Christie said that the accident, which occurred on March 15, involved a truck belonging to […]
Own Correspondent, Johannesburg | Sunday A SOUTH African company called Strategic Digital Technologies, in Selby, Johannesburg, has, together with a Norwegian company called Scandec, manufactured what they say is the first machine capable of passively monitoring cellular telephone conversations, The Sunday Independent reports. Until now it has been possible to tap cellphone conversations, and apparently […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Saturday ZIMBABWES President Robert Mugabe on Friday scoffed at white farmers sincerity, who this week pledged to work with the government to resolve a land reform crisis. “Now they are saying ‘we want to negotiate with government, we want to work together with government’” Mugabe said in an address on state […]
ROWAN Atkinson, the British comic actor best known for his role as the accident-prone “Mr Bean” seized the controls when the pilot of his light aircraft fainted in the sky over Kenya, it was reported on Friday. Atkinson, 46, who does not know how to fly, kept the plane carrying his wife and two children […]
BENINS incumbent President Mathieu Kerekou was re-elected with more than 84% of the vote, the country’s autonomous electoral commission (CENA) announced on Saturday. Late Friday, challenger Bruno Amoussou, one of Kerekou’s cabinet ministers, conceded defeat, even before the CENA had tallied the final results of Thursday’s second-round run-off. Amoussou was the only candidate to run […]
NAMIBIAS largest low-cost housing provider, the National Housing Enterprise (NHE), has stopped paying out mortgage insurance to relatives of home buyers who die of Aids-related illnesses after its own insurance company, South Africas Fedsure, complained that it was processing too many Aids-related claims. This means that the family of the home buyer will lose the […]
THE rebel Congo Liberation Front (FLC) and Mai-Mai tribal militia leaders have agreed to set up a peacekeeping force to operate in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the FLC leader said. Jean-Pierre Bemba, a businessman who now leads one of the two main rebel groups which have been fighting the Kinshasa regime, said that […]
THE mighty Zambezi River has swelled further in Mozambique’s flood disaster, with the death toll rising to 81. The Natural Disaster Management Institute (INGC) said the flood situation persists in Mozambique as the Zambezi River, whose levels had started declining, was beginning to rise again due to rains. This year’s floods have affected 635 000 […]
PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday AUDITORS have recommended that the national office of the South African National Tuberculosis Association (Santa) be closed down following revelations that Dr Andrew Ratsela, the CEO of Santa, is paid a salary of R500_000 a year for working two days each month. Ratsela also had a Santa credit card with […]
PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday LUCRATIVE illegal casinos are operating openly in Durban under the protection of a secret agreement between the police, the Department of Justice and two of Durbans most notorious illegal casino owners. The deal makes a mockery of state attempts to claim that the suspended head of KwaZulu-Natals organised crime unit, […]
THE Zimbabwe government has granted permanent residence to Ethiopia’s former dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, who has been exiled in the country for nearly 10 years. Mengistu, whom Addis Ababa wants extradited to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity back home, now enjoys permanent residence in Zimbabwe along with seven members of his family. […]
ZAMBIAN Education Minister Godfrey Miyanda says he will not resign, despite mounting pressure for him to step down for opposing President Frederick Chiluba’s third term bid. Miyanda said he will not support calls for a third term because Chiluba personally told him in 1996 and 1997 that he had no intention of going for a […]
On the eve of the Oscars (and a strike) Salman Rushdie looks at the state of the cinematic art.
Matthew Krouse CD OFTHEWEEK Evaluating the quality of foreign music is a tough task. If you don’t know anything about Japanese music, for example, and you get to hear it, how do you know whether you’re in the presence of brilliance or mediocrity? Especially since Japanese vocal music, in particular, is full of strained notes […]
Ebrahim Harvey left field Are we beginning to see the emergence of a sinister, faceless and cowardly anti-democratic political reaction in our country? If recent death threats against Patricia de Lille, Judge Willem Heath and staff of e.tv arising out of the controversial arms deal are anything to go by, we do, indeed, face something […]
whipping boy It is estimated that about 5% of people who regularly bet on racehorses make a profit which means it is possible! The bad news is that it is not easy. It requires the ability to perform long hours of hard, meticulous work, an analytical mind, iron discipline and patience. The gambling industry depends […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION How refreshing to watch a television documentary that leaves you with a feeling of hope; in this case that the excesses of human craving can be met without permanent loss to the natural world. Sea horses have long been under siege and their numbers have become dangerously low. In this wise these […]
#David McKay Brian Gilbertson, chair of Billiton, collects clocks. Isn’t that odd as well as intriguing? Odd because Gilbertson is renowned in mining circles for the more outward shows of his material success: the ostentatious commuting to and from his Johannesburg office by helicopter, the Porsche apparently permanently on display in an underground bay at […]
THE people of the remote Richtersveld area near the Namibian border have lost the first round of their long legal battle against the state diamond company Alexkor to reclaim their land. The people of Richtersveld instituted an action in the Land Claims Court against Alexkor and the government in terms of the Restitution of Land […]
Howard Barrell The government plans to set up a White House-style presidential press corps to improve dramatically communications with the media and the South African public, President Thabo Mbeki announced this week. Mbeki said that he and the government were treating as a matter of urgency an improvement in the flow of information and perspectives […]
Life has not been all rosy for the decade-old sector, which boasts about 80 stations on air Thebe Mabanga and Jubie Matlou ‘There are many of us [refugees] living in the township. I feel that I am part of the community. For instance, more than 500 people turned up at my wedding in Nyanga township, […]
THE European Union says the presidential poll that returned Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni to power this month took place “normally”, but acknowledged reports of bad practice. Sweden, currently chairing the EU, said the community hailed “the efforts made by a national group of Ugandan associations which monitored the vote.? The Union, however, “is not unaware that […]
Bruce Whitfield Transport consulting firm Terrafin is probably going to have to negotiate its way out of an acquisition it made in 1999 if it’s to have any hope of restoring investor confidence. The company has come under renewed pressure this year following negative media reports about its empowerment strategy and its scheme to enable […]
After 10 Old Trafford years, the winger tells Daniel Taylor that his best is yet to come Ryan Giggs has a contract worth millions of pounds binding him to Manchester United, but he can still remember the days when the club that is now the richest in the world would not even give him a […]
Serjeant at the Bar Human Rights Day is a cause for considerable satisfaction among all South Africans. Forty-one years ago the massacre at Sharpeville occurred because we were governed by a system that preferred to kill opponents rather than permit dissent. The significance of Human Rights Day is that it personifies our change from a […]
Andy Capostagno rugby There are a number of truisms that are regularly trotted out when the Super 12 is in progress. There is no such thing as an easy game, beware the team that can win away from home, it’s about peaking in May and not in March, don’t get carried away with home wins. […]
BENIN?S convoluted and long-running polls finally veer to an end on Thursday with a second-round runoff pitting President Mathieu Kerekou against low-profile candidate Bruno Amoussou. Some three million voters are eligible to cast their ballot in the presidential elections, which have been marred by withdrawals of two prominent candidates who trailed Kerekou in the first […]
Peter Robinson cricket At least one school of thought about Test cricket holds that the only way to go about the business is to win your home series and cross your fingers and hope not to be beaten when you travel abroad. This view is not so much defeatist as pragmatic. Different conditions, different food, […]
The failure of the Proteas’ lower order is a worry despite the second-Test victory John Young The traditional virtues of South African cricket pulled the coals out of the fire in Port of Spain again and ignited the Proteas’ hopes of joining a very exclusive group of cricketers to win a Test series in the […]
Two leading congressional inquisitors into former US president Bill Clinton’s pardon of sanctions-buster Marc Rich also worked against the embargo Josey Ballenger The role played by fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich in supplying oil to South Africa’s apartheid government, violating international sanctions, has been buried in the furore over the pardon he was granted in […]