Staff Reporter

THE Nigerian government has agreed to sell the country’s only naval training vessel, the MV Trainer, which has fallen into disrepair, Information Minister Jerry Gana said. The government decision follows the recommendation of a committee set up by ministry of transport, he said. The naval ship was originally sold off in 1979 for $785000 to […]

THE Nigerian government has approved a $10bn development plan for the state-run telecoms company NITEL, casting doubt on its place in the country’s slow moving privatisation programme. Communications Minister Mohammed Arzika said NITEL would be asked to provide 625.9bn naira over four years in internally-generated revenue for investment and find an additional 500bn naira from […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe spent more than US $500000 (R3,5m) of his struggling country’s cash by taking a delegation of 47, including his wife and three children, on a trip to the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York earlier this month, according to reports. Quoting from official correspondence the […]

STEVEN MANN AND REUTERS, Cape Town | Thursday DOES President Thabo Mbeki believe that HIV causes Aids? Quizzed about the issue for the umpteenth time in Parliament, Mbeki has again resorted to verbal gymnastics to avoid giving a definitive answer to the question. “The programme of the government in this country is based on the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday GOVERNMENT has created three home-grown mutant superheroes as the stars of a campaign to raise awareness of the effects of alien vegetation, which drain billions of litres of water from South Africa’s reserves each year. Bionic Bug, Mechanical Man and Chemical Can will be the heroes of AlienBuster Week, which […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT AND REUTERS, Cape Town | Thursday DEFENCE Minister Mosiuoa Lekota is to forward Auditor-General Shauket Fakie’s special report on South Africa’s controversial R30-billion arms deal to Cabinet for further action after Fakie recommended a probe into alleged irregularities in the deal. Lekota gave no indication whether he would personally support Fakie’s recommendation that […]

CRIMINALS are more likely to target people who are armed because they want firearms, according to a Gun Free South Africa survey. The anti-gun interest group commissioned the study to determine under what circumstances licensed firearms were lost to criminals. Anthony Altbeker, a lecturer in the policing programme at the University of the Witwatersrand, conducted […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, Johannesburg | Wednesday THE South African Communist Party (SACP) has lashed out at the country’s financial institutions as “commercial oligarchies” which use working class money to finance white luxuries, and urged the government to force banks to invest in black communities. “Commercial banks in South Africa today command enormous financial resources, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT AND ELLIS MNYANDU, Johannesburg | Wednesday ORGANISED labour in South Africa has uncovered the deepest cracks yet in the ruling alliance with the African National Congress (ANC) government, saying it would not be reduced to “rubber-stamping” ANC-formulated social and economic policies. “The relationship is dangerously undefined. Government takes decisions without effective alliance participation,” […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, New York | Wednesday SOUTHERN African foreign ministers have expressed deep opposition to proposed US legislation to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe if democratic reforms and changes to a controversial land reform program are not implemented. In a meeting here with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the foreign ministers from the […]

REUTERS, London | Wednesday TANZANIA has assured major oil companies that its first offshore oil licenses, which have just been launched, will be corruption free and not bogged in red tape. The east African nation, which currently is not a major producer of hydrocarbons, launched the licensing round in Houston last week, followed by a […]

Lunga Masuku and Justin Arenstein, Mbabane | Wednesday INTERNATIONAL pop icon and self-proclaimed Africa enthusiast Michael Jackson has been approached to design and underwrite a multi-million dollar theme park in central Swaziland, former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa has confirmed. Phosa said Jackson had been requested to throw his weight behind the proposed ‘African’ theme park […]

REUTERS, Cape Town | Wednesday THE South African oil industry is just months away from starting to hand over 25% of its assets to black-owned businesses, says Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Mlambo-Ngcuka told a news conference she expected black empowerment deals to cover the whole range of the industry, including the mooted state oil company […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Johannesburg | Wednesday SOUTH African authorities have seized about R40m worth of assets, including a jet and helicopter, belonging to Zimbabwean billionaire Billy Rautenbach, a former boss of Hyundai Motor Distributors. A court order granted the seizure after on the basis of an 18-month investigation which allegedly links Rautenbach to customs […]

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) says health facilities in Sierra Leone refugee camps might collapse under the strain of large numbers of refugees returning back across the border from troubled Guinea. The WHO said a new influx of refugees, spurred by the crisis in Guinea, would be “a step too far” for health facilities in […]

POLICE are investigating whether a missing Kruger National Park field ranger was murdered before being eaten by wild animals. Field ranger Salamoa Mongwe’s torn clothes, identity book, boots and bank card were found in bloodstained grass near the staff quarters on September 4. There were signs of leopard and hyena in the area and bits […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, Johannesburg | Wednesday SOUTH African motorists, already reeling from a series of fuel price hikes which has driven the price of a litre of petrol to R3,66, could be paying up to five cents more per litre from next month, which will put increased pressure on domestic inflation. Strong international petroleum […]

REUTERS, Mexico City | Wednesday A THIRD of the world’s six billion people live in a state of extreme poverty, a state of “brutal inequality” that mars the dawn of the new millennium, says the United Nations. In a preview to a report on world population, the UN Population Fund representative in Mexico said one […]

DEFENCE Minister Mosiuoa Lekota says he cannot rule out racism as a motive for the shooting of a naval officer by a subordinate at Simon’s Town. “It’s not impossible that it was racial,” he said, adding that racism was endemic to South African society. However, South Africans were generally quick to resort to extreme violence […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pietermaritzburg | Wednesday GOVERNMENT is considering compensating farmers for losses following the outbreak of foot and mouth disease on a pig farm at Camperdown in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, which has already seen Namibia banning all pork imports from South Africa and Botswana and the European Union weighing their options. Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza […]

AFP, Johannesburg | Wednesday THE Anglican Church in South Africa has waded into a huge Aids controversy, saying history will rank the current lack of action by the government against the disease as a crime against humanity on the same scale as apartheid. Cape Town archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, the head of the church, issued a […]

GOVERNMENT ministers and industry leaders from diamond producing and trading countries are meeting in Pretoria to fine-tune agreements banning the sale of diamonds used to finance warfare in Africa. The industry, responding to pressure from human rights movements, established the World Diamond Council in July at a meeting in Antwerp, Belgium. It proposed a system […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTand REUTERS, Johannesburg | Tuesday THE Building Industries Federation of South Africa (BIFSA) has revised down the sector’s growth forecast this year because of crime, the weak rand and recent political upheaval in Zimbabwe. Executive Director Ian Robinson said in his annual report that “the single most negative domestic influence on the fortunes of […]

A CAPE Town court has sentenced two Muslim vigilantes to a suspended sentence and three years of community service for the killing of a seven-year-old girl in 1998. The men, Mogamat Adams and Abduraghman Thebus, are members of the vigilante group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad). The two were found guilty of murdering Christel […]

Ongeri John, Dar es Salaam | Tuesday THE opposition Civic United Front (CUF), which lost presidential elections on the semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar by 0,4% in 1995, has criticised police for allegedly siding with the ruling party in a series of public clashes that has left hundreds imprisoned and scores in hospital. CUF presidential candidate […]

STEVEN MANN, Cape Town | Tuesday IT could take up to 20 years before the government realises its goal of providing all South Africans with access to clean water, Water Affairs Minister Ronnie Kasrils has admitted. Kasrils told a media briefing in Parliament while running water had been laid on for six million South Africans […]

CONCERNS still remain about the reliability of local transport, criminal activity at bus stops and ongoing intimidation of commuters in Khayelitsha outside Cape Town, where turf wars between taxi operators and bus companies claimed several lives earlier this year. This is in spite of relative calm having returned to the township, according to a report […]

THE man known as the “saloon killer”, Velaphi Ndlangamandla, who killed 19 people in a five-month reign of terror in Mpumalanga in 1998, has been sentenced to 137 years’ imprisonment. Ndlangamandla, 34, was convicted of 19 murder charges, nine of attempted murder, six robbery charges, one attempted robbery charge, five housebreaking charges (three of housebreaking […]

ZIMBABWE President Robert Mugabe has made a rare concession on his plan to confiscate farms for redistribution to landless blacks, telling one of the country’s biggest corporate landowners, Anglo American, that it could keep sugar estate and cattle ranches that had originally been listed for confiscation. A powerful South African-based mining conglomerate, Anglo American owns […]

AN Egyptian mother has been arrested for tying her mentally unstable son in his bed and leaving him to die, police said. Fawqiya Mahmud Ismail tied her 19-year-old son Hazim Taha Ibrahim to his bed by his arms and legs after he had a screaming fit and caused a disturbance. Ibrahim, an arts student in […]

AN IRAQI delegation has left for South Africa to examine cooperation plans to rebuild Iraq’s electricity sector. Delegation chief Saleh Yussef Qazir, who heads up the Iraqi electricity office, said he would talk with South African electricity officials about “the basis for cooperation over production and distribution of electric energy.” He said the talks would […]

WORK has started on a $10m project to clear earth blocking the flow of the River Nile, using machinery supplied by the Egyptian government. Workers started removing the mass of earth blocking the middle of the river’s main stream, said an Egyptian irrigation mission official. The Nile is the main source of water for agriculture […]