Staff Reporter

RWANDA will not leave the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) until Hutu extremists fighting there are disarmed, Foreign Minister Louis Michel said on Friday after talks with Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Michel said Kagame explained Rwanda’s involvement in the DRC conflict by saying he only wanted to secure Rwanda’s borders, but Kigali has long been […]

ABOUT 120 people were left homeless after a fire gutted 66 shacks at Langa on the Cape Flats on Friday night, a Cape Town disaster management representative said on Saturday. Mark Pluke said the fire began at about 1am and was extinguished an hour and a half later. No one was seriously injured in the […]

FLIPPIE van Rooyen, the son of dead paedophile Gert van Rooyen, has been found guilty on one charge of perjury in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court. Van Rooyen was charged with three counts of perjury after he allegedly gave police conflicting statements under oath relating to six missing schoolgirls linked to his father in the late […]

TWO people are feared dead ater a South African helicopter crashed in Mfuwe National Park in eastern Zambia. Police said rescuers had not been able to reach the wreckage because of heavy rains and the difficult terrain. Two helicopters rushed to the scene could not land. “Our officers will try to get there Friday, depending […]

A NUDIST resort in KwaZulu-Natal must admit blacks or face legal action by the South African Human Rights Commission, The Star newspaper reported. The commission has given Jane’s Jungle seven days to abide by the country’s constitution and admit blacks or face a lawsuit, it said. South African naturist pioneer Beau Brummel opened Jane’s Jungle, […]

AN Mpumalanga businessman and an unemployed man accused of child sex will remain in custody for the duration of their trial. Security company owner and auctioneer Daniel Francois Botha, 57, and his friend Andries Johannes van der Mescht, 37, spent three days trying to convince the Belfast Magistrates Court to grant them bail. Their co-accused, […]

The Angolan rebel movement appears to be stockpiling weapons from new sources Sechaba ka’Nkosi Former Eastern bloc countries have emerged as the main suppliers of arms to Angola’s Unita rebel movement as fears mount in the international community that rebel leader Jonas Savimbi may be stockpiling weapons. A report by the United Nations monitoring team […]

Jaspreet Kindra A SECOND LOOK Should a developing state lose strategic control of assets that provide basic services? Debates are raging within the government and the tripartite?alliance over whether the state will be able to fulfil its social and?developmental obligations once privatisation takes hold.? This debate has been rekindled with the expected market entry of […]

Guy Willoughby theatre Continuing the buoyant spirit of the festive season, the Cape revels in a new batch of intriguing new home-brewed shows that foster, in different forms, the unfolding cusp-millennial local genius. Most curious is the odd congruence of two dance-theatre explorations, Tango del Fuego (just ended at the Oude Libertas, Stellenbosch) and Sex, […]

Marianne Merten Township homes in Hermanus, a seaside resort near Cape Town, are being auctioned off because of service arrears dating back to 1994 despite an innovative “pay as you use” scheme meant to ensure access to water for everyone. This Friday seven homes are on auction in Zwelihle; six homes went under the hammer […]

Andy Capostagno golf Woodhill Country Club in Pretoria celebrates its second birthday in style this week by hosting the South African PGA Championship. Through a deal with the Sunshine Tour, Woodhill will be the host for South Africa’s second-oldest event for the next three years. The prize fund is R1-million, which might appear small potatoes […]

Graham Welch and Justin Arenstein Irate staff at the beleaguered Afrikaans talk station Punt Radio laid criminal charges against their managers this week and ordered attorneys to apply for the company’s urgent liquidation. The staff including high-profile presenters, journalists and former managers have not been paid salaries for two months. They allege that Punt has […]

Roshila Pillay British recruitment agencies are aggressively poaching South Africans to address the severe teacher shortage in that country. The head of education personnel for Britain’s Department of Education, Chris Williams, will arrive in South Africa this month on yet another recruitment drive. “They [the recruitment team] went last year, and they were really successful, […]

Barry Streek Parliamentary oversight over the Cabinet should play a significant role in ensuring the delivery of constitutionally guaranteed socio-economic rights and the entrenchment of a rights-based culture, delegates to a seminar in Cape Town said in a declaration this week. They also concluded that the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and […]

Neal Collins soccer Europe looms. Months ago, the only thing we footie freaks talked about was the Champions League. You remember those heady days in early December: Leeds beating Lazio, Arsenal getting stuffed by Spartak Moscow and boring Manchester United winning both of their second phase games so far. Seems like years ago, doesn’t it? […]

David Macfarlane Vista University’s senior management creams off astonishingly high perks, at a time when the university’s financial crisis ranks among the worst in the country. An annual credit card allowance of R120 000 and cellphone allowance of R36 000 are among the extra- ordinary perks available to vice- chancellor Professor CT Keto. Four other […]

Mungo Soggot, Evidence wa ka Ngobeni and Nawaal Deane The state oil company and the government are limbering up for a court battle in London over a controversial R1,5-billion oil contract under investigation by the Scorpions. The contract in question was sealed last year by officials at the state oil company, the Strategic Fuel Fund […]

Nawaal Deane A company belonging to the Central Energy Fund (CEF) is using taxpayers’ money to test, market and launch an immune booster being tested on people with HIV. The state oil company CEF owns a subsidiary company, Enerkom, which was established in 1992 to house the patents and technologies of the National Energy Council. […]

A US surgeon has devised an electronic implant that gives women an orgasm without the hassle of sex, the New Scientist reports. Stuart Meloy, a surgeon at Piedmont Anaesthesia and Pain Consultants in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, got the idea for the device when he was conducting a routine operation on a woman to relieve spinal […]

whipping boy It’s business as usual in the Cape of Good Hope Derby at Kenilworth on Saturday. Simintov Property and Investment (Pty) Ltd are running Badger’s Drift in the R400?000 classic. The firm paid a cool R500?000 for the colt, insured their asset and engaged the services of the champion trainer-jockey combination, Geoff Woodruff and […]

The curtain lifts on the new political year with the president’s state-of-the-nation address and the opening of Parliament. The lekgotlas and bosberaads that usually precede these two events, important though they are, amount to little more than the various parties learning their lines for the new year. There is, none the less, a sense of […]

Peter Robinson cricket Is Allan Donald’s head worth R1 000? His wicket certainly is if you are to believe Ray Jennings, the Easterns coach who dumped all over his young fast bowler Andre Nel last weekend for bursting into tears when he felled Donald. Ultra-competitive and ever-abrasive, Jennings was far less concerned about the fuss […]

MORE than 80 former Rwandan Hutu soldiers suspected of having participated in the 1994 genocide have been released from jail, the head of Kigali’s main prison said. The 84 were released because there was not enough evidence on which to hold them, Isidor Gahamanyi told journalists. They had been accused of taking part in the […]

The Nigerian dictatorship killed Ken Saro-Wiwa ensuring his lasting fame, as several new books show Chris Dunton Together with eight other activists campaigning for the economic and environmental rights of the Ogoni people, Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by the Nigerian government on November 10 1995. Before his death he was already a prominent figure: a […]

Suzan Chala Mandrax and dagga are still the favourites among South Africa’s junkies, but heroin, cocaine and amphetamines pose a danger for the future, says the man who will head South Africa’s central drug authority, Frank Kahn, director of public prosecutions in the Cape. The government has produced a drug master plan making provision for […]

Barry Streek ‘Political tourism” provides huge economic benefits to the Cape Town region and Parliament is worth about R870-million a year to the local economy, according to the chief executive officer of Cape Metropolitan Tourism, Rick Taylor. The presence of Parliament in Cape Town ensures there is a steady flow of political tourism to the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday FIGURES cited by President Thabo Mbeki as proof of a decline in violent crimes actually showed an upward trend in these offences, the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said this week. The institute – which Mbeki named in an interview as the source of his crime figures – said […]

Sipho Seepe no blows barred In 1993 Donaldo Macedo, a scholar and follower of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, coined the phrase “literacy for stupidification” to describe the inability of many Americans to read the word and the world critically. This incapacity makes people susceptible to political manipulation through big lies. No amount of evidence […]

Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION I have this fear that at some stage, not too far into the South African future, a lot of people will be speaking the crude burlesque of English used in e.tv news bulletins. As a crucible of what might well be described “kitchen English”, there is no finer. Any bulletin from e.tv […]

Belinda Beresford Free anti-fungal drugs widely needed by people with HIV/Aids may be distributed within a few weeks, in line with an agreement signed two months ago by the Department of Health and the donor, drug company Pfizer. The Medicines Control Council has said it will decide next week whether to register the anti-fungal agent […]

AN Islamic court in Nigeria on Wednesday handed down the first-ever conviction against a Christian, who was flogged in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. Officials in Kano State, which introduced the Islamic law known as Sharia in November, had said it would apply only to Muslims. Nevertheless, an Islamic court on Wednesday convicted Alto […]

Deon Potgieter boxing Namibia’s biggest sporting export so far this new millennium, Harry “The Terminator” Simon, could be in for a rough time on Saturday night. Simon, the World Boxing Organisation (WBO) junior-middleweight world champion, makes the fourth defence of his title in Britain. He was to have faced Daniel Santos, the WBO welterweight world […]