Staff Reporter

AN alleged rapist has escaped arrest after trapping two policemen in a shack and opening a box of bees, police said. The policemen were inside the shack at the Duduza informal settlement near Nigel when the suspect closed the door and opened the box of bees. A 26-year-old alleged rape victim and her daughter were […]

UGANDAN officials have sighted debris believed to come from a German plane which plunged into Lake Victoria, leaving five people feared dead, the national Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said. The light aircraft, flying from Kilimanjaro airport near the Tanzanian town of Arusha, went into the lake on Monday night a kilometre from Entebbe airport. – […]

SOUTH Africa and Belarus have signed a trade and economic cooperation agreement on the first day of a visit by a Belarussian delegation headed by Foreign Minister Ural Latypov. SA Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin said it sets the basic starting point for a trading relationship which “we hope will lead to much more […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Durban | Wednesday ANOTHER 34 cattle have tested positive for foot-and-mouth disease in KwaZulu-Natal’s midlands, dashing hopes of an early end to bans on South African agricultural products imposed since the outbreak of the highly infectious viral disease last month. The latest reported cases of infection came as members of the European Union’s […]

THE flamboyant owner of a Swazi premier league soccer club, Nkomazi Sundowns, has appeared briefly in the Mbabane Magistrate’s court in connection with being in possession of 63 bags of dagga. Charles Mashesha Nhlengetfwa, who is well known for his upmarket lifestyle and expensive cars, appeared in court with two players from the team and […]

A CITIZEN’S group whose support centre for rape victims in Mpumalanga was forcibly closed two weeks ago because it provided anti-Aids drugs free of charge, has dropped a High Court action against the provincial health department. The Greater Nelspruit Rape Intervention Project’s (Grip) Ina Georgala said Grip’s lawyers were instead negotiating an agreement with the […]

BETWEEN 15 000 and 20 000 petrol attendants are poised to go on a pay strike in December after the National Union of Metalworkers of SA declared a wage dispute with the SA Fuel Dealers Association. Numsa’s demands include a wage increase of 13% across the board and a minimum wage of R7 per hour […]

A SOUTH African court has handed down life sentences to the two men who machine-gunned United Democratic Movement (UDM) secretary general Sifiso Nkabinde in January last year outside the KwaZulu-Natal town of Richmond during a wave of political violence. Lincoln Mbikwane and Sandile Dlamini were sentenced for what the court said was clearly a political […]

HIV/AIDS infection rates in the small landlocked kingdom of Swaziland have leapt from 3,6% in 1992 to over 31,6%, the country’s national Aids programme has announced. The Swaziland National Aids Programme (SNAP) warned that the figures are, however, probably understated because women are still contracting the fatal pandemic twice as fast as men but are […]

A THIRD radio personality has received his marching orders from the Department of Home Affairs after being found to have forged South African identity documents. Zimbabwean Tonderayi Nokutenda Katsande, popularly known as Tee Kay, a former presenter at Radio Metro and Channel O, has until Friday to leave South Africa. Last week Katsande’s former colleague […]

TWENTY-FIVE people have died and 40 others were injured when an unidentified armed group attacked a diamond field in Cambulo, Angola, the Roman Catholic radio network Ecclesia has reported. Ecclesia blamed the attack on the rebel Unita, which relies on diamonds to fund its war against the government. The victims are thought to include expatriates […]

SWAZILAND’S constitutional affairs and justice minister, Chief Maweni Simelane, has stunned the House of Senate by defending a man who mutilated his wife’s genitals in a fit of jealousy. Simelane was responding to senate calls for a retrial of 55-year-old Philemon Dlamini, who was let off with a R120 fine by a traditional court for […]

THE Nigerian government is planning to set up a trust fund to use unclaimed share dividends to help develop small and medium-sized enterprises. Following a practice adopted in Britain and the United States and other countries, dividends unclaimed for a number of years will revert to the treasury. It is estimated that some two billion […]

THE numbers of certain wildlife species in tourist-popular northwestern Botswana are dropping because animals are being trapped in fences erected to control disease. The decline in animal numbers could threaten tourism in the area, said a report. Attacks by carnivorous animals on herbivores trapped against the fences, as well as poaching, are among other factors […]

ETHIOPIA and Eritrea’s foreign ministers have begun talks in the Algerian capital aimed at turning June ceasefire halting a two-year border war into a lasting peace agreement. Tens of thousands of people, most of them soldiers from both sides, were been killed in the war, which has displaced more than 1.2 million people. – AFP

SEVERAL people were injured when Swaziland’s armed forces broke up anti-government protests in the capital, Mbabane, and in the industrial city of Manzini. Eyewitnesses said police and army officers disrupted a march on the king’s palace outside the capital led by the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) with teargas and batons. – African Eye […]

A NORTHERN Province welder who allegedly tried to slice his wife’s throat with an angle-grinder has been remanded in custody after failing to make bail. Samuel Munaka, 34, allegedly attacked his wife with an angle-grinder when he suspected she was cheating on him. – African Eye News Service

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Cape Town | Tuesday THE African National Congress has accused the Democratic Alliance-led Western Cape government of using black Aids victims as guinea pigs by giving them “dangerous and toxic drugs” reminiscent of the biological warfare of the apartheid era. Saying the ANC’s propaganda machine had “seriously lost the plot”, the alliance hit […]

JOHN GROBLER, Rundu | Tuesday NAMIBIAN and Angolan security forces are carrying out illegal detentions and torturing prisoners in round-ups along their joint Kavango River border designed to crack down on Angolan rebels, local sources and human rights activists say. Namibian police refuse to confirm or deny the existence of Operation Eagle, and insist that […]

ONE death and a further 11 cases of the gruesome Ebola disease have been reported in northern Uganda, bringing the total number of known infected people in the outbreak, which has killed 55 people, to 160. No cure exists for Ebola, a viral infection which causes fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and eventual severe haemorrhaging of internal […]

PHILLIP NKOSI, Nelspruit | Tuesday SUSPENDED Mpumalanga Parks Board (MPB) chief Alan Gray, who faces 77 criminal charges for allegedly embezzling R2m of taxpayer funds, has been paid his full salary of R44000 per month – over R1,1m – since he was suspended in September 1998. Gray will this week finally face an internal disciplinary […]

MALAWI’S Supreme Court has upheld the results of the June 1999 presidential election here, ending a 16-month dispute over the vote’s outcome. The opposition had argued in its legal challenge that President Bakili Muluzi did not win the election because he failed to win votes from more than half of the eligible electorate. – AFP

AN Inkatha Freedom Party local government election candidate was shot dead after a campaign meeting at the weekend. Justice Thula Mthimkhulu Radebe, 58, was gunned down by two men at his supermarket in Vosloorus on the East Rand. Nothing was taken from the shop. – AFP

A STEAMY sex session between two goats led to the temporary closure of a high school in northern Swaziland last week. The amorous twosome disrupted classes at Timphisini Central High School after running into a Grade 8 classroom to engage in frenetic sex as bemused pupils watched. As the classroom erupted into catcalls and applause […]

PETER CUNLIFFE-JONES, Abuja | Monday THE Nigerian equivalent of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week launches 12 weeks of public hearings probing human rights abuses in Nigeria dating back to the first military coup in 1966. The commission, which was set up last year, has received over 10000 complaints of rights violations. Around […]

SCIENTISTS have successfully tested a natural insecticide against grasshoppers and locusts in Niger. The non-chemical insecticide, called Green Muscle, has no secondary effect on humans or animals, and kills only locusts and grasshoppers – longtime pests for farmers in Africa and elsewhere. It can be applied just once a season, and costs only one third […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday SOUTH Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance has kicked off its campaign for the December local elections with a promise to provide free anti-Aids drugs in wards its members win. DA leader Tony Leon told a 500-strong crowd in Soweto, south of Johannesburg, the party would give anti-retrovirals to HIV-positive pregnant women […]

A FOUR-year-old girl who survived a hand grenade blast in Whittlesea, south of Queenstown, is to be discharged from the Hewu hospital soon. Two cousins, both aged 10, were killed in the explosion. The two boys were visiting their grandparents when they saw the grenade hanging in a neighbour’s tree. The boys boys are believed […]

SOUTH African police are seeking the masterminds behind a heist of 30 tonnes of unrefined platinum worth millions of rands after nine men were caught packing the granular platinum into maize meal bags on Johannesburg’s East Rand. The truck transporting the metal was hijacked during the week. Police found the truck using a satellite tracking […]

A NIGERIAN couple who smuggled two young Nigerian girls into the United States and held them in involuntary servitude in their home in the Bronx, New York has been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Prosper Emeka Udogwu and his wife, Ifeoma Ezeonu Udogwu, had been sentenced to 11 years and three months […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Saturday A ZIMBABWEAN game park which is internationally known for its advanced techniques in training and domesticating African elephant has been listed for seizure in the latest round of land grabs by President Robert Mugabe’s government. The Imire game park, in the Wedza area 100km east of Harare, also has a […]

A SOUTH African diamond miner has committed suicide by putting a stick of dynamite in his mouth and lighting it with a match. Police said Mogakalodi Thetswe, 30, killed himself in his bedroom at his parents’ house in Ganyesa in the North West province. The family thought they heard a gunshot and rushed to the […]