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 | Monday AFRICAN National Congress Women’s League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela on Monday broke her silence on her sensational letter to Deputy President Jacob Zuma, saying she had used the appropriate ANC internal channels to air her grievances. She was reacting to statements by unnamed ANC insiders quoted in The Citizen newspaper that […]
FIVE people, including two opposition members of parliament, have been killed in a weekend road accident in central Gambia, the state media reported. Twelve others were injured. All were believed to have been aboard a minibus which rolled several times after a tyre burst on a road inland from Banjul. The two MPs, Bouba Samoura […]
Swazilands only airline has suspended all morning flights to South Africa following an unexpected drop in the number of business travellers over the festive season. Airlink Swaziland general manager President Dhlamini said many flights were running almost empty and the airline rationalised its services. Airlink Swaziland suspended all flights to Tanzania last year after the […]
THE national road death toll since the summer holidays began on December 1 had reached at least 851 by noon on Sunday and was expected to climb with the big rush home underway. The road safety campaign, Arrive Alive, said it expected traffic volumes to peak in the late afternoon on all the country’s major […]
JOHANNESBURG police have asked local authorities to drain the artificial Bruma Lake, where five bodies have been found in the past nine months, fearing a serial killer is on the loose. Two more bodies of middle-aged men were found this week in the lake, east of the city centre, which is surrounded by a shopping […]
THE Nigerian government has announced a ban on the importation of vehicles and other goods overland in a bid to increase activity at its under-used ports. In recent years, thousands of cars have been imported into Nigeria from the neighbouring countries of Benin and Niger. Finance Minister Adamu Ciroma said the importation of electricity generators […]
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, 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
American film-maker Lionel Rogosin, who died recently, made a classic South African film, Come Back, Africa. Peter Davis reminisces.
Michael Odell CD OFTHEWEEK You’ll have noticed that writing poetry in coffee shops, plundering jumble-sale threads and being love-battered yet plucky is now “in”. But just four years ago, if you were a female R&B act, you wore knee-high leather boots and demanded regular oral sex and housekeeping from your “nigga”, safe in the knowledge […]
Some South Africans get so much from polarisation that they cannot imagine a future without it.
Jon Henley in Paris As controversy rages in Britain and South Africa over the Steven Maisels’s sexy Sophie Dahl advertisement for Opium perfume, French feminists are turning up the heat in their war on a national ad industry that has long considered bare breasts an appropriate way to advertise anything from lawnmowers to low-fat margarine. […]
The presidential election run-off that took place in Ghana on December 28 will go down as one of the most exciting days in the nation’s history.
102 Dalmations. She’s back. Cruella de Vil (Glenn Close) re-emerges with a social conscience that lasts a full 10 minutes. Representing us ordinary, good folk is the pretty probation officer who will keep an eye on Cruella but keeps Dalmations. Wonderfully surreal, it’s a pity that Cruella’s comeuppence takes so long, because by then the […]
Deon Potgieter boxing Dingaan Thobela has appealed to the World Boxing Council (WBC) to declare his super-middleweight world title fight against Dave Hilton in Canada last month a no contest. Thobela is not contesting the ludicrous split points decision which robbed him of his title, but rather the gross neglect of world boxing regulations. Dave […]
South African groundsmen are preparing pitches to last the full five days but the lack of variety might kill off interest in Test cricket Peter Robinson When a batsman who has just scored 180 in a Test match wonders publicly whether the type of pitch he’s just scored his runs on really suits his side, […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Against my better judgement and the advice of several friends I had a look at the newest ordeal to have sprung from the SABC’s light entertainment division: Greed, or the “neetch for greetch” as its presenter, Revin John, would have it. At first I thought there was something wrong with his microphone […]
Andrew Smith ventures into Silicon Valley to meet the technoseers who think supercomputers have made man obsolete.
Shooting the scene — Kevin Carter shoots Ken Oosterbroek shooting Kevin shooting Ken and bang-bang, they’re dead.
Do we have a right to dismiss them as racists, as upholders of white privilege, not supportive of change and reconciliation? asks Rhoda Kadalie.