MPUMALANGA farmer Willem Pretorius is to approach the Land Claims Court on Tuesday for an annulment of the expropriation notice served on him by the government last week for his Lydenburg farm, Boomplaats. Officially, however, the land became government property at midnight on Monday. Pretorius’ lawyer Tiaan van Dyk said documents would be handed in […]
THE group of 53 African states at the United Nations have publicly endorsed Secretary General Kofi Annan for a second term in office and asked him to declare his candidacy. Diplomats said Annan was so popular that if he decided to seek re-election before his five-year term expires on December 31, it would probably preclude […]
HERVE BAR, Goma | Monday UNITED Nations peacekeepers will begin deploying this week in rebel-held parts in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as fighters from several countries pull away from front-line positions under a 1999 ceasefire accord. 200 Uruguayan peacekeepers will take up positions in southeastern Kalemi, with a “first wave” […]
MOZAMBICAN police have arrested three prominent businessmen in connection with late last year’s murder of journalist Carlos Cardoso. Mamade Abdul Satar, Ayob Abdul Satar and Vicent Ramaya have also allegedly been linked to the 1999 attempted murder of a bank lawyer, Albano Silva, as he pursued the largest bank fraud in Mozambique’s history, involving about […]
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Monday MPUMALANGA’s chief spin-doctor, Joy Letlonkane, has been banned from Tsogo Sun’s Emnotweni Casino in Nelspruit after she was caught cheating. Letlonkane, who is chief representative and director of Mpumalanga’s communications department, was banned from the casino for six months just after Christmas when surveillance cameras caught her cheating at a […]
AN alleged “peeping Tom”, who made secret video recordings of a woman bathing in his Gordon’s Bay apartment and possibly broadcast them on the Internet, is to appear in the Strand Magistrate’s Court again. Fanie Terblanche, 28, faces charges of crimen injuria and is out on R10 000 bail. He was caught when a friend […]
A MENINGITIS epidemic that has raced through Burkina Faso since the beginning of this year has claimed 567 lives among the 3_226 people infected, according to a toll published by the west African country’s health ministry. A major meningitis outbreak in Burkina Faso killed about 4_000 people in 1996. The west African country is regularly […]
MPUMALANGA police are investigating allegations that mining giant, Anglo-American, unlawfully evicted a family from a farm in Dullstroom. Koos Shongwe, 30, a grandson of 82-year-old Marta Mthimunye who has lived at Roodekrans farm for more than 40 years, said Roodekrans (Pty) Ltd, of which Anglo-American is a shareholder, allegedly evicted Shongwe and his family without […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday THE first quarter 2001 inflation expectation survey by the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) had revealed a decline in inflation expectations, the bureau said on Friday. The bureau said the most recent decline in inflation expectations was significant, as inflation expectations could easily have risen. Although CPIX inflation increased […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday A LEADING South African lawyer says Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe failed to reassure an international jurists’ panel in a meeting last week of his commitment to the law. Advocate George Bizos, former President Nelson Mandela’s lawyer and a regular adviser to the South African government, said Mugabe refused to accept […]
THE driver of a tour bus involved in a accident in September 1999 on the Long Tom pass – in which 27 British tourists died – has been was found guilty of manslaughter in the Regional Court after admitting that he might have stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake pedal. Titus Dube and […]
THREE miners were killed and four injured in the third accident involving fatalities in the country’s mines in less than a week in South Africa. The accident occurred at AngloGold’s Savuka mine near Carletonville, 50km southwest of Johannesburg. The rockfall occurred 2 900m underground. According to the latest government statistics, 146 people were killed in […]
A CRIME syndicate of Sudanese businessmen and tribal warlords is behind big-time poaching and atrocities against local people in the Central African Republic, says an official enquiry. Investigators found that the poachers were responsible for “savage destruction” in the Bangassou forest, a region covering 1.6m hectares. Poachers are not only carrying out “wholesale and indiscriminate […]
MASS graves crammed with the remains of people believed “executed by elements of the security forces” between 1998 and 1999 have been discovered near the Congolese capital Brazzaville, a local rights group said. The independent Congolese Observers of Human Rights (OCDH) said the dead, found 80km south of Brazzaville, were the victims of “extra-judicial executions” […]
AN outbreak of bubonic plague in eastern Zambia has killed nine people in the past two weeks, a senior health official said. About 420 people had been treated for the disease. Four patients are seriously ill and have been hospitalised in eastern Zambia. The disease, which is spread by rats, has seriously affected the small […]
MORE than 10_000 villagers who recently fled their homes to escape fighting in Angola’s civil war now suffer from a lack of medicine and shelter, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). More than 5_000 people are living on the war-ravaged streets of Kuito, 600km southeast of Luanda, after fleeing […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday GENERAL Constand Viljoen, the leader of South Africa’s rightwing Freedom Front and the champion of self-rule for the white Afrikaner minority, is leaving politics in frustration at the way the ruling party dominates politics. In a brief address to parliament this week, Viljoen complained that South Africa’s democracy resembled […]
Photojournalist and documentary film-maker George Gittoes tells Alex Sudheim that not even his gory paintings of violent conflict can aptly describe the horror out there Australian artist George Gittoes is both a conundrum and an extraordinary synthesis of seemingly paradoxical forces. In his work and his life, Gittoes is simultaneously a modernist, a postmodernist, a […]
Dale T McKinley gives a personal account of a protest march against power cuts in Soweto Seventy-three-year-old pensioner Mapule Mathole* shares her four-roomed house in Klipspruit, Soweto, with her five grandchildren, all of whom are unemployed and depend on her R540 monthly pension. She has an Eskom bill for R40 000. Even though her electricity […]
Bruce Whitefield Dunlop Africa is considering shutting its manufacturing operation in Zimbabwe because it is becoming increasingly difficult to operate in that country. The company says it has no plans to close its distribution network of 20 branches that operate across the country, as there is still a huge demand for its products in Zimbabwe. […]
SOUTH Africa’s foreign direct investment (FDI) for 2000 shrank to R6.1bn ($775m) from R9.1bn the previous year, after a negative outflow in the fourth quarter, the Reserve Bank said this week. During the final three months of last year, FDI showed an outflow of R1.1bn versus an inflow 1.6bn in the third quarter, the bank […]
Neal Collins soccer Sounds great doesn’t it? The semifinals for this year’s FA Cup are Arsenal vs Spurs and Liverpool vs … er … Wycombe Wanderers. Yes, the world’s oldest knockout competition proved yet again that the old giant-killing twist remains a magic ingredient. While Tranmere battled gamely to lose 4-2 to Mersey rivals Liverpool, […]
movie of the week Author Hubert Selby Jnr is best known for his Last Exit to Brooklyn, a sombre collection of connected stories that was made into a very effective film by Ulrich Edel in 1989. Now Darren Aronofsky, who made the fascinating (that is, Pi, as in the ratio of a circle’s circumference to […]
Ebrahim Harvey left field Nothing depicts the ugly and brutal face of capitalism more than the court battle between this government and pharmaceutical companies over the right to import or locally produce cheaper drugs to combat the ravaging Aids epidemic. At stake is saving or prolonging the lives of millions of children and adults. Today, […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni A Tzaneen businessman has offered a R1 000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killers of a police dog and set off a mini-controversy in this Northern Province town. Adolf, a six-year-old Alsatian, was stabbed to death two weeks ago after its police handlers released it to trace […]
Cristina Odone Body Language At my all-girl high school in Washington DC, the most popular course on the curriculum was women’s studies. Twenty-five uniformed teenage girls sat in front of a (woman) teacher and learned that for years we had been victims of a pernicious white male culture that had robbed us of our rightful […]
Tim Wood Telkom executives are letting the market know in less than subtle ways that a public listing may not be a good idea in present circumstances. It’s misleading and talks to the wrong book and strategy. The concern is that listing in a poor market will cheat the monopoly out of some easy money. […]
Richard Calland and Alison Tilley A SECOND LOOK Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete was recently reported as saying that the majority of criminals are women. The report raised eyebrows and hackles, not surprisingly. The accuracy or otherwise of the statement should be easy to check, by reference to the Department of Justice’s records […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Take five scientists of various disciplines, dump them on a small uninhabited island and set them some survival tasks: among others, build a radio, work out the longitude and latitude of the place and manufacture an insect repellent. Use only those tools or implements that might be found in a long-deserted prison […]
Bruce Whitfield Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed Sanlam’s short-term insurance subsidiary, Santam, has compiled a short-list of replacements for managing director Leon Vermaak. Vermaak is moving to Sanlam as chief executive in just under two months, and his replacement at Santam must be identified by the beginning of May. Vermaak has been MD at Santam for just […]
Marianne Merten For the second time in less than a month the Cape High Court has handed down guilty verdicts in two brutal gang rapes and stabbings but only one teenaged girl survived to testify. Public attention focused on just the one case, although there are striking similarities: each girl was repeatedly raped, stabbed, had […]
As the Dance Umbrella reaches its climax, Jill Waterman looks at the main players centre stage After a highly successful week of South African and international performances, one can convincingly say that dance is alive and challenging but, sadly, still financially unwell. Audience support is encouraging and perhaps civil society is beginning to realise that […]