RIGHTWINGER Eugene Terre’Blanche will enjoy his last day of freedom on Sunday before starting a jail sentence for attempted murder on Monday afternoon. North West police served a notice of incarceration on him on Friday afternoon and he is to report to the Potchefstroom Magistrate’s Court before 3pm on Monday. Superintendent Louis Jacobs said Terre’Blanche […]
UN special rapporteur on human rights Roberto Garreton is to probe a series of massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Lebanon has asked Garreton to investigate the killings of 11 Lebanese nationals abducted and murdered in the hours following the assassination of president Laurent Kabila on January 16. But the main focus of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Bruce Whitfield The Investec chief investment strategist’s favourite financial services stocks are somewhat unusual. Market commentators on Moneyweb’s Classic Business radio show this year tended to pick leading banking shares in this sector, but Piet Viljoen’s picks break that mould. He argues that investors will be able to extract the most value from the separately […]
Nawaal Deane Finding the HIV/Aids policy guidelines launched by the Department of Health last November is like trying to find snow in the Kalahari. Coleen McIver, a family practitioner, discovered this when she asked the health department for copies in preparation for an international general practitioners’ conference being held in Durban in June and was […]
Mozambican authorities allegedly paid bail for the wayward child of the country’s president Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Allegations of a cover-up surround the arrest of Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano’s eldest son in South Africa on drug charges three weeks ago. Nhimpine Chissano was arrested and held by the South African police after he refused to […]
BARRY STREEK and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday THE state lottery had accumulated sales of more than R2bn by the end of last year, but only R4,1m has been paid out to 80 charities in emergency funding, Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin has disclosed. This represents just more than 1% of the money […]
Barry Streek Peacemaking in South Africa: A life in conflict resolution by HW van der Merwe (Tafelberg) This book was nearly not completed because at the end of 1999 HW van der Merwe was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Yet with the help of two friends, fellow Quaker Candy Malherbe and former Cape Times deputy editor […]
Jaspreet Kindra ‘We want Alec Erwin to come here!” screams Nolan Borman, a coffin-maker based at the Department of Trade and Industry-owned City Hive in Salisbury Street, Johannesburg. He is one of several tenants in arrears with Business Partners, a company mandated by the department to manage these complexes. Three of them were evicted on […]
Barry Streek The state lottery had accumulated sales of more than R2-billion at the end of last year, but only R4,1-million has been paid out to 80 charities in “emergency funding”, Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin has disclosed. This represents just more than 1% of the money available to charities from the total […]
JAN HENNOP, Johannesburg | Friday THE world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, who were given a bloody nose in the Pretoria High Court this week, say they have become scapegoats for the South African government’s own inability to treat people living with HIV/Aids. Mirryena Deeb, chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa (PMA), accused […]
Khadija Magardie Body Language A close friend of mine, being born, as she woefully puts it, “without flowing-in-the-wind, shampoo-ad locks”, has had a love-hate relationship with tubes of hair straightener since her teens. Of course, like the numerous women who still use skin-lightening creams, it is entirely her prerogative to use disguises to hide things; […]
Belinda Beresford One of the largest manufacturers of copycat drugs in the world kicked the issue of generic drugs into play this week by applying for a compulsory licence to import eight Aids drugs into South Africa. Cipla, a company based in India, on Wednesday formally requested compulsory licences on the anti-retrovirals in a letter […]
Jaspreet Kindra Banking on Change by Helena Dolny (Viking) Rainbow Nation revisited by Donald Woods (Andre Deutsch) So was there a concerted effort led from the top to remove anti-apartheid activist Helena Dolny from the helm of the Land Bank? And did Dolny, a lefty in her own right and the widow of the South […]
whipping boy Fort Wood, sire of sensational Horse Chestnut, has been easily the most inspirational force in the local breeding industry in recent years. The American-bred stallion has also produced a number of big-race winners and continues to spawn quality horses. Mike de Kock, who trained Horse Chestnut for the Oppenheimers, attacks with a fair […]
Marianne Merten Gang boss Chris “Ougat” Patterson, who once handed over the R14 500 monthly bond payments on his Plattekloof mansion in cash, has been forced into reduced circumstances. He and his family have returned to his modest Factreton, Cape Flats, house currently the subject of an investigation under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act. […]
Kathy Thersby The latest draft legislation on capital gains tax (CGT) was released last week, and the public have until March 12 to comment. The full draft legislation can be found at www.sars.gov.za under CGT. These are some of the most important changes to the first draft: l October 1 is the implementation date. l […]