Staff Reporter

David Macfarlane About 73% of grade seven learners don’t know what apartheid was, 95% know nothing about the 1994 elections and 98% are unaware of township grievances under the apartheid regime. Yet outcomes-based education (OBE) the teaching and learning philosophy that underpins South Africa’s new Curriculum 2005 for schools also produces results at least as […]

It’s a weekend of celebration as local jazz musicians bring out four new discs Thebe Mabanga In the past week, it has been difficult to talk to anyone in the music industry without mentioning the name Moses Taiwa Molelekwa. His tragic death has cast a haunting shadow on the scene. This weekend four artists and […]

Metrorail’s continual delays have infuriated passengers, writes Suzan Chala On Monday I saw a woman knocked down by a train at Longdale station in Johannesburg. She was flung across the railway line, covered with blood. Part of her dress was left hanging on the front of the train. The nightmare started in Naledi when about […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Residents of Johannesburg and its surrounding suburban flatlands are experiencing an invasion of massive rats and cockroaches thriving in the city’s warm conditions and because of a lack of a proper pest-control strategy. The Johannesburg Metropolitan Council confirmed this week that the city of gold and suburbs of Yeoville, Jeppe, Berea […]

John Pilger crossfire Kevin Toolis’s article last week about Peter Hain, “Hain’s world”, contributed to the promotion of Hain as South Africa’s “son of the soil” and bold liberal voice in Tony Blair’s government, but left much unsaid. These days Hain is seen very differently in Britain from the portrait painted by Toolis, who failed […]

A YOUNG boy and his grandmother had their left legs blown off in separate incidents after stepping on anti-personnel landmines at Halili village near Rundu in Namibia. The woman said she heard a blast, followed by her grandson’s screams. While trying to reach him by another footpath she stepped on another landmine.

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday UNITED States pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is to start distributing the drug Diflucan free to HIV and Aids patients at government hospitals and clinics in the next few weeks, the health department and Pfizer said this week. The department removed the final stumbling block to the distribution by approving Diflucan for […]

VICTIMS of repression under Chad’s former president Hissene Habre have applauded legal attempts in Senegal to reinstate torture and murder charges against the ex-dictator, who is now in exile in Senegal. An appeals court in Dakar said it would rule on March 6 on whether Habre, who ruled the north-central African nation from 1982 to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday SOUTH African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has given billions of rand to the poor and to middle income earners in tax reforms in a bittersweet budget designed to kickstart the rural economy and create much-needed jobs. Manuel said an ambitious privatisation plan would go ahead, and announced targetted tax […]

ANNIE THOMAS, Bamako | Wednesday THE heads of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), flanked by 10 African leaders, have emerged from two days of talks claiming to have forged a radical new approach to the continent’s chronic poverty. The talks, held in the impoverished west African state of Mali, led to […]

FLIPPIE van Rooyen, 39, the son of paedophile Gert van Rooyen, has been sentenced to six years in jail by the Pretoria Regional Court on a consolidated charge of perjury. Van Rooyen made conflicting statements to police between March 1995 and November 1999 about the fate of five missing schoolgirls, linked to his father and […]

EGYPTIAN authorities have seized sandwiches and oriental pastries filled with 1 100 Viagra anti-impotence pills from the luggage of two Syrians. Viagra has been legal in Egypt since December 1999 and can only be sold by prescription, but black-market dealers sell it at exorbitant prices. Customs officials found 600 pills in 12 sandwiches brought in […]

A UN official responsible for monitoring basic legal freedoms has denounced threats made against judges and their families in Zimbabwe. “Harassment, intimidation, attacks, and threats against an independent judiciary and its judges will in fact be seen as direct assault on the rule of law,” said Dato’Param Cumaraswamy, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the […]

A WAR veteran and MP working on the election campaign of the leading challenger to President Yoweri Museveni has been released a day after his arrest by military intelligence officers. An army spokesman confirmed the release of Major Okwir Rabwoni, who was dragged out of a VIP lounge in Entebbe international airport for questioning by […]

RESIDENTS in Johannesburgs Soweto township killed two men and a teenager, and injured a woman, for stealing chairs from a church. Police said residents from Pimville caught the four as they were trying to take away the chairs. The victims appeared to have been hit by bricks, whips and stones. Their naked bodies were later […]

SA PRISONERS’ Organisation for Human Rights president Golden Miles Bhudu has been suspended following allegations that he misspent more than R200 000 in donor funds intended for an HIV/Aids programme at the Johannesburg Prison. Bhudu is apparently refusing to heed the order, and the organisation’s board of trustees is now threatening to seek a court […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Nairobi | Thursday ALTHOUGH there are now government-sponsored human rights commissions in nearly half the countries in Africa, the basic rights of African citizens are not generally better protected, says Human Rights Watch. In 1989 the only human rights commission was in Togo. Today there are 22, the New York-based group said in […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe marked his 77th birthday with an astonishing attack on the opposition, Britain and foreign-owned oil companies – who he blames for crippling the economy – and says he will retire only when his old white opponents are “thoroughly beaten”. In an interview on state television, Mugabe […]

POLICE in Tanzania have arrested two people in connection with a laboratory allegedly producing mandrax and heroin in a beachside house on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. The police found processed tablets, a weighing scale, 18 types of raw materials such as starch, galalin and lactone, packed in polythene bags and in large paper […]

A quasi-political organisation and public holidays set up under Ghana’s former president, Jerry Rawlings, have been banned for the military. Defence Minister Kwame Addo Kufuor said soldiers were now banned from participating in the Associations of Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (ACDR), which has branches in the private and public sector and, up […]

THE European Union (EU) has placed a three-month ban on all beef imports from Swaziland following the kingdom’s failure to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. EU resident advisor Aloys Lorkeers said the ban would also allow European agricultural experts to monitor Swazi cattle herds for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), popularly known as mad cow […]

ANGOLAN Defence Minister Kundi Payama is to reveal in parliament details of illegal arms sales to the country in 1993-1994 from French companies. French judges are currently investigating Brenco France, the arms trading company whose president Pierre Falcone is in prison on possible charges of having organised shipments of arms to Angola worth $500m with […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Wednesday THE leader of South Africa’s biggest trade union federation, Cosatu, says the South African government’s policy of “soft diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe has failed. “Just talking softly, saying please to President Robert Mugabe has not helped,” Cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions) secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi told the independent eTV […]

AT least 12 African heads of state are expected to attend next week’s summit on the Burundi peace process in Tanzania’s northern town of Arusha. The summit is expected to settle outstanding issues in efforts to bring peace to Burundi after more than seven years of war, including the leadership of a transitional government and […]

EGYPT is in the midst of a drive costing $2bn to revamp its old airports and build new ones as it anticipates millions more tourists in the next few years. When the current program is completed in about four years, Egypt will have a network of 26 modern airports, including seven new ones, with capacity […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, New York | Wednesday THE UN children’s agency, UNICEF, says it has found 163 child soldiers – some as young as nine years old – from the Democratic Republic of Congo in a political education camp for Congolese rebels in Uganda. The children, aged between nine and 17 and including three girls, were […]

SOUTH African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel is likely to announce further tax cuts, increased government spending and new employment subsidies to get the economy on a strong growth path when he presents the budget midweek, predict economists. The Bureau for Economic Research said the country’s deficit has been brought under control to the point where […]

MILITARY police at Uganda’s main airport violently arrested a parliamentarian working with the election campaign of a main rival to President Yoweri Museveni. Witnesses said after security officials failed to pursuade the MP, Major Okwir Rabwoni, to accompany them to the offices of the head of military intelligence – who happens to be Rabwoni’s brother […]

LESOTHOS tribal chiefs have warned the country’s senate that their subjects might take up arms to stop gangs from Kwazulu-Natal crossing their border and stealing cattle. Chief Mathealira Seeiso called on the senate to declare a state of emergency in Mokhotlong because, they said, the situation was so dire that fighting might break out in […]

THE University of Malawi has launched an investigation into how 500 students at its agricultural college were fed meat contaminated with Bovine Tuberculosis (TB). Agricultural college principal Kanyama Phiri said the students were fed infected meat after a regular meat supplier sold the university nine cattle carcasses last week. Internal testing by the college had, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday PRESENTING the 2001/02 Budget in Parliament, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said taxpayers would begin to taste the fruit of sacrifices, as the government shifted its focus to encourage growth and investment. “This Budget tells the story of the choices and decisions we have made and which have advanced the […]

THE Ghanaian government has announced its intention to almost double the price of petrol in stages, from Cedi 6 400 (91 US cents) to 12 000 ($1.71). The increase will be made periodically to make its effect bearable to Ghanaians, says Owusu Agyapong, Minister of Transport and Communications. The minister said the increase would not […]