CLAIRE KEETON and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Beira | Monday MOZAMBIQUE remains on the brink of a major disaster from new flooding, the Red Cross has warned, as river levels continue to rise steadily as a result of steady rains and dams upstream releasing vast bodies of water. We could be on the brink of a major […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday THE government is investigating declaring a national emergency to fight Aids, which could speed up access to anti-Aids drugs as the government battles pharmaceutical giants over cheap medicines, the Sunday Times reports. In the Pretoria High Court this week, the government faced 39 of the world’s biggest drug producers as […]
CATHOLIC bishops meeting at the weekend in Nigeria’s capital Abuja have slammed the introduction of strict Islamic law in some northern states, describing it as irresponsible and unacceptable. Ten states in northern Nigeria have adopted or announced plans to introduce the Sharia, which includes punishment for drinking, gambling, prostitution and adultery. Some Christians have been […]
MADAGASCAR’S minister in charge of security was shot and injured by men wearing police uniforms who had been seeking to extort money from one of his friends, hospital sources said on Friday. Secretary of State for Public Security Azaly Ben Marofo, whose brief includes the police, was wounded late on Thursday in the stomach and […]
MPUMALANGA Health MEC Sibongile Manana appeared before a SA Human Rights Commission investigative hearing on Friday to explain why a boy suffered brain damage during a routine operation. The MEC was subpoenaed with Dr Abdullah Lubego, who operated on the boy, to attend the hearing after being accused of negligence. Zweli Methule, who was six […]
RUSSIAN armed forces have killed more than 10_000 Chechen rebels since they launched their intervention in the southern republic on October 1, 1999, military sources in the northern Caucasus said on Sunday. Anti-terrorist” operations, as Moscow terms its actions in Chechnya, have killed an estimated total of 10_720 rebels, the military news agency AVN quoted […]
CLAIRE KEETON, Mafambisse, Mozambique | Sunday A CYCLONE threatening Mozambique was no longer a danger by Saturday but the devastation of recent flooding was still causing havoc, officials said. “The threat of the cyclone has receded,” Colonel Hugh Paine from the South African National Defence Force said, indicating that his team of rescuers might leave […]
AN estimated 6.7 million abortions take place in India every year, mostly by unauthorised medical practitioners, an official of the Bangalore Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology said on Friday. “More than 80% of these abortions are unsafe,” Sheela Mane, secretary of the society said. “A fifth of the 80 00 maternal deaths that occur globally […]
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki says if he tried to prescribe to President Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean leader “would chase me away”. Mbeki told the Afrikaans-language daily Beeld that he would not support sanctions against the Mugabe government. Mbeki has been sharply criticised at home and abroad for his “quiet diplomacy” towards Mugabe in the […]
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has appealed to governments and private firms to lend helicopters to help Mozambique evacuate 50_O00 people threatened by floods. So far, 450_000 persons have been affected and 75 deaths attributed to the floods. Noting that water levels continue to rise in the Zambezi river basin, and a tropical storm is […]
RETAIL group Wooltru says headline earnings from continuing operations fell 20% to R151.6m in the six months to end-December 2000. Headline earnings per share fell 24% to 32.3 cents. The drop was caused mainly by start-up costs at the group’s business-to-consumer venture inthebag.co.za, losses at clothing chain Topics and the dilution of Wooltru’s holding in […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday MOBILE network infrastructure vendors are scrambling to submit bids in the race to build South Africa’s long-delayed third network, which is expected to earn the winner $300-800m. Groupings including Ericsson, Lucent, Motorola and Siemens say they will hand in bids – a revision of original tenders made almost a year […]
ONE passenger was killed and 80 injured when the train in which they were travelling slowed to avoid a suicidal man on the tracks and another train crashed into it outside Johannesburg on Friday, a rail representative said. “Two people died, the man and a passenger in the second last carriage of the first train. […]
AN Egyptian shepherd who was sleeping in the desert died when one of his sheep kicked the rifle cradled in his arms and set off the trigger, the state-owned MENA news agency reported. Detectives found that 20-year-old Mukhtar Yadim Fadl had fallen asleep among his flock in the Sidi Barrani region of Egypt’s western desert […]
MEN had better stop complaining about women drivers. In the land of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and no speed limit autobahns, it’s women who are better in the driver’s seat, says Germany’s Federal Statistics Office. In 1999 there were 225_100 accidents involving women drivers compared with 303_200 for men, while 2_119 women and 5_651 men died. Only […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Saturday KEY testimony to the Margo commission of investigation into the Helderberg air crash of 1987 – in the form of unscrambled flight tapes – is incompatible with new evidence recently acquired with the help of the American FBI, Beeld newspaper reports. The controversial developments in the Helderberg probe have been […]
A CENTRAL African journalist has been freed from jail, three days after being jailed for publishing a survey in his human rights journal in which most respondents said they wanted the country’s president to resign. Aboukary Tembeley walked free thanks to a pardon from President Ange-Felix Patasse, after having been convicted to a two-month sentence […]
A WOMAN was killed and at least six other workers injured in an explosion at an ammunition and military products factory just outside Cape Town. The explosion rocked the Swartklip Products factory – which belongs to arms manufacturer Denel – in the propellant hopper of a shot shell loading machine. – AFP
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kabul | Saturday AFGHANISTANS opposition said on Friday the ruling Taliban have destroyed the two ancient Bamiyan Buddha statues in central Afghanistan, despite worldwide pleas to save them. Mohammad Ashraf Nadeem, a representative for the opposition led by commander Ahmad Shah Masood, said “the Taliban dynamited both of the statues and they are […]
Glenda Daniels A major shift is happening in South African politics as white workers flock to sign up for union membership. Are class alliances superseding race a Trotskyist dream come true? Is expedience at work as jobs are lost in thousands? Has political consciousness been raised? Or are white apolitical unions mushrooming because they can’t […]
David Macfarlane and Glenda Daniels The widely expected appointment of a woman as the next vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand was announced this week but it is not Professor Leila Patel, the current deputy vice-chancellor. Instead, the selection committee this week recommended Irish candidate Professor Norma Reid. The university senate and the council […]
Barry Streek South Africa should introduce a food voucher scheme to ensure low-paid workers and their families can use smart cards to buy food apart from their cash earnings the Women’s Development Bank (WDB) has urged. Food vouchers could ensure food security in a country where 73% of all households receive monthly incomes of less […]
Guyana is one of the few places in the West Indies where fast bowlers are not always in the ascendancy John Young One of Guyana’s nicknames is “Mudland”. The pitch at the Bourda Ground in Georgetown, where the Test series begins on Friday, is nearly a metre below sea level. They get a lot of […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION When it comes to television documentaries there seems to be a peculiarly British disease, rampant among directors particularly at the BBC. It is a pathological inability to leave well enough alone. In a recent BBC Panorama programme the subject was the spectacular cock-up that constitutes the current British railway system. After last […]
David McKay Inside mining Anglo Platinum, the world’s largest platinum group metal (pgm) producer, expects the pgm market to remain stable despite significant increases in production. Anglo Platinum, for one, is building yearly production to 3,5-million ounces by 2005, a growth in that company’s output of about three-quarters. The increasing use of pgm in autocatalysis […]
Nawaal Deane South Africa’s newest editor marked her first week running one of the country’s most prestigious financial publications with a thunderous attack on her management about editorial independence. Caroline Southey, who took over the helm of the Financial Mail (FM) last week, found herself in disagreement with her employers over her authority. BDFM, the […]
David Le Page Tiego Moseneke, CEO of empowerment company New Diamond Corporation, does not concur with some of the more severe criticisms of the Mineral Development Bill. He feels the provisions for security of tenure, for example, are adequate. “Once you are at mining stage, the Bill countenances the granting of 25-year leases that’s as […]
Key features of the National Plan for Higher Education include: l reducing the number of institutions; l eliminating duplication of programmes offered by institutions in the same region; l establishing a single distance education provider by merging Unisa, Technikon South Africa and Vista University’s distance education centre; l merging Vista’s contact tuition campuses with other […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo The African Credit Bank has launched a money school to empower its clients on consumer issues relating to the financial market. The bank, which recently repositioned itself as a credit bank to cater for the lower end of the market, identified consumer education as one of its key corporate strategies to meet the […]
To mark International Women’s Day, a special Court of Women heard moving accounts of hardship from women displaced by war Marianne Merten ‘My husband was an ex-soldier and in my country [with the coming to power of a new government] ex-soldiers were pursued [for political reasons],” explains refugee Susan Matata. Matata, who comes from a […]
Sipho Seepe no blows barred Education has tended, throughout history, to serve the interests and objectives of political, cultural and economic systems. In South Africa education was once an instrument that divided people racially and ethnically. This Verwoerdian prescription became the bedrock that was to direct educational policies for 40 years of apartheid rule. The […]
Madoda David Mabunda right to reply The report “Kruger National Park R36m in the red” (March 2 to 8) warrants setting the record straight. The memorandum on “Drastic measures to curb non-essential expenditure” sent to 300 cost-centre supervisors and managers was an open internal management tool rather than a secret classified information document hidden in […]