A NORTHERN Province schoolteacher accused of hijacking a newlywed American couple and their driver has been granted R7 000 bail. His seven co-accused, who include another teacher from Skukuza High School, were remanded in custody. Daniel Mashele, 35, is accused of the hijacking and robbery of American newlyweds Scott and Lesley Newman and their South […]
SOUTH Africa has to tighten immigration laws to discourage false asylum claims and marriages of convenience, says Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Some 35% of the 75 000 asylum seekers currently in the country were not genuine, he said, and current migration laws are so badly abused that 60% of migration applications were by spouses […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT with AFRICA EYE NEWS SERVICE and AFP, Johannesburg | Wednesday IN two separate rape cases, an Mpumalanga man has been arrested for raping his eight-year-old daughter for the past two weeks, while a pregnant girl who was raped by Angolan government soldiers at the weekend has died from her injuries. The man from […]
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Wednesday MPUMALANGA is sitting on a race war time bomb where farm labourers still live like slaves, are denied basic health care and are treated worse than mechanical implements such as tractors, the leading political parties in the province have warned. The situation is so bad in some areas that racial […]
A DIVING safari company has hunted and killed a suspected man-eating shark off Dar es Salaam’s main beach in Tanzania after it allegedly ate five people. The pregnant 400kg shark, believed to be responsible for the death of a 28-year-old student last week, was killed after “a hell of pursuit” off the popular Coco Beach. […]
SOWETO councillor Trevor Ngwane will protest against globalisation in the US and Canada later this month when he speaks in the Challenging Globalisation at Grassroots campaign. The month-long campaign is being driven by Global-South, a movement against corporate globalisation, and aims to generate solidarity for social justice movements in South Africa and Bolivia. The tour […]
A WARRANT of arrest has been issued against Presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana after he failed to turn up for a child maintenance hearing in Mpumalanga. Mankahlana had denied fathering a child by Thalitha Mthethwa nine years ago, but a paternity test proved he was the father. Mthethwa, a teacher, and Mankahlana lived together for two […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday SOUTH Africa’s foreign affairs department has launched a programme to ensure that blacks will fill 80% of the posts in the country’s diplomatic missions within the next 12 months, Business Day newspaper reports. The newspaper quoted foreign affairs director-general Sipho Pityana as saying that at the beginning of the […]
ISLAMIC extremists massacred 14 members of the same family overnight after attacking their home in north-western Algeria as they slept. The assailants raided the house of an agricultural worker in the isolated hamlet of Ouled Amrane, and killed six women, four children and four men, setting about them with axes and knives as well as […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday DISGRACED Cape Metropolitan Council (CMC) mayor William Bantom, who was ousted from his post last month for allegedly watching pornography on the Internet, found a legal loophole to pay himself a “golden handshake” during his final days in office, the Cape Argus newspaper has reported. The CMC remains tightlipped […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday THE Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has refused to comment on a book in which the body’s deputy chairperson, Alex Boraine, published the commission’s proposed findings on former president FW de Klerk. The TRC said in a statement the fact that Boraine had chosen to publish the findings against De […]
THE Anglo American Platinum Corporation has launched a new corporate identity which will see the familiar abbreviation of Amplats fall away. The company is now called Anglo Platinum (AngloPlat), says the company’s Steve Calladine. Its old pentagonal logo has been replaced with a new three-layer triangular logo, described as bold and distinctive, which Calladine says […]
REUTERS, Kinshasa | Tuesday UN HUMAN rights chief Mary Robinson has blamed both the government and rebel groups for what she calls “widespread human rights violations” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Unfortunately, I have taken note that at this moment, men and women are pursued and detained for having expressed their opinions,” Robinson […]
AFP AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday SOUTH Africa has slammed Israel for what it calls the “excessive and disproportionate use of force” which has seen 56 people die in clashes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel since last week. Israel and the Palestinians agreed early today to observe a ceasefire following five […]
THIEVES apparently working for an international art syndicate have stolen 15 priceless centuries-old maps of Africa from the University of Witwatersrand at the weekend. “Following what appears to be a well thought out plan, armed thieves entered the William Cullen Library on Saturday 30 September, minutes before the library was due to close for the […]
NAMIBIA’S agriculture ministry has lifted a ban on the import of live pigs and pork products from South Africa. The ban was imposed on September 18 in response to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. The only restrictions that will remain in place are for cloven-hoofed animals and products from KwaZulu-Natal, and these will be lifted […]
MALAWI has officially switched on its new but controversial 64 megawatts hydro-power project, bringing the country’s total power output to 234 megawatts. The much-delayed $130m dollar Kapichira hydro-project was declared open by President Bakili Muluzi at the weekend. Work had been halted in 1992 after donors withdrew all aid to Malawi to put pressure on […]
THE opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has lashed the government’s decision to release another 7_ 000 prisoners as either a misguided crime-prevention strategy or no strategy at all by government to reduce crime. The DA said the additional release was in effect eroding the independent judicial decision of magistrates and judges. Their reaction follows the Department […]
REUTERS AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday SOUTH African Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni has cautioned against over dependence on the government to increase the participation of the majority black population in the mainstream economy. “If we think that the state is going to drive this process we are making a mistake,” Mboweni told delegates […]
AFP AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday ZIMBABWE’S ruling party has warned that it will respond to any attempt to forcibly oust President Robert Mugabe from power with “violence” following opposition calls to remove him. Nathan Shamuyarira of the governing Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) told state television that his party and government […]
AFP AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Monday NAMIBIA’S controversial home affairs minister Jerry Ekandjo has launched an astonishing attack on gays and lesbians in his country, urging a group of new police constables to “eliminate them from the face of Namibia.” Ekandjo told 700 newly graduated policemen and women at the police training college at […]
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Monday OUTSPOKEN Mpumalanga safety and security MEC Steve Mabona has launched a fresh attack on the magistrate who implicated him in a damning 1997 commission report into drivers’ licence fraud, branding him a racist in an emotional public tirade. Mabona told a specially convened press conference he had no respect for […]
AFTER its recent announcement to dispose of its retail investments and focus on providing technological services, retail group Wooltru, together with Woolworths, is to launch inthebag, an online shopping business. Customers will be able to order a range of products, including fresh fruits and vegetables, pre-prepared meals and groceries from Woolworths using a warehousing model […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Monday THE culling of seals by the Namibian government off its shores has been slammed as cruel, inhumane and inadequately managed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw). Responding to an insert screened on Carte Blanche, a television magazine programme, on the current seal cull, Ifaw South Africa projects manager […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday ANGLO American and De Beers are to start severing their 70-year old cross-shareholding relationship after the rules governing inclusion in Britain’s FTSE 100 index were changed, according to reports. De Beer’s managing director Gary Ralfe said in an interview with the United Kingdom’s Sunday Telegraph that the company would consider […]
UNITED States First Lady Hillary Clinton has donated $1.5m to help resettle and rehabilitate Uganda’s children traumatised by 13 years of war in northern Uganda. Clinton had pledged to help Ugandan children affected by war in northern Uganda when she visited Uganda in 1997, ahead of her husband’s visit a year later. The children are […]
VIOLENT clashes over the weekend between Guinean soldiers and armed groups operating from across the country’s southern borders have left 77 people dead in the latest round of fighting that continues to bring misery to civilians and hundreds of thousands of refugees in the area. In the first incursion by armed groups an “alarming number” […]
Former South African president Nelson Mandela is among the first winners of the new Pan-African Broadcast Heritage.
REUTERS AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday THE World Bank is to formally classify Zimbabwe as one of the world’s worst economic pariahs as its inflation rate nears 120%, with potentially damaging consequences for South Africa and the entire sub-continent. Zimbabwe will be accorded “non-accrual status” for failing to make any payment on its debt […]
Ilda Jacobs, Washington DC | Monday THE only South African pie shop in America is up for sale to anyone who likes to network and wants to keep a finger on the pulse of South African gossip in the US. Hal Hofmeyr, 70, and his wife, Deirdre, opened “Meal-In-A-Pie” in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1996 […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday SOUTH Africa’s mediocre performance in two authoritative reports on risk and economic performance in emerging markets could cost it dearly, as large international portfolio managers channel investments elsewhere in preference to the South African market. In the first report, international brokering giant Merrill Lynch says South Africa’s recent macro-momentum was […]
RETAILER Pepkor is to split into three listed entities, with the Pepgro holding company being unbundled to shareholders and delisted. Chairman Christo Wiese said that for every 100 Pepkor shares, shareholders would earn 150.6 Shoprite shares and 50 shares in a new company, Tradehold Limited, which would hold Pepkor’s 69% stake in British subsidiary Brown&Jackson. […]