SOUTH Africa’s youngest Aids activist, 11-year-old Aids sufferer Nkosi Johnson, remains in a critical condition at home in Johannesburg. His foster mother Gail Johnson said Nkosi, who suffered three severe seizures at the weekend, was still semi-comatose. Doctors discovered Nkosi suffered brain damage after finding a layer of damaged tissue. Nkosi was initially given nine […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Abidjan | Monday AN attempted coup d’etat was underway early on Monday in the Ivory Coast, with heavy fighting wracking the countrys economic capital as loyalist forces attempted to overpower mutinous troops who had seized the television station. No toll from the fighting is immediately available and the situation on the ground remains […]
EXTERMINATORS who killed hundreds of rats being kept in a rented Cape Town house have found a three-month-old human foetus in a cupboard while removing the rat carcasses. The woman who kept them, Gwynneth Quick, 39, who referred to the rats as “my babies”, was hospitalised for psychiatric observation but later released. She worked as […]
A GANG of cash heist gangsters risked their lives for a mere R2 each after pension payout security guards foiled an ambush. The 10 heavily armed gangsters used three stolen vehicles to ambush a convoy of armoured vans belonging to Empilweni Pension Payout Services between Witbank and Siyabuswa, but the armoured van ferrying the money […]
REPORTS of a gold strike in Mali by Hyundai Corp. have sent the stock price of the Hyundai Group’s trading arm soaring despite the company’s efforts to downplay exuberance. Hyundai confirmed it had discovered gold in the west African state, but in a statement to the Korea Stock Exchange, denied rumours that the find contained […]
A NIGERIAN minister accused of leaving a pregnant woman to die by the roadside after a fatal collision involving his convoy has gone abroad, his office said, as the couple who died were buried. Nigeria’s minister for Africa, Dapo Sarumi, left this week for an undisclosed destination for medical attention”. Critics suggested his health concerns […]
BRENTON WILLIAMS and SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Jeffreys Bay | Monday ITS not great white sharks or even killer whales that terrify Jefferys Bays only black surfer – its racist white tourists. Jackson Jacko Pennington is still shaken after a group of aggressive white Northern Cape tourists confronted him on one of Jefferys Bays most popular beaches […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Monday TOP officials of state arms agency Armscor have gone into a huddle in Pretoria to discuss weekend reports of pending damages suits totalling more than R2bn – and accompanying allegations of shady deals at the highest levels. This follows reports at the weekend that two disgruntled military hardware companies were […]
THE United States has offered rewards of up to $5m for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Rwandan war crimes indictees who are still at large. The State Departments Richard Boucher said the rewards would be given for information that results in the “transportation” of indictees to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday TWO military hardware companies are planning to sue South African arms manufacturer Armscor for millions of dollars in separate cases – which, they allege, implicate several former and current top-ranking defence officials in high-level corruption. E-tv news reported that Quantam International Services Limited, with corporate offices in the British Virgin […]
US President Bill Clinton has informed Congress of his decision to extend for a further six months US economic sanctions slapped on Libya some 15 years ago. Clinton stated that despite Libya handing over for trial two suspects in the 1988 bombing of a Pan-Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, US concerns about the Libyan government’s […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Saturday ELEVEN-year-old Aids activist Nkosi Johnson, who gripped the hearts of the world when he addressed last year’s International Aids Conference in Durban, is not expected to survive the weekend. Nkosi, who appealed to the government for access to anti-retroviral drugs and to South African citizens to accept Aids and HIV […]
THE death toll on South Africas roads since the summer holidays began on December 1 has reached 824 – and road safety campaign, Arrive Alive, expects traffic to peak on the country’s roads this weekend as inland holidaymakers return home to start the new working year on Monday. Arrive Alive said speeding, drunk driving, driver […]
THE Johannesburg Regional Court has granted R10_000 bail to a doctor accused of raping his daughter, so he could continue assisting patients on an Aids drug programme. The doctor, who allegedly raped his daughter a month before her 16th birthday, was in custody for two months. Defence attorney Errol Goss alleged the girl had laid […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Paris | Sunday AN international rescue operation is afoot in Cameroon to save fewer than ten black rhinos, the last survivors from herds of thousands wiped out by poachers across West Africa over the past two decades. “It is necessary, in fact, to act immediately, because this rhinoceros could disappear very soon,” said […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Saturday ZIMBABWEAN police have arrested 97 members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the south of the country following pre-election clashes which the MDC has described as state-sponsored violence. Party leader Morgan Tsvangirai confirmed the arrests, and said the MDC had sent reinforcements to beef up the 50-strong […]
IT took a couple of days, but a 23-year-old Tanzanian proved an informant right when he passed 800g of heroin in 86 packets while in police custody. The man was arrested at Dar es Salaam airport on a flight from Bombay, and eventually passed 86 packets of the drug which he had swallowed before boarding […]
DISABLED beggars in northern Nigeria’s largest city Kano have given the state government two weeks to rescind a ban on street begging or face protests. State authorities last month announced a ban on street begging, which they said had become an organised racket. The practice of begging for alms is widespread in Kano, the second […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Saturday A VIGILANTE group – which is backed by authorities in three southern Nigerian states – this week barbarically executed two suspected robbers in public, police admitted. Members of the vigilante group known as the Bakassi Boys – sanctioned by Abia, Anambra and Imo state authorities to tackle high crime levels […]
AT least 18 people have been arrested in a rural district in southern Zimbabwe in pre-election violence that has left at least one person dead, police said. Among those held are members of both the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the ruling Zanu-PF. Political tension in the Bikita-West constituency has shot up since […]
SHAUN BENTON, Cape Town | Saturday THOUSANDS of banjo-strumming minstrels, complete with blackface, are shrugging off the traditional derogatory label of Coon Carnival in a two-week celebration they hope will rival the annual carnivals in Rio de Janeiro, Notting Hill, and New Orleans. The “klopse”, as they are known, compete for annual prizes, including the […]
American film-maker Lionel Rogosin, who died recently, made a classic South African film, Come Back, Africa. Peter Davis reminisces.
Do we have a right to dismiss them as racists, as upholders of white privilege, not supportive of change and reconciliation? asks Rhoda Kadalie.
Andrew Smith ventures into Silicon Valley to meet the technoseers who think supercomputers have made man obsolete.
Letter to the Editor — Racism is essential to human behaviour.
Marianne Merten Several Western Cape residents in witness protection who are refusing to leave the province despite the Christmas murder of two state witnesses face the choice: relocate or leave the programme. The head of the Office for Witness Protection, Director Piet Kleynhans, said a decision on this handful of witnesses to Cape criminal trials, […]
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Newcastle | Friday KWAZULU-Natal wildlife rangers have been forced to kill an aggressive bull elephant after it refused to be driven back into the park from which it had escaped. The shooting follows the first large-scale escape from the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi park by elephants since they were introduced to in 1980. The tusks were […]
Ian Penman Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968-76 by Hunter S Thompson, edited by Douglas Brinkley (Bloomsbury) As a writer bin all that “cultural icon” stuff, all the cartoon strips and cocaine blizzards and Colorado screamin’ it is hard to see Hunter S Thompson as much more than […]
SIX Moroccan fishermen have gone missing after their small boats were swamped in heavy seas off Morocco’s Atlantic coast, regional maritime officials said. The men’s vessels had sunk on Tuesday during foul weather conditions near the port of Sidi Ifni. Another 36 fishermen who had experienced trouble in the same area were rescued by a […]
Thomas and the Magic Railroad. A mixture of live action, animation and modelling, Thomas and the Magic Railroad is an Americanised version of the British TV series based on the Reverend W Awdry’s children’s books. It’s whimsical stuff about the interaction of the railway (sorry, railroad) systems of a real community and a magical one […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Blantyre | Friday THE high-profile trial of a former Malawian cabinet minister facing corruption charges has opened amid tight security and high tension. Brown Mpinganjira, who had been widely tipped to succeed President Bakili Muluzi as leader of the governing United Democratic Front (UDF), faces up to 12 years in prison for his […]
Neal Collins soccer England’s bleak midwinter will enjoy a traditional post-New Year lift this weekend with the arrival of the Football Association Cup third round, comfortably the best weekend of mud-and-guts football to be found anywhere in the world. This is when the top clubs join the long road to erm … well, it was […]