Staff Reporter

THE military command of Angola’s UNITA rebel movement has “totally and irrevocably” rejected an amnesty offered last week by the country’s government, saying the offer from Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos was “nothing more than a bait”. UNITA recently presented the government with a series of proposals, including the setting-up of a new government, the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Monday NIGERIA’S top lawmakers take home pay and allowances worth more than $9 000 a month, most of which they have awarded themselves, in a country where most people earn less than a dollar a day. Members of the 109-seat Senate, or upper house, and the 360-seat House of Representatives, or […]

TWO farmers were murdered in separate attacks on farms in Mpumalanga on Thursday, police said. In the first attack, intruders shot Johannes Petrus George Botha, 57, and his wife, Diana Magdalena, 49, while they were asleep around 1am on their farm Rietfontein, near Lydenburg. Johannes Botha died instantly but his wife drove to neighbours for […]

NIGERIAN drugs agents this week set fire to more than six tonnes of narcotics and other drugs with a street value of around $25m, officials said. The 6 162kg of drugs was ere seized at airports and border crossings, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency said. The agency last month destroyed a large quantity of […]

A 23-YEAR-OLD man has become the first victim of strict Islamic law in Nigeria’s Katsina state when he was publicly given 100 cane strokes for fornication, local radio reported. An Islamic court in Malunfashi town ordered the flogging of Lawal Sada for impregnating an 18-year-old girl out of wedlock. In addition, Sada will serve a […]

Malawian President Bakili Muluzi has sacked the country’s inspector general of police, Bernard Mphinji, on allegations that he frustrated the British-sponsored police reform programme. Mphinji is alleged to have frustrated efforts to reform the 6 000 police personnel from a state-terror machinery to a professional police not influenced by politicians. – AFP

ANGOLA’S civil aviation authority has grounded all Russian-built Antonov planes after an Antonov 24 crashed this week, killing all 39 people aboard, Angolan radio reported. The plane with 34 passengers and five crew – including four Ukrainians – went down just five minutes after taking off from the capital Luanda. The accident was the second […]

THREE men, including an SA Revenue Services employee, are expected to appear in the Kempton Park Magistrate’s Court this week for apparently stealing R6,1m worth of diamonds from the Johannesburg International Airport. Police recovered about R5m worth of the diamonds. Last Wednesday a parcel containing the precious stones was locked in a safe at customs […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Saturday POLICE are investigating allegations that the 12 people killed in an explosion in a floor polish factory near Johannesburg had been locked into the factory on Friday afternoon and had no emergency escape route. Superintendent Richard Luvhengo said an explosion triggered a fire in the in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, […]

EMMANUEL GIROUD, Nairobi | Saturday SITTING on a Kenyatta Hospital bed shared with another patient, a man called out repeatedly for a doctor. He is lucky: although clearly in pain, he will survive the effects of a batch of methanol-laced moonshine that this week claimed more than 90 lives and sent some 400 to hospital. […]

THE Kenyan government has successfully negotiated a new repayment schedule of its foreign debts following a meeting with the Paris Club, Finance Minister Chrysanthus Okemo said. The new schedule affects some $300m worth of debt arrears and maturities falling due in the year beginning in July. Okemo said he had cited the drought ravaging Kenya […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Saturday BARELY a week after Zimbabwe’s highest court declared that President Robert Mugabe’s “fast-track resettlement programme” violated farmers’ rights, Mugabe’s elder sister Sabina has demanded that a white farmer leave his house so she could move in. The Commercial Farmers’ Union said in its latest bulletin on the anarchy in rural […]

CHARLES MANGWIRO, Maputo | Friday MOZAMBIQUE’S Human Rights League (LDH) has blamed police for sparking last week’s bloody riots in the northern city of Nampula by allegedly firing on demonstrators without provocation. The League’s northern regional representatives claimed in a report that police confronted opposition Renamo party supporters outside a local soccer stadium last Thursday […]

BRIAN LIGOMEKA, Blantyre | Friday MALAWI’S multi-million dollar tobacco industry finally admitted this week that it uses illegal cheap child labour on the country’s massive plantations. Tobacco Association of Malawi (TAMA) vice president Fredgstone Thangwi publicly conceded that the industry, which accounts for almost 90% of Malawi’s formal employment in the agriculture sector, used some […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Friday CHEMICAL warfare expert Dr Wouter Basson and others involved in the SADF’s chemical and biological warfare programme were “despondent and upset” after throwing millions of rands worth of drugs and mortars into the sea, the Pretoria High Court has heard. Mr H, a military intelligence officer who may not be […]

SEVENTY Kenyans have died after drinking an adulterated batch of moonshine popular for its 10 US cent price tag, police and medical sources said. The illegal brew, known as chang’aa, has landed 260 other people, mostly from Nairobi’s plethora of slums, in hospital. Many have been blinded by the adulterated concoction, which attacks the central […]

WATERPUMPS that are turned by children playing on roundabouts will be installed in 120 rural communities in South Africa, the inventor of the system said this week. Roundabout Outdoor director Trevor Field signed an agreement with the Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, Ronnie Kasrils, and the US Kaiser Family Foundation this week to install […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday A NEW law that recognises traditional African marriages, including polygamous unions, has come into effect in South Africa, bringing relief to women who have been discriminated against because their unions were not recognised. Justice ministry official Paul Setsetse said millions of people would directly benefit from the Recognition of Customary […]

POLICE in Lagos said this week they have released two dogs after failing to find evidence they had been transformed from children by witchcraft. A police unit in the Oko-Oba, Agege, district of the city last month detained 13 members of a vigilante gang who had beaten up and were about to lynch a man […]

THE Western Cape’s first “responsible gambling programme” was launched at the Kenilworth Addiction Treatment Centre in Cape Town on Thursday. The programme is funded by the province’s casino gaming industry and includes a toll-free national problem gambling helpline (0800006008), counselling and treatment for gambling addicts. Speaking at the launch, Cape Town University commerce faculty Professor […]

A DURBAN woman has laid an assault charge agaunst public protector Selby Baqwa, KwaZulu-Natal police have confirmed. Dolly Mkhulisi claims Baqwa assaulted her at the Durban City Lodge hotel on October 30, while he was attending the 13th international ombudsman conference, where he was elected vice president of the International Ombudsman Institution. No details concerning […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday NEW regulations paving the way for apartheid chemical warfare expert Dr Wouter Basson to be provisionally suspended from medical practice are nearing completion, the Health Professionals Council of SA said this week. Basson is being tried for of a series of murders and fraudulent transactions apparently committed while he was […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday JOHNNIC e-Ventures (JeV), the Internet division of black empowerment giant Johnnic, has acquired 50% of South African digital publisher comPress in a bid to explore new publishing models and to open up publishing to the masses. The new business will provide tailor-made publishing services to the corporate, academic, and traditional […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Lydenburg | Thursday SOUTH African authorities are to prosecute the 41-year-old bus driver who survived a horrific accident on a treacherous mountain pass in Mpumalanga that claimed the lives of 26 British tourists and their local tour guide last year. Mpumalanga provincial police commissioner Eric Nkabinde said Titus Phillip Dube would be charged […]

TELECOMMUNICATIONS value-added service provider Cointel has surged through all previous m-commerce barriers to register an unprecedented R1m a day in m-commerce transactions, with more room for growth. “While other m-commerce ventures are still in their infancy, Cointel has delivered on the m-commerce promise,” said Paddy Gray, director of ECnet, a division of PQ Africa which […]

A GRADE eight pupil who was allegedly apprehended by security guards in the act of bestiality with a cat is to be transferred to a mental hospital for 30 days’ observation. Magistrate David Mahongo noted that the original order for mental observation had been ignored, following which Elite Ntjana, 18, who was visiting his father […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday FORMER Democratic Party Member of Parliament Helen Suzman says she believes that the People’s Poet Mzwakhe Mbuli has information on the drug activities of highly placed South Africans and that there is a conspiracy to keep him in jail, the Afrikaans daily newspaper Beeld reports. Suzman this week spoke about […]

AN illegal Mozambican immigrant drank rat poison and died because he thought police were going to arrest and deport him for taking his girlfriend’s cell phone and R200. But his girlfriend never laid charges against him and by the time she told him, it was too late. The man told his unnamed girlfriend that he […]

A SENIOR official in the Eastern Cape roads and public works department has been suspended for alleged corruption, says MEC Phumulo Masualle. The official was allegedly found using departmental equipment at his private premises for his own purposes. Masualle said four other suspended officials, including Dennis Maart, had been called back to the department so […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday AN infrared telescope and camera developed by South African and Japanese scientists and capable of photographing stars never seen before officially starts operating in the tiny Karoo town of Sutherland this week. The R18m telescope is situated at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) site near Sutherland, about 250km […]

DUNDEE farmer Eicker Henning has been sentenced to 25 years in jail in the Ladysmith High Court in northern KwaZulu-Natal for torturing a worker to death. But Henning will be at home for Christmas and New Year because he was granted leave to appeal the sentence in the Durban High Court on January 15. His […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday CONFIDENCE in South Africa’s government has plunged over the past year but the African National Congress (ANC) is still expected to dominate municipal elections next month, a recent poll indicated. “Trust in major institutions appears to have hit rock bottom on the eve of South Africa’s local government elections,” said […]