REUTERS, Abidjan | Thursday THE central bank that serves all the francophone West African countries, the BCEAO, has tightened the minimum reserve requirements for banks in some of the zone’s countries, but not in the area’s biggest economy, Ivory Coast. Previously, minimum obligatory reserves of 3% were required of banks in all eight countries of […]
A CAPE Town policewoman has been shot and wounded while getting off a bus in Nyanga, one of the city’s townships where taxi operators have targeted buses in a bitter turf war, say police. The 24-year-old constable was hit in the leg and side, but police say it is not clear whether the shooting was […]
POLICE have used stun grenades to disperse an angry mob in Palm Springs, near Vereeniging, after the local municipality began seizing property from rates and services payment defaulters. Angry residents claimed the Vereeniging municipality was not providing them with services. The municipality’s tough stance was prompted by arrears of about R200m and the fact that […]
THE Archbishop of Ouagadougou, Jean-Marie Compaore, has asked 128 African refugees holed up in the city’s cathedral for three months to move out. The archbishop said in a letter that “the grounds for the hospitality offered no longer existed” and that their stay in the church had “become an additional obstacle to the resolution of […]
AFP, Pretoria | Wednesday COMMUNICATIONS Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has applied for the right to appeal a high court order preventing her from awarding the country’s third cellular phone licence. The minister wanted the Constitutional Court, the highest court in the country, to set aside an interim order blocking her from naming the third licence holder, […]
A SOWETO high school teacher has shot his wife and mother-in-law dead and critically wounded his father-in-law before turning the gun on himself, apparently after discovering he was HIV-positive. A neighbour said Singer Motloung walked into his Meadowlands house, pulled out a gun and shot his wife, Mpho Motloung. Mrs Motloung’s mother, Winkie Molorane, was […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday SOUTH Africa faces a massive battle to exterminate exotic plants which are robbing the country of precious water resources and threatening its biological diversity, in spite of hacking out close to a quarter of a million hectares of invasive alien vegetation last year. According to the Working for Water […]
DEPARTMENT of Correctional Services representative Russel Mamabolo has been fined R2000, or six months’ imprisonment, after telling a newspaper a judge had erred in granting bail to Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre’Blanche. Pretoria High Court judge Johan Els found Mamabolo guilty of contempt of court, and suspended another six months in jail for three […]
POLICE have arrested 13 veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war for blocking highway traffic with police barriers in the north-eastern Mashonaland province, authorities reported. According to the white farmers union, the CFU, the veterans started demonstrating and causing problems in some 20 farms in the region. “They were asking for a bigger share of land in […]
TWO Defence Force employees are being treated for shrapnel wounds after a grass fire caused an explosion at an ammunition dump at the Generaal de la Rey training area near Potchefstroom, the SANDF said. Various ammunition types, including heavy calibre ammunition, mortars and small ammunition types, which were stored in the magazine, exploded due to […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, Johannesburg | Tuesday BRITAIN has warned Liberian authorities that their detention of four television journalists – including South African Gugu Radebe – on spying charges has put the west African state on a collision course with the international community. Foreign Office minister Peter Hain called for the immediate release of the […]
THE first tollgate has been opened at Moamba, on the Mozambican leg of the Maputo corridor toll road, Trevor Jackson, chief executive officer of Trans African Concessions (Trac) announced. The Moamba toll is the fourth of five planned tollgates that stretches along the N4 between Gauteng and Maputo. Jackson said that work is progressing ahead […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT AND REUTERS, Miami | Wednesday TWO Cuban doctors jailed for more than a month in Zimbabwe after declaring their intention to defect have accused the Zimbabwean government of kidnapping them. Leonel Cordova Rodriguez and Noris Pena Martinez, who arrived in Miami earlier this week, told a gathering of jubilant Cuban Americans and local […]
A STALWART of right-wing politics in South Africa, Herstigde Nasionale Party (HNP) leader Jaap Marais, has died at the age of 77. One of the gentlemen of South African politics, Marais died in a Pretoria hospital last night barely an hour after being admitted with what is thought to have been a bleeding ulcer. He […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday THE assault that killed a three-year-old toddler – allegedly for wetting her bed – was the culmination of a series of beatings by her father, the Cape High Court has heard. Nicole Bianca Banthom, who died in August 1998 of extensive bleeding on the brain, had died fearing her […]
NEW estimates of rhino numbers in the wild suggest that their populations are higher than they have been since the early to mid-1980s. The African rhino specialist group of the World Conservation Union said today there are just over 13 000 wild rhino in Africa, up from 1992’s estimate of as few as 8 300. […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday HUMAN rights organisations have expressed reservations about a proposed new anti-terrorism law which allows for terrorism suspects to be detained without trial for up to 14 days, calling it “reminiscent of apartheid-era security legislation.” But Justice Minister Penuell Maduna says he’d like to see the draft Anti-Terrorism Bill, which was […]
THE Umtata High Court granted a R2m forfeiture order to the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) against a Lusikisiki prosecutor alleged involved in defrauding the Bank of Transkei of R4.6m. National Director of Public Prosecutions spokesperson Sipho Ngwena said that the AFU had the South African Police Service’s outstanding investigation to thank. In 1995 the sum […]
THE Nigerian Senate is to pick a new head of the upper house of parliament after voting to oust the country’s third-highest ranking official over charges of corruption. Senators were scheduled to pick a successor to Chuba Okadigbo, dismissed by 81 votes to 14 after he refused repeated pleas to resign over detailed allegations made […]
NAMIBIAN President Sam Nujoma and his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki held talks in Windhoek on Tuesday on detailed development and investment issues, including the Trans-Kalahari highway. “We discussed the nitty gritty of development and investment,” Namibian Trade Minister Hidipo Hamutenya told journalists after the talks. He said the meeting had been “businesslike, not politics […]
A MOB of enraged pupils stoned to death on Tuesday two men who seriously wounded a woman teacher and shot dead her lover at a rural high school in KwaZulu-Natal. Police said the two men arrived at the Isembela High School, near Inanda Dam, about 20 kilometres north of the Durban, with the teacher’s lover, […]
BACTERIOLOGISTS at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in Pretoria are baffled as to what is causing chunks of meat to glow and frighten rural villagers in Northern Province. Head of the bacteriology division Dr Maryke Henton said it was the first case of its kind that she had investigated, and that she believed it was something […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT AND REUTERS, Johannesburg | Saturday THE threat of a life ban from the game is hanging over the heads of South African cricketers Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams after both admitted to a disciplinary hearing that they accepted cash to under-perform in a one-day international match in India. The players made the expected […]
DAVID LE PAGE, Johannesburg | Friday THE country’s largest providers of Internet services to home dial-up subscribers, M-Web, World Online and SAIX, are carrying links to child pornography websites on their servers. The links are part of the Usenet service, an Internet-wide system of virtual bulletin boards on which subscribers can place and respond to […]
A BEAMING Archbishop Desmond Tutu returned home to Cape Town on Thursday, saying he planned to sleep and leave the public spotlight to younger leaders. He was in top form, going down on his knee to tie a photographer’s shoelace and hugging supporters who arrived at the airport to greet him. “It’s great to be […]
A RESEARCH team from the South African Museum in Cape Town has found fossilised remains of long-extinct reptiles, the most valuable specimen being a perfectly preserved skull of a little known carnivorous reptile known as Burnetia, near Murraysburg in the Karoo. The leader of the team, Dr Roger Smith, said the Burnetia skull was found […]
STEVEN MANN, Cape Town | Friday A MAN police say is responsible for a campaign of terror against bus drivers and commuters in Cape Town’s ongoing transport war has been convicted on three murder charges in a trial shrouded in secrecy. In a highly unusual step, the Cape High Court held an in-camera trial for […]
Mark Ouma OLYMPICS In a country where rugby, cricket, and football are the best-paying sports disciplines – and monopolise media attention – it is unusual for anyone to abandon one of the “big three” for a so- called small sport. But a conscious decision to opt for athletics over rugby has produced one of South […]
Howard Barrell over a barrel I have spent several days this week trying to understand the basis on which Thabo Mbeki says Tony Leon is a racist. I have read, reread and read again the speech in which Mbeki did so – the second Oliver Tambo Lecture, delivered in Johannesburg last Friday. I have enlisted […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality has called for a commission of inquiry to probe allegations of illegal sex- change operations, medical torture and chemical castration performed by the South African Defence Force (SADF) on gay men and lesbians before 1994. The coalition, whose call for an inquiry is […]
A new committee of inquiry has been tasked with meeting the needs of the poorest of the poor Glenda Daniels An integrated and comprehensive social security system, to include the government’s current R18-billion social assistance programme, is on the cards now that a committee of inquiry has begun its work. The draft plan has to […]
cut off James Hall A Swazi man who instructed a traditional healer to cut off his wife’s clitoris has been fined R120 by a traditional court – a fine his wife, who almost bled to death, ended up paying. The case has sparked debate about the judgement of conservative elders who hear cases involving abused […]