Staff Reporter

A GROUP of Northern Province farm workers who once worked for just R500 a month are now proud owners of a R2m naartjie farm. The provincial land affairs department handed the title deeds of Marobala Citrus Farm in Soekmekaar near Pietersburg to three farm workers’ trusts. The trusts, which comprise 137 farm workers, combined their […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday A MOTHER with a child on her back and two toddlers in her arms stood on the tracks in front of an oncoming train – and when the five-year-old child tried to scurry away, she pulled him back before the family was pulverised under the train’s wheels, Die Burger […]

THE European Union has given Zambia 6m euros to be used to prepare next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections. The money is to be used to train electoral officials and to buy in voting material. Zambia is due to hold presidential, parliamentary and local government elections in the last quarter of 2001. Under the terms […]

CHRISTOPHE DE ROQUEFEUIL, Gaborone | Tuesday US SECRETARY of State Madeleine Albright has wrapped up a swansong tour of three sub-Saharan African countries in Botswana with a call for the next US president not to neglect Africa. The administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton saw Africa as “vitally important to the United States,” Albright told […]

APARTHEID activist Steve Biko, who died in police detention in 1977, has been awarded the Duma Nokwe Human Rights Award, the National Institute for Public Interest Law and Research (Nipliar) said. Biko’s son Nkosinathi Biko received the award on behalf of his father. Biko said his father’s achievements included the establishment of the Ginsberg Educational […]

FORMER Nigerian military ruler Ibrahim Babangida has secured a court order so that he does not have to testify before the country’s human rights panel probing abuses. The High Court in Lagos granted an order restraining the panel from compelling Babangida to appear before it in connection with the 1986 parcel bomb death of journalist […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday SOUTH Africa’s Department of Agriculture has slammed “misleading” media reports suggesting that a Rustenburg woman died of a form of the so-called “mad cow” disease, saying they could further harm the country’s beleagured beef industry. Departmental representative Moses Mushi said there was no evidence linking the death of Ronel Eckard, […]

A 24-year-old man has died in KwaZulu-Natal’s cholera outbreak, bringing the death toll to 39 since August, health authorities said. Another 107 new cases were reported at the weekend. Health authorities have treated 7 096 people for the disease, including 234 people still in hospital. The government’s health department is working with its water affairs […]

BRIAN LIGOMEKA, Blantyre | Monday THE home of the Malawi Cob – a type of marijuana enjoyed by dagga connoisseurs worldwide – is under pressure from Rastafarians to legalise the intoxicating herb. There’s only one problem. Statistics at Zomba Mental Hospital, Malawi’s only mental asylum, indicate that six in every ten mentally deranged people admit […]

ED STODDARD, Johannesburg | Monday DELEGATES from more than 120 countries have signed a treaty declaring war on some of the world’s most dangerous organic pollutants – with an exemption for DDT, which South Africa and other countries need to fight the lethal mosquito-borne disease malaria. The talks, held under the auspices of UNEP, were […]

THE United Cricket Board (UCB) will go to court to defend its life ban against disgraced former captain Hansie Cronje, who has filed an interdict against the punishment. Cronje, who has admitted to taking money from bookmakers, first threatened legal action when the UCB general council took a resolution to ban him for life in […]

TORTURE is rife in South Africa’s police service and in its military prisons, according to claims by human rights watchdog Amnesty International. Torture included electric shocks, suffocation, forced painful postures, suspension from moving vehicles and helicopters and severe and prolonged beatings, the organisation told The Star newspaper. Police chief Jackie Selebi denied the claims. Amnesty […]

BRITISH retailer Sainsbury’s, which opened its first supermarkets in Egypt last January, has decided to pull out of the Egyptian market and sell its shares to an Egyptian investor. Sainsbury’s-Egypt opened 114 chains in a year in the Greater Cairo area. Shortly after the Palestinian uprising erupted in late September, Egyptian students demonstrating against Israel […]

SOUTH Africa’s ruling ANC won 59% percent of the popular vote in last week’s municipal elections, with the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) taking an unexpectedly high 22%, according to the final tally. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) said the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) won 9.14% of the vote. The IEC said that the ANC […]

AN Mpumalanga community removed from 1500ha of land under apartheid laws 36 years ago has won back 1000 hectares and R2,6m in compensation. Land and Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza handed over two portions of Leidenburg farm, 5km from Lydenburg, and the money to 300 families of the Alverton community. The community stayed on the land […]

VINCENT MAYANJA, Kampala | Monday UGANDA’S successful campaign against HIV/Aids has come under threat following demands by moralists that radio advertisements on how to use female condoms “were immoral and encouraged promiscuity.” Female condoms were introduced more than two months ago to protect women from contracting HIV, with advertisements on local radio stations emphasising “not […]

THE United Nations has chosen South Africa to host Earth Summit 2002, which will press for global commitment to sustainable development, the environment ministry announced. Heads of state are expected to lead more than 40 000 delegates to the conference, which will be a 10-year review of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday BOBBY Godsell has taken over the chairmanship of AngloGold in a move intended at bringing in-house understanding of the company to the role of chairman, Business Day reports. Godsell will not leave his position as CEO of AngloGold, and will combine the role with that of executive chairman, the newspaper […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Sunday UNITED States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Saturday reaffirmed the United States’s commitment to uplifting Africa, saying the next American president had an responsibility to create a better life for all the continent’s people. “Africa is not optional to the United States. We have a responsibility and national interest […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday A RUSTENBURG woman who died on June 22 this year could be the first victim of the human form of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE or mad cow disease) in South Africa, Beeld newspaper reports. Variant Creutzfeldt Jacob disease (vCJD) has already killed 89 people in Britain and Europe since it […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday THE ANC top brass has been sent scrambling for cover and are refusing to renounce comments by the party’s KwaZulu-Natal chairman S’bu Ndebele, who threatened vengeance against Africans, coloureds and Indians who voted against the ANC this week, the Sunday Times reports. Ndebele, a member of the KwaZuluNatal provincial Cabinet, […]

SWAZI farmers have been warned that their cattle would be shot dead on sight and incinerated if the animals strayed across international borders into South Africa. The warning is the latest measure in an increasingly desperate attempt to contain foot and mouth disease outbreaks in Mpumalanga province and at Swaziland’s largest abattoir. Farmers were warned […]

SENIOR ANC members and Eastern Cape MECs are expected to attend the funeral of Nomayise Hani, mother of former SA Communist Party leader Chris Hani, in Cofimvaba in the Eastern Cape. Hani, fondly known as Ma Hani, died in the arms of her daughter-in-law Dimpo Hani on November 23 at the age of 83 after […]

THE bail application of a Johannesburg doctor accused of raping his 16-year-old daughter has been postponed to January 4 next year because the docket was not in court and the investigating officer was busy elsewhere. The doctor, who may not be named to protect the identity of the victim, was arrested in November and was […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Saturday INDIAN communities in South Africa have shunned the African National Congress (ANC) in this week’s local government elections, pushed by a perception that the ruling party cares only about black people, analysts said. The community, with many families here for generations, numbers about 1.2 million people, or close to […]

JAMES HALL, Johannesburg | Friday A TRIO of Swaziland appeal court judges have sat alternately stonefaced and slack-jawed as a man appealing against an incest conviction explained that the rape of the eldest daughter is required to secure a male heir to the family homestead. Generations of fathers in Jasper Nxumalo’s family of Hhohho, Swaziland, […]

The Bafokeng are sitting pretty, fuelled by the millions made off the mineral rights to platinum on their land Khadija Magardie The fame of Phokeng “The Place of the Dew”, a township 5km outside Rustenburg, in the Northern Province, stretches way beyond its borders. It is said that Phokeng’s streets, which eventually become the road […]

Jill Waterman Dance The removal of funding from government for the State Theatre Ballet Company has led to Maestro Entertainment stepping in to produce and present The Nutcracker from December 1 to 16. This is a tried and tested old work, which in most cases brings in good box office returns. Maestro Entertainment, being a […]

Neil Sonnekus SIGNS OF THE HEART by Christopher Hope (Picador) There are usually two reactions to the name Christopher Hope. The first and most frequent, usually by those who worship television programming, is one of blank incomprehension. The other is slightly more difficult to pin down and therefore more interesting. It is something that approaches […]

‘Free as the air we breathe’ Could a United Kingdom model for digital community networking be applied in South Africa? Sean Dodson Using an aerial, a lightning conductor, a floppy disk and a microwave transceiver little bigger than a credit card, a pair of techies are hoping to beat the world’s big telecommunication companies and […]

Nechama Brodie looks at the legacy of South Africa’s beauty queens Historically, the spectacle of a pageant was used as a means of expressing national, religious or communal identity. The occasion may have ranged from fertility rites and harvest festivals to military victory parades. Beauty pageants were a natural extension of this, alone or as […]

Iain Harris music Early in 1997, rock funk trio Boomslang had axed its vocalist and was shedding its skin for something newer and fresher, looking to reinvent itself in a funkier and more experimental coat. DJ Bonanza Clone, aka Adam Lieber, and MC Ultra Berzerk, aka Denver, came into the mix, adding spoken word, turntables, […]