THREE alleged Rastafarians are scheduled to appear in the Warmbaths Magistrate’s Court on Thursday in connection with keeping nine children in an old mineshaft. The five girls and four boys, aged between five and 13, were rescued on Friday after police responded to a complaint that there were trespassers at the old Zwartlkloof mine, 10km […]
SCIENTISTS have made a breakthrough that could pave the way for a treatment for the deadly Ebola disease. Researchers from the US National Institutes of Health and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, have found a protein manufactured by the Ebola virus that disrupts the cells that line the blood vessel walls. It is believed […]
FORMER Mpumalanga director general Coleman Nyathi has met with Home Affairs investigators in Pretoria in an attempt to head off a looming deportation order. Nyathi was forced to resign last week after Home Affairs hand delivered a letter warning he would be deported to Zimbabwe within 14 days unless he proved his South African citizenship. […]
British Airways said it had found no evidence of a fuel leak in one of its supersonic Concordes, which made a precautionary landing at Gander, in Canada. The Concorde, carrying 66 people from London to New York — including entertainers Tony Bennett and George Benson — was diverted to Canada two hours into its three-hour […]
SOUTH African Breweries Plc (SAB) said its growing international operations helped to offset a slower performance in South Africa. The company’s international division’s total volume was up 30 percent for the quarter ending June 30, a performance attributed to a good early summer in Europe.”Overall, the group’s financial performance was ahead of the prior year […]
THE High Court in London has rejected various applications brought against Thor Chemicals by about 20 former employees seeking compensation for suffering mercury poisoning while working at the Thor plant in Pietermaritzburg. The court ruled that expert evidence submitted by Thor was admissible after the claimants’ lawyers applied to have it struck out, and an […]
INTELLIGENCE Minister Joe Nhlanhla has suffered a mild stroke and his poition will be assumed with immediate effect by Justice Minister Penuell Maduna. Nhlanhla’s condition was confirmed by a spokesman in President Mbeki’s office, Joel Netshitenzhe, who said Nhlanhla is in a stable condition at a Johannesburg hospital. Doctors attending to Nhlanhla expect him to […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10:15am NATIONAL Sorghum Breweries (NSB), one of South Africa’s first black-owned companies, has for a first time in years shown a profit. Jaishankar Ramchandran, a representative of the Indian industrial group, United Breweries (UB), NSB’s largest shareholder, said a reduction in overheads, increased productivity and capacity utilisation had resulted in […]
Former president Nelson Mandela said the late Kobie Coetsee was a great South African who had not yet been accorded his rightful place among the patriots and had contributed to the peaceful transition in the country. Coetsee, 69, a former Justice Minister who served under both PW Botha and FW de Klerk, died early on […]
THE Department of Trade and Industry has set up a special task team to assist local companies export goods into the United States market. This will kick into action once the new African Growth and Opportunities Act comes into effect. Faizel Ismail, the department of Trade and Industry’s deputy director, said that the team’s task […]
An Egyptian team is traveling to New York to participate in the latest phase of the probe into the causes of crash last October of an EgyptAir Boeing 767, an official of the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority said. All 217 people on board the aircraft were killed. The team, made up of ECAA officials, will […]
ST HELENA Bay could soon have a sponge cloth production plant as part of a project worth R100m. Norwegian company Kongsfoss Norge, is planning to move its sponge-cloth production plant from Norway to the South African west coast town, creating between 70 and 80 job opportunities. St Helena Bay was chosen as the best spot […]
Facing the challenges of a post-apartheid South Africa should be an urgent priority, especially for the media Barney Pityana As a nation we are always at our best when we face a common cause. When we queued together to cast our votes in 1994 or when we erupted as one nation when Francois Pienaar hoisted […]
‘cure’ gay men Howard Barrell Being called a nutter by the defence force that serviced apartheid might, in the eyes of many, be an endorsement of one’s sanity. But, for those conscripts who were victims of the form of psychiatry practised in the former South African Defence Force (SADF), it could be a horrifying experience. […]
against cancer Julian Borger in Havana Clinical trials of a cancer therapy genetically engineered by the Cuban biotechnology industry are due to begin in London next month. It may prove to be a landmark both for medicine’s struggle with the disease and Fidel Castro’s attempts to break out of Cuba’s United States-imposed isolation. Despite a […]
David Beresford Another Country A former American foreign correspondent turned dot-com finance consultant tossed a thought to me over dinner the other day. He asked rhetorically what would have happened if PW Botha and his boys had tried to impose censorship on South Africa today as they did in the mid- 1980s? The question is […]
Thebe Mabanga The shocking incident in which a man allegedly raped a goat to death at the weekend is one of about 70 cases reported each year. Figures supplied by the Department of Safety and Security show the number of reported cases of bestiality between 1996 and 1999 is fairly stable, with the highest being […]
Glenda Daniels A Thokoza domestic worker who filed a sexual harassment complaint with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) is being sued in turn – for defamation – by her former employer. The domestic worker has received a lawyer’s letter from her former employer, a doctor, claiming R100 000 plus costs because she […]
Why is a oe500 lump of titanium shaking the genteel world of golf to its foundations? Richard Williams It’s lunchtime in Nevada Bob’s, and the boys are discussing length. Karl, thirtyish, has just emerged from the storeroom holding a golf club. It’s a driver, the type of club that sends the ball furthest whether you’re […]
Sean Cohen is urging the diamond industry to clean up its act, but has himself had dubious Angolan dealings David Le Page A leading South African figure in the international campaign to ban conflict diamonds himself smuggled diamonds out of Angola as recently as three years ago. At the time the source of such diamonds […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Last week SABC2 showed an hour-long assortment of early work by the Community Film-Makers, a endeavour intended to nurture local television material. Funded principally by the World Bank and the SABC, a group of young producers, directors and reporters are getting the chance to develop. In the first instance it is encouraging […]
South Africa has the most skewed distribution of income in the world after Brazil Glenda Daniels Wage gaps in South Africa are excessive, the second largest in the world after Brazil, recent research shows. A report by the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (Naledi) shows that wage policy is one of the most contested […]
Ebrahim Harvey left field The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has a proud and militant history in the trade union movement. It was organisationally and politically arguably the strongest affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) with an unwavering commitment to socialism. It also produced some of the best […]
Victoria Brittain ME AGAINST MY BROTHER: AT WAR IN SOMALIA, SUDAN, AND RWANDA by Scott Peterson (Routledge) ACROSS THE RED RIVER: RWANDA, BURUNDI AND THE HEART OF DARKNESS by Christian Jennings (Orion) T he United Nations’s recent humiliation in Sierra Leone was a disaster almost as inevitable as the UN experience in Somalia a decade […]
An exhibition of the work of architect Roelof Uytenbogaardt is a nostalgic tribute to South Africa’s most significant urban thinker Melinda Silverman The dark, 17th-century Dutch interior of the Old Town House in Cape Town houses a reverential exhibition of the work of Roelof Uytenbogaardt, modern South African architecture’s master of lightness and space. But […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Pietermaritzburg Regional Court this week dismissed a high-profile rape case against Johannesburg tycoon Jonty Sandler, who had been accused of assaulting a security guard at gunpoint in a Drakensberg hotel. Magistrate Fred de Beer threw out the case on the grounds that the evidence presented against Sandler in court this […]
Peter Robinson CRICKET Of all the mistakes made by Shaun Pollock in his first Test match as captain (and, let’s be honest, he made a few), the worst by some distance was his failure to call the toss correctly on the first morning in Galle. A lot went wrong for South Africa in the first […]
Duncan Mackay ATHLETICS Though officials must fear having to act as peacemakers to Maurice Greene and Michael Johnson in the United States Olympic squad for Sydney, at least they should not have any problems from their runners for the women’s 800m, where for the first time in history one family will fill all three places. […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 10.00am. SHAREHOLDERS in Nando’s, the fast food chain, voted overwhelmingly in favour of a controversial merger between Nando’s Group Holdings and its loss recording offshore operations, controlled by Nando’s chairperson Robbie Brozin. Critics including some Nando’s shareholders said that the deal was designed to salvage Brozin’s interests and protect them […]
Namibia Tangeni Amupadhi Just when it seemed as if cross-border attacks on north- eastern Namibia by Angolan gunmen had stopped, the killing has started again. At least three people were killed and close to half a dozen have been injured in the past three weeks in the Kavango region, following a month-long lull in raids […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo Residents near Johannesburg’s Zoo Lake have teamed up with the city council to try to restore the treasured green belt to its former glory – complete with a multicoloured lighting display at the fountain in the lake. They have formed a committee to raise funds to restore Zoo Lake, which has suffered in […]
Andrew Worsdale TELEVISION I was there. At Granny Lee’s funeral in the Anglican Cathedral in downtown Johannesburg in 1989. As someone remarks in the upcoming documentary Metamorphosis: The Remarkable Journey of Granny Lee, “It was a de luxe state funeral.” I’d met him some years earlier when I used to hang out with friends at […]