Staff Reporter

Deon Potgieter boxing Jackie “Pressure Cooker” Gunguluza could be facing his Waterloo at the Graceland hotel in Secunda on Sunday. The veteran fighter will be attempting to win the national featherweight title a historic fourth time. At 35 this may be his last shot at the big time, and big time it will be. Not […]

Test cricket in Guyana, a country with a passion for politics, has had its volcanic moments John Young Guyana is the only one of the countries that the South African cricket team will be visiting in the next two months that is not a volcanic island. Politically, however, Guyana has experienced eruptions on a volcanic […]

Australia’s amateur had a transcending pre-eminence in the history of sport Frank Keating Some sporting pundit in the United States the other day tried to forecast the huge impact Tiger Woods looks sure to have on golf. All he could think of as a comparison for what Woods might be headed for was an historical […]

Khadija Magardie One of the most crucial ways of moni-toring the health of the nation is through mortality statistics. In a chapter on “Health status and determinants” in the South African Health Review, the authors argue that statistics need to be compiled more rapidly and the current disease notification system “needs attention”. The South African […]

Sophie Radice Body Language About 10 years ago I remember my mother telling me that she and another very good-looking friend in her early fifties had decided that they had reached the state of invisibility. I didn’t understand because at the time I was more concerned with different kinds of female invisibility, the kind where […]

Glenda Daniels and David Macfarlane A hefty R975-million is in the kitty for skills development, yet about half South Africa’s employers are not claiming grants to implement training. This emerged at a two-day Skills for Productive Citizenship conference last week that launched a skills development strategy in South Africa, which has a 40% unemployment rate. […]

Khadija Magardie Both legislators and the country’s anti-smoking lobby no doubt will welcome findings that tobacco use has dropped dramatically in South Africa. According to the latest South African Health Review, consumption of tobacco in South Africa “has fallen for eight consecutive years since 1991”. In the year 1998/1999 more than 30-billion cigarettes were released […]

A R5-million ‘donation’ from a United Kingdom armaments firm has not reached its intended target war veterans Paul Kirk Mystery surrounds the whereabouts of millions of rands donated by British Aerospace (BAe) to the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association (MKMVA) a few months before the company was named as the preferred bidder to supply jets […]

Barry Streek The Dutch government would continue supporting NGOs after it cut back on its development assistance to South Africa in 2004, the country’s Prime Minister, Wim Kok, said this week. It would continue current levels R750-million over five years but South Africa did not fit into Holland’s criteria for aid, which include levels set […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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) […]

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 […]

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 […]

OVER the next 50 years, the world’s poorest nations will triple in size – while its richest will shrink, a new UN study predicts. The world, 6.1bn people strong today, is anticipated to reach 9.3bn by 2050, the UN Population Division estimates. Nine of every 10 people will be living in a developing country, one […]