Staff Reporter

The Mail & Guardian, with Alec Hogg and the Moneyweb team, will launch a brand-new business section, Rands & Sense, to be published weekly in the M&G from March 9. Rands & Sense will bring M&G readers a business section anyone can understand, with insights from leading analysts. The section will be compiled and written […]

Paul Kirk The National Directorate of Public Prosecutions is close to completing a probe into allegedly corrupt practices involving the deputy mayor of Durban, councillor Logie Naidoo. This comes a week after the forensic investigative unit of the Durban municipality began a probe into Visvin Reddy the chair of the Durban unicity tender board and […]

THE Afrikaans community radio station Radio Pretoria has lost its broadcasting license and will have to close down soon. The executive chairman of Radio Pretoria, Mossie van den Berg, said the Independent Communications Authority of SA had rejected the station’s application for a temporary licence. Van den Berg said more than 500_000 “Boere-Afrikaners” listened to […]

Thuli Nhlapo The Doornkuil Farm south of Johannesburg that the African National Congress leased to the Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) Military Veterans’ Association is neglected. Except for few lean cows chewing long grass inside an electrified fence, there was little sign of life. A face-brick mansion on the property was empty. Peeping through the windows, we […]

David Beresford another country Afew years ago a water charge of more than R300 000 mysteriously appeared on my municipal services account. Living in a two-bedroom house with little more than a splash-pool by way of indulgence where water is concerned, I pointed out the obvious error to the municipal authority and forgot about it. […]

A land dispute with its roots in the days of King Cetshwayo is before the high court in KwaZulu-Natal Niki Moore ‘I don’t like being called coloured,” says Pat Dunn emphatically. “I am a human being first and a South African second.” Dunn is embroiled in a land claim dispute that takes up every waking […]

SEVEN of the 17 rare black rhinoceros in the world-famous Ngorongoro crater and six lions have died from unidentified causes. Several hundred other animals are believed to have died from lack of water during a prolonged drought in the area in northern Tanzania. An 11-member team is investigating the cause of death of the animals, […]

Marianne Merten The Human Rights Commission (HRC) wants the University of the Western Cape (UWC) to explain an across-the-board reduction of marks for final-year management students. The students’ marks for their labour relations course were reduced by the chair of the management department. HRC Western Cape coordinator Victor Southwell said provisional findings showed the reduction […]

As Thokoza residents who’d had their shacks demolished shivered in the rain, the new mayor of the area threw his second inauguration party Thuli Nhlapo It was raining last weekend when the Greater East Rand Metro mayor Bamvumile Vilakazi was inaugurated at a glamorous celebration at the Kopanong hotel in Benoni. In African culture, they […]

Fiona Macleod food It was during a bizarre encounter between some Gauteng hippie-vegan types and the red-meat-and-beer-boep toughs who belong to the Phalaborwa 4×4 Club that I recently came across an exciting range of vegetarian convenience foods. The Gauteng vegetarians/vegans, most of them members of South Africans Against Vivisection (Saav), were visiting up north for […]

RESCUE workers battling to evacuate 105_000 Mozambicans from rapidly rising floodwaters in the Zambezi River valley are being hamstrung by a lack of supplies to build refugee camps, while residents in endangered towns and villages are refusing to leave. Environment Minister John Kachamila has warned that towns such as Marromeu, Luabo and Mopeia on the […]

CANADIAN firm Tiomin Resources, which has been entangled in a $120m titanium mining tussle on the Kenyan coast, faces a second lawsuit to stop its proposed operations. Some 1_200 local peasants in Maumba-Nguluku village of the coastal Kwale district have filed writs seeking to block titanium mining in their locality. Lawyer Gikandi Ngibuini, who represents […]

A TENTH state in northern Nigeria has adopted strict Islamic law, or Sharia, banning the sale of alcohol and introducing severe punishments for a range of crimes, officials of the northern state of Bauchi said. Officials said the new legal code would apply only to Muslims and be used to try cases of alcohol use, […]

TUBERCULOSIS in Malawi has shot up massively from only 5_000 cases in 1995 to almost 30_000 last year. National TB Programme Manager Dr Felix Salaniponi says the lung disease currently kills 25 Malawians each day, and that the deaths were most likely linked to HIV and Aids. The twin epidemic of Aids and TB was […]

SOMALI faction leaders have called for a reconciliation conference that would include all Somali factions and regional administrations. The current Transitional Government (STG), the warlords said, should attend as one of the factions. Somali factions warlords Musa Sudi Yalahow, Hussein Mohamed Aidid and Osman Hassan Ali “Atto” announced that they had “definitely resolved” their differences, […]

A SCHOOLBOY has been jailed for eight years for setting alight an agricultural college in Mpumalanga. Sicelo Mthembu, 18, of Vosloorus in Gauteng, was in Grade 8 at Mathews Phosa College near Nelspruit when he set the school on fire after the college director reprimanded him in the dining hall for misbehaving. The school lost […]

ASSAAD ABBOUD, Cairo | Thursday AN Egyptian court has sentenced a Saudi princess to three years’ hard labour in her absence on for a million-dollar jewel theft, in yet another brush with the law for her Cairo-based family. Central Cairo’s Abul Ela correctional court announced that it had also handed three years’ hard labour to […]

THE US Export-Import Bank is ready to provide up to $250m in loans, guarantees and insurance to help Ghana acquire US-made medicine and equipment to combat HIV and AIDS. The agreement is part of a S1bn Ex-Im Bank program established last July to back Africa’s fight against HIV/AIDS. Ghanaian Health Minister Dr Richard Anane, who […]

EMSIE FERREIRA, Johannesburg | Thursday FIVE people have died at the hands of vigilantes in as many days in Johannesburgs townships as mob justice becomes an increasingly familiar sight in crime-weary South African communities. A newspaper picture published this week of a naked, dying man and an angry mob summed up the scale of the […]

MPUMALANGA education representative Peter Maminza has been replaced as a guest speaker on a radio talk show after he allegedly went on air drunk and outraged listeners. Maminza has been replaced by departmental head of communication Pat Zwane, on a half-hour educational show that is broadcast on Ligwalagwala FM in Nelspruit every Friday night. Maminza […]

SOUTH Africa will lose more than 300_000 of its schoolchildren to Aids in the next ten years, Mpumalanga education MEC Craig Padayachee has warned. “It is estimated that 300_000 learners at all schools and 30 000 in Mpumalanga will die in the next 10 years,” he said at the handover of new classrooms at Mvuso […]

TORTURE is “rife” in Egyptian police stations, says Amnesty International, warning that “no one is safe from harm”. Amnesty listed “electric shocks, beatings, whippings, suspension by the wrists or ankles, suspension in contorted positions from a horizontal pole, death threats and threats of rape or sexual abuse of the detainees or their female relatives,” as […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday THIS year’s South African wine harvest is set to be the smallest in more than a decade, even though exports have soared, particularly to the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia, say industry sources. The South African Wine Industry and Information Services (SAWIS) predicted that the harvest would, due to cool […]

BARREN soil, scorching sun and choking dust will be a thing of the past for 200 new families in Elukwatini, near Badplaas, when 400 trees are planted in their gardens this week. The project is spearheaded by Elukwatini Trees for Homes in Mpumalanga and is sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) […]

THE management of the pan-African carrier Air Afrique appears inflexible ahead of a renewable 24-hour strike over the planned layoff of nearly half the airline’s staff. Acting general manager Claude Bessec said that the new management, in place since January, could not indicate at present the modalities of payment to some 2 000 workers facing […]

GUMISAI MUTUME, Washington DC | Wednesday SOUTH Africa’s human rights scorecard has been blemished by the excessive use of force by security forces, political violence, overcrowded prisons and increasing vigilante activities, a United States government report has warned. The Country Report on Human Rights Practices, issued annually by the US State Department, said South Africa […]

THE pump price of petrol will go up by at least 7c/litre from March 7, says the government, and further fuel price increases can be expected in April when the latest fuel tax rises take effect. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel announced in the Budget last week that the petrol levy would be raised by 2.4c/litre […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Wednesday RED-FACED South African police have been forced into a humiliating apology after a mock hostage drama – which they reported as real – was broadcast to the world at large by unsuspecting local and international media. The incident has sparked outrage amongst the media, members of the public and even […]

Justin arenstein, Nelspruit | Wednesday MPUMALANGA has fast-tracked disciplinary hearings against four senior hospital managers who allegedly allowed a volunteer rape crisis group to distribute anti-Aids drugs to rape victims without written authorisation. Health department representative Lucky Molobela confirmed that the disciplinary hearing against Rob Ferreira hospital superintendent Dr Thys van Mollendorf, hospital manager David […]

COLONEL Eddy Kapend, a key aide to assassinated Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) president Laurent Kabila, has been arrested for “involvement” in his slaying, the French daily Le Monde reported. Kapend played a key role in the succession of the dead president, approving the choice of his son Joseph, 29, over several other contenders including […]

DUMISANE LUBISI, Pietersburg | Wednesday THE President of the Student Representative Council (SRC) at the University of the North, who has been at the institution since 1992 for a four-year B Juris law degree, is among 10 SRC members suing the institution for R1m for defamation for revealing that they owed more than R400_000 in […]