Staff Reporter

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Wednesday THE Madhlopa Commission has uncovered another web of corruption in Mpumalanga, finding that the province’s powerful Highveld District Council chief executive Charles Makola irregularly awarded multi-million rand tenders to politicians and friends and intimidated those who threatened to expose him. He also got his job using two fraudulent drivers’ licences […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Wednesday PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s sister, Sabina, has hopped onto the land-grab bandwagon by driving up to a white-owned farm in her Mercedes-Benz and exhorting black squatters to grab chunks of the farm for themselves. The occupiers seized 380 hectares of prime land, leaving farmer John Wilde with 420 hectares of arable […]

SUSPECTED viral meningitis has been detected among Zimbabwean soldiers fighting in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe Health Minister Timothy Stamps said this week. He said no deaths had been reported but that some soldiers had been flown home to Zimbabwe and quarantined to protect against the spread of the highly […]

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 […]

AN angry Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo this week ordered the bosses of the troubled state-run electricity company to meet agreed power supply targets, his office said. Output at the state-run National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) collapsed last week from 2300 to around 1200 megawatts after shutdowns at two power plants. The target set earlier this […]

CLAN chiefs of Loango on Congo’s southwest coast have enthroned a new monarch, Moe Tati I, ending a four-year row over the succession in the five-centuries-old kingdom. The 72-year-old king succeeds his uncle, Moe Poaty III, under tribal law awarding the succession to a nephew of a deceased monarch. Trouble erupted when one of Moe […]

BRIAN LIGOMEKA, Blantyre | Tuesday THE Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has launched a probe into Malawi’s finance ministry following indications that the country sold 5000 metric tonnes of donated rice to a private export company. JICA resident representative in Malawi, Hiroshi Murakami, said he had formally asked Malawi’s government to explain why food earmarked […]

MALAWI has implemented a home-care system for tuberculosis (TB) patients in an attempt to free up hospital beds for non-HIV/Aids patients. The new programme will see all non-critical TB patients sent home for care by relatives, visiting nurses and doctors who have been trained to treat opportunistic diseases, such as TB, that target HIV/Aids sufferers. […]

CRAIG BISHOP, Durban | Tuesday THE 23 giraffe and three white rhinos which spent the past 40 days at sea after being turned away by foot-and-mouth fearing Spaniards will be back in the bush this week. The animals arrived at Durban harbour on Monday and immediately left for Brits in North West Province under orders […]

UNITED Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa was forced to go door-to-door with his election message in rural Nelspruit at the weekend because of the poor turnout at two planned rallies. A UDM ward candidate blamed the poor turnout on African National Congress supporters whom, he claimed, intimidated UDM supporters. Holomisa heard residents’ complaints that low-cost […]

CAPE Town hockey player Graeme Eadie has been found guilty of murder after he beat to death motorist Kevin Duncan in a fit of road rage. Eadie, 35, the father of two young children, was also found guilty of an attempt to defeat the ends of justice. His hearing followed an attack on the Kommetjie […]

KWAZULU-Natal’s stricken farmers are waiting with “bated breath” for the government’s response to their financial predicament as the province’s multi-billion rand agricultural industry faces ruin following the extension of the foot-and-mouth disease zone. Pork, beef and diary farmers in the 20 000 square kilometre zone have been locked in meetings with government officials to try […]

DESPITE charging only R20 a month for school fees, Sundra High School near Secunda has managed establish a computer centre with 13 computers and a tuck-shop run by parents in just three years. This is due, says Mpumalanga education MEC Craig Padayachee, to the leadership of principal Sylvia Nomvula Motloung, who is the first black […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Libreville | Tuesday FRANCE’S Cooperation Minister Charles Josselin has warned African countries that they risk falling out of the loop of international trade and investment, calling for rapid democratisation to retain a share of foreign markets. “The difficulties that some countries are having in building legal and tax mechanisms likely to secure investment […]

AT least 13 people being held in a police station in western Congo died of asphyxiation at the weekend because of extreme heat. Police said 13 people had died of asphyxiation at a police station in the southern oil city Pointe-Noire on Sunday, while a Congolese human rights association said 15 lives were lost. – […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday A FORMER British spy is refusing to come to South Africa to give evidence in the trial of apartheid chemical warfare expert Dr Wouter Basson because he fears the security forces and intelligence community may threaten his life. Senior state advocate Anton Ackermann told the Pretoria High Court that he […]

SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Groblersdal | Tuesday MORE than 50 white children at an Mpumalanga primary school have left the school in the past seven months after their parents protested that black parents were not paying school fees. White parents complained that Laerskool Toitskraal in Groblersdal was struggling to pay its bills after it amalgamated with Tlakanani […]

THOUSANDS of pro-democracy protestors in Swaziland dispersed peacefully after crippling the business centres in the kingdom’s two major cities of Mbabane and Manzini for over three-hours at the start of a two-day anti-government strike on Monday. Large police and army squads surrounded the chanting protestors, but no damage or injuries were reported and demonstrators dispersed […]

A 19-year-old prisoner was shot dead in the back seat of a police car when he allegedly tried to strangle the driver while being driven to a prison in Johannesburg last week. The Independent Complaints Directorate is investigating the incident, which took place on the N4 highway near Belfast, in Mpumalanga, last week. The prisoner […]

SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Skukuza | Monday ONE of the largest conservation areas in Africa, a 35000 square kilometer conservation and eco-tourism area spanning the Kruger Park, Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe and a conservation area called Coutada 16 in Mozambique, has started taking shape. Ministers from the three countries at the weekend signed a historic agreement […]

THE president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, has formed a new government by decree made up of 36 members, some from four new opposition parties. Three small opposition parties present in the outgoing government of former Prime Minister Kadre Desire Ouedraogo, who resigned last week, have retained their place. At least seven other parties are […]

THE National African Chamber of Commerce (Nafcoc) and the South African Chamber of Commerce (Sacob) have announced their amalgamation to form a new company (Newco). Newco said the amalgamation was formalised last week when the governing principles for Newco were drawn up, which would “promote and practice democracy.” It would also be a non-racial lobbying […]

FOUR children have been eaten by leopards in eastern Ethiopia, police said. The children were sleeping inside their houses in the Harari region when the leopards attacked them, national ENA news agency said, citing the police. People in the region have appealed for help from the authorities to deal with leopard “invasions,” ENA said. – […]

SIX men kidnapped two Libyan diplomats in Pretoria at the weekend and demanded a R50 000 ransom, but police arrested all six and the hostages were released unharmed, SABC radio reported. The arrests came after a meeting was arranged to exchange the diplomats for cash, it said, adding that the police also seized four firearms […]

FRANCE Telecom wants to buy US firm Motorola’s shares in Egypt’s biggest mobile phone company, Mobinil, which would make the French company the largest shareholder, a source in Egyptian business circles said this week. Motorola currently holds 18%, France Telecom 23.5%, and Orascom Telecom, belonging to Egyptian businessman Nagib Sawiris 26.1%, with the remainder shared […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Pietermaritzburg | Monday KWAZULU-Natal is staring down the barrel of a potential economic disaster as almost two million hectares of the province were cordoned off over the weekend pending the vaccination of cloven-hoofed animals for foot-and-mouth disease. Just how big the impact could be will be determined this week as teams from the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday THE South African public has been “severely traumatised” by viewing television footage of three black illegal immigrants being attacked by police dogs, according to the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. Speaking on SABC’s Newsmaker programme, the Centre’s Ntsiki Matsilo said some members of the public had […]

CHINESE and Arab oil firms have formed a joint venture to search for petroleum in southeast Sudan, a newspaper reported this week. The Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Gulf Oil of Qatar, and a United Arab Emirates firm formed a consortium with Sudan’s state-run Sudapet in a deal signed at the weekend, the As-Sahafi Ad-Dawli […]

AN anti-crime organisation has threatened to sue the South African government for millions of rands for failing to stamp out rampant crime. The South African Fund for Bodily and Mentally Injured Persons for Hijacking (SAFBIP) said it would use the R110m it hopes to win in damages to care for victims of violent crime. The […]

FOUR people were seriously injured in northern Angola in a bomb attack blamed on UNITA rebels launched on the eve of the country’s 25th anniversary of independence, police said. The attack occurred around midnight Friday in the town of Uije, 300 km east of Luanda. Before the celebrations, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos offered a […]

GRIFFIN SHEA and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday AS the deadline for President Robert Mugabe’s government to obey Supreme Court orders to return the rule of law to the country’s commercial farming areas, a new surge of illegal “resettlement” operations has overrun scores of white-owned farms. Zimbabwe’s government says the ruling declaring its land reform […]

THE Zimbabwean Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) has agreed to settle a debt owed to South African counterpart Eskom and began the process with a sizeable payment in October, Eskom said this week. Eskom said ZESA’s decision followed a day long workshop between the two firms in October where it was decided that the long-standing multi-million […]