Staff Reporter

SOUTH Africa’s motorists, who have suffered a 30% increase in the fuel price in the past 10 months, will experience some relief with a drop in the petrol price next month. A Department of Minerals and Energy official could not confirm reports that the price would decrease by 20 cents, but said there would definitely […]

THE Nigerian army is not considering a pardon for 25 wounded soldiers recently jailed for mutiny and disobedience, says army chief Victor Malu. The soldiers, who were wounded while fighting under the west African peacekeeping force ECOMOG in Liberia and Sierra Leone, were last month jailed for life for protesting against conditions surrounding their medical […]

THE coalition government of Guinea-Bissau is in danger of collapse after six government members from the country’s second most powerful party announced they had pulled out. The Guinea-Bissau Resistance (RGB/Bafata movement) said President Kumba Yala had not respected a political agreement and had reshuffled his cabinet this week without consulting his coalition partners. – AFP

POPULAR South African music star Brenda Fassie has arrived in the Liberian capital Monrovia to take part in celebrations marking the birthday and fourth wedding anniversary of Liberian President Charles Taylor. Thousands of Liberians lined the 45km route from Roberts International Airport to the city centre to catch a glimpse of Fassie. The singer is […]

A MPUMALANGA farmer has appeared in court in connection with the death of a man allegedly mauled by his boerboel dogs. It is alleged that Christopher Livanos’ three dogs mauled the man so badly that he had not been identified. His age could not be estimated.

HUGH NEVILL, Kinshasa | Wednesday THE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is to swear in as president Joseph Kabila, the young and politically untested general who inherits the war-torn chaos of this huge African country a day after his murdered father and predecessor was laid to rest. Kabila was hurriedly appointed as the country’s leader […]

THE leader of a security task force accused of terrorising and brutalising Nigeria’s troubled Ogoni people has told an astonished human rights hearing he was proud of what he did. Colonel Paul Okuntimo told a packed conference hall the task force sent in 1993 by the late military ruler Sani Abacha to suppress unrest in […]

THE burnt body of an Mpumalanga farmer was found hidden in a mealie field at the weekend – five days after he was reported missing. Herman Jones, 59, of Klipplatsdrift Farm in Standerton, disappeared on January 16. His body was found about 200 metres from the house in an area that had already been searched. […]

THE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has boosted security as a tense Kinshasa prepares to bury the country’s assassinated president Laurent Kabila in the capital. Angola, one of Kabila’s allies in the huge conflict that swamped his country during his rule, said it was sending in extra troops amid fears that the ceremony could spark […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday THE state and the taxpayer last year lost at least R390m because government is preventing the Judge Willem Heaths Special Investigative Unit from investigating cases of corruption, says the unit’s annual report. According to a report in Afrikaans daily Beeld, the figure of R390m for the financial year ending […]

THE man who introduced South Africa’s Protea to America, the late Howard Asper, has been awarded the 2000 California Floriculture Hall of Fame Award. Asper, who died in 1993, took a Protea seed from its native South African soil in 1961 and successfully propagated it in California in 1965. Today, he is widely recognised as […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday THE Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) has declared a dispute with Telkom in its latest salvo over what it calls ruthless job cuts and other preparations for the listing of the state-controlled communications giant, and is to embark on protest action. CWU announced its new step a day after Telkom and […]

SENEGAL’S President Abdoulaye Wade has urged Africans to take a measured response to fighting racism outside their continent, and focus more effort on resolving ethnic problems at home. “A Burkinabe in Ivory Coast is being treated in a way that a black person would not be treated in Europe,” Wade told participants at the opening […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Port Harcourt | Tuesday THE families of four slain leaders of the southern Nigerian Ogoni people have accused the late human rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, of instigating their murder seven years ago. Saro-Wiwa and eight others were executed on November 10, 1995, after being found guilty by a special tribunal of murdering the […]

PRIVATE companies have already invested R122m in six sites that were commercialised in the Kruger National Park three months ago. The sites will be developed as luxury lodges and are expected to generate a combined total of about R2,4m in the first year and R22m after 20 years. 630 permanent jobs, excluding construction work, will […]

REPRESENTATIVES from Cameroon, Malawi, Niger and Guinea-Bissau will this week renegotiate their debt with the Paris Club group of creditor countries. All four African countries are on the list of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) identified by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank for special consideration in debt relief if they demonstrate […]

A JUDICIAL panel of inquiry into the finances and management of Nigeria’s corruption ridden state-run telecommunications company NITEL has begun its public sitting. The panel, headed by former high court judge Daniel Ishola-Adeniyi, will look into the finances and management of NITEL and its sister company, M-TEL, in the past years. NITEL is widely considered […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday OPPOSITION parties have slammed African National Congress (ANC) members of Parliament’s public accounts committee for backtracking on their call for the involvement of the Heath unit to help investigate the governments R43bn arms deal. The Democratic Alliance (DA) and African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) charged the ANC members with […]

A JAILED Guinean opposition politician has begun a hunger strike to press for his release after serving a two-year prison sentence which ended last month. Antoine Soromou is a friend and political ally of the main opposition leader Alpha Conde, head of the Guinean People’s Rally (RPG), who is also behind bars. Soromou was convicted […]

A YOUNG Egyptian woman is filing for divorce after she woke up from a New Year’s drinking binge to find herself married, the daily Al-Akhbar newspaper reported. A Cairo court was told the unidentified woman had gone out drinking with friends from work on New Year’s Eve and had no recollection of having married one […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday A GROUP of Pretoria businessmen accused of selling more than 700 dud computers to the Mpumalanga government could lose the plush mansions they bought with the proceeds of the dirty deal. Police confirmed that the Asset Forfeiture Unit has been brought on board to seize the properties in Pretoria and […]

A KENYAN who nearly brought down a passenger plane after storming the flight deck has apologised, but said he had only been trying to get away from people who wanted to kill him. Paul Mukonyi told BBC television that he was “very very sorry”, and that he had not meant to down the British Airways […]

A CASH-strapped Egyptian cement worker has been sentenced to death for murdering and robbing a man to buy an engagement ring for his beloved. Wael Salam, 27, was found guilty of luring co-worker Haitham Omar on a day off to their cement factory in the southern town of Luxor, where he hit him on the […]

ZIMBABWES 140_000 civil servants plan to go on strike on Wednesday in protest at the government’s proposed 15% cost of living adjustment. Public workers believe the government has failed to negotiate in good faith on the amount of the raise and say the government has insisted on sticking to its 11bn Zimbabwe dollar ($190m) budget […]

THE South African Air Force has stepped in to help a young black woman achieve her dream of flying a Boeing 747 one day. Asnath Matsobane, 21, of Rosenkrans village in the Northern Province, needs to clock up 400 flight hours if she wants to fly large passenger planes, but she ran out of money […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kampala | Monday BETWEEN 150 and 250 people died – some beheaded and burned alive – in clashes last week in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) town of Bunia, humanitarian sources there said Monday, considerably raising a previous toll. Earlier reports said 59 people had died on Friday in clashes arising […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Monday IN a case that raised international concerns about human rights in Nigeria, a teenage mother found guilty by an Islamic court of pre-marital sex has been flogged 100 times, a senior official said on Monday. Bariya Ibrahim Magazu, found guilty in September of the Islamic offence of “zina” or pre-marital […]

MICHAEL MATARI and PHILLIP NKOSI, Thohoyandou | Monday A GROUP of more than 24_000 former Venda homeland officials is demanding that government repay them an estimated R1bn in unpaid pensions – and they allege that at least one local banking institution has withheld R358m that was invested with it in 1992. The group, the Dabalorivhuwa […]

THE SA Police Service’s Commercial Crime Unit has in the past three weeks confiscated counterfeit and stolen computer software worth almost R15m, says computer software giant Microsoft. Police raided a computer vendor that supplied the Mpumalanga education department with 347 PCs, as well an Erasmia-based computer company where counterfeit and stolen software was found.

ILDA JACOBS, Washington DC | Monday A SOUTH African woman’s 25-day hunger strike has succeeded in forcing the California Department of Corrections to admit that her husband was wrongly classified as a gangster. Lara Johnson, 35, originally from Volksrust in Mpumalanga, married African American Demian Johnson in a prison waiting room three years ago after […]

A MAN accused of driving drunk and crashing into a minibus full of school children was let off the hook in the Nelspruit District Court because the police failed to take statements from the survivors. Carl Furter, 34, was never asked to plead on a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol. Police allegedly […]

ZIMBABWES main opposition party, which has fiercely opposed President Robert Mugabe’s land reforms, has given cautious support to the government’s new scheme of resettlement based on commercial operation. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has previously criticised the programme promoted by Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), which involves taking away land mainly from […]