President Nelson Mandela will on Thursday spend his first day in retirement on a plane winging his way to a secret holiday destination, a presidential aide said on Tuesday. The aide declined to say where the outgoing president, accompanied by his wife, Graca Machel, was headed. “He will be away for two weeks. Mrs Machel […]
WESTERN Dape Director of Public Prosecutions Frank Kahn has referred a docket in which Foreign Affairs official Robert McBride is charged with being an accessory in an assault case, back to the police for further investigation. McBride and a friend are being accused of assaulting a woman at an escort agency in Cape Town. According […]
ZIMBABWE were one goal up against Bafana Bafana at half-time in the President Thabo Mbeki Inauguration friendly match at FNB Stadium on Wednesday. Hurlington Shereni scored in the 24th minute in the international soccer friendly. Bafana not too ‘Chippa’ 15
STATE prosecutors slapped another four fraud charges against alleged cash-heist kingpin Collin Chauke’s lover, Dudu Nkosi, when she appeared in the Nelspruit district court on Monday. Nkosi now faces 14 separate fraud charges. After she was arrested with Chauke at her Nelspruit townhouse on January 19, she was charged only with harbouring a known fugitive. […]
BRONWYN ROBERTS, Johannesburg | Wednesday 12.30pm NELSON MANDELA commemorated South Africa’s Youth Day by laying a wreath in Soweto, just hours before officially handing power to his deputy Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday. Several hundred people from the sprawling township outside Johannesburg greeted Mandela and his wife Graca with applause, cheers and whistles at the Hector […]
AFRIKANER Weerstandsbeweging leader Eugene Terre’Blanche and one of his generals, Piet “Skiet” Rudolph, have been granted amnesty for their part in the siege of Ventersdorp in which three people died, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty committee confirmed on Monday. Beeld reports that Terre’Blanche was also granted amnesty for two other incidents: the tarring and […]
Johannesburg | Wednesday 1.45pm. HUMAN rights violations continue in post-apartheid South Africa, with frequent reports of deaths in police custody, Amnesty International said in its latest annual report published on Wednesday. Five years after all-race elections ended minority white rule in South Africa, there are “numerous reports of torture, ill-treatment and suspected unlawful killings by […]
THREE-YEAR-OLD Chantine Veldsman, daughter of slain The Firm gang leader Glen Khan, died late on Monday night after she was shot in the head by a masked gunman on Saturday. Hospital staff turned off Veldsman’s life support machine and declared her brain dead at 9pm. On Saturday a gunman walked up to Veldsman who was […]
MONDAY, 1.30AM: FOR months now the South African Grain Information Services (Sagis) and the National Maize Producers Organisation (Nampo) have been releasing conflicting information about the size and pricing of South Africa’s maize crop, information on which the South African Futures Exchange’s agricultural division is basing its maize futures trade. This continual haggling begs the […]
MONDAY, 12.30PM: THE IRISH rugby side silenced their critics when they produced some sparkling rugby at the Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein, restricting the Springboks to a 37-13 victory margin. The South Africans started brilliantly, with right wing Stefan Terblanche scoring the first of his four tries on debut barely four minutes into the match. […]
RUSSIA is ready to sell civilian helicopters and planes to Libya. President Boris Yeltsin in May signed a decree confirming the resumption of diplomatic and economic cooperation between the two countries, which were interrupted by UN Security Council sanctions against Tripoli. Russia will also deliver arms to Libya, where experts are already preparing the terrain […]
THE legislature sitting during which the KwaZulu-Natal premier and legislature members will be sworn in has been postponed from Tuesday to Friday. ANC spokesperson Ina Cronje said the decision was taken at a meeting involving all political parties held in Pietermaritzburg on Monday following an IFP request. Cronje said all parties agreed that the sitting […]
POP singer Brenda Fassie’s former husband Nhlanhla Mbambo appeared briefly in the Johannesburg Regional Court on Monday on charges of attempted murder and attempted car hijacking. Mbambo (31) and his two co-accused, Darius Petlele (28), and Pule Mdluli (35), were arrested on Saturday after an extended chase through the streets of Hillbrow. It is alleged […]
BOTSWANA’S famed basket industry has hit hard times as natural resources are thin on the ground and the weavers, all women, are turning to more reliable ways to earn a living. The North West district is renowned nationally and internationally for the quality of its baskets, but here the raw ingredients such as palms and […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday 12.20pm. DEMOCRATIC PARTY leader and new head of the official opposition Tony Leon took over New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk’s seat in the National Assembly on Monday at the start of the swearing-in of the 400 MPs returned in the June 2 poll. United Democratic Movement leader […]
FOR one week now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been experiencing a water shortage which has forced residents to recycle water from polluted sources. Sources at the Water Production and Distribution Board suggested the water crisis was due to a shortage of chlorine, a chemical used to treat potable water. […]
LIBYAN leader Moamer Kadhafi visited Soweto on Tuesday and pledged to work for African peace and unity. He said he would strive to attain peaceful solutions to crises afflicting the African continent, in “Sierra Leone, Angola and such countries”. Kadhafi, who arrived in South Africa on Sunday, will be among the guests at president-elect Thabo […]
MONDAY, 12.30PM: SOUTH AFRICAN heavyweight boxer Corrie Sanders held onto his WBU title at the Mohegan Sun in Conneticut when he beat Bobby Czyz by a technical knockout in the second round of their fight on Saturday morning. Sanders flattened Czyz three times in the first round, and put him down in the second round […]
THE new R620-million Skuifraam Dam to be built in the vicinity of Franschhoek and Paarl in the Western Cape will add a yield of 56-million cubic metres a year to the current water supply system for Cape Town and surrounding areas. Business Day reports that, unlike past practices of simply building dams when water was […]
MONDAY, 5.30PM: THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange was on the defensive on Monday, with a quiet market holding its breath for developments from Asia, the New York stock exchange, and moves in the local repo rate. Barnard, Jacobs, Mellet dealer Echardt van der Hoven said the market started off on a weak footing, with the Hong […]
AT least 57 more people have died as an outbreak of a virulent strain of highland malaria spreads in southwestern Kenya. A clinical officer at Kilkoris government hospital, says another 30000 people have been affected by the disease in the remote Transmara district, about 240 kms west of Nairobi. A reporter who visited the region […]
TWO people were killed and two injured when suspected UNITA rebels ambushed their vehicles as they were carrying out a polio vaccination campaign 80 kms southeast of Luanda. The UNITA rebels apparently made off with various supplies and vaccines. The two injured people were hospitalised in Luanda. Meanwhile, at least three people, two of them […]
DEDICATED teams of detectives will probe all police attacks and killings in the flashpoint provinces of Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape, Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi announced on Friday. The announcement came as the number of policemen murdered so far this year touched the 100 mark, according to figures released […]
A DEADLOCK in talks in Lome between Sierra Leone’s government and the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) has eased, Togo’s Foreign Minister Joseph Kokou Koffigoh said late on Sunday. He said the two sides agreed in a meeting on Saturday to consider each other’s positions, after pleas from Togo’s President Gnassingbe Eyadema and other mediators […]
OLD Mutual Unit Trusts announced on Monday that it is to temporarily stop inflows into its R320-million Global Technology Fund. This decsion comes after the government’s decision to limit foreign investments to 15% of domestic and not total assets. Old Mutual Unit Trusts’ managing director, Pieter van Niekerk, said that the fund would not accept […]
ITALY have called up uncapped scrumhalf Filippo Frati to replace the injured Matteo Mazzantini on their four-match tour of South Africa. Mazzantini was taken off with a knee injury in his side’s 47-10 defeat by South Western Districts in the opening match on Tuesday. The 27-year-old Frati, of Parma, is the second scrumhalf to be […]
THE African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party on Thursday agreed to form a coalition government in KwaZulu-Natal. In a joint statement the parties said that they commit themselves to a need for the formation of a coalition government between the ANC and IFP. They said they hope “to finalise the talks in due […]
SOUTH African businesses have been hit on Friday morning with new virus called the “ExploreZip Worm” –causing a number of businesses to shut down their e-mail servers to contain it. The new infection can erase files from users’ computers, making it much more dangerous than the Melissa virus, which gained notoriety for its ability to […]
DEPUTY Speaker Baleka Mbete was on Monday re-elected for a second five-year term, weathering a challenge from the Democratic Party — the first in its role as official opposition — in which the party nominated its own candidate for the post. Mbete had already been nominated by fellow African National Congress MP Bertha Gxowa, when […]
HEAVY fighting erupted on Friday in the southern Somali port city of Kismayo, militia and humanitarian sources reported. Kismayo has been controlled since 1993 by warlord Mohamed Said Hirsi “Morgan,” a Marjerten, but it was unclear by late-afternoon if he still controlled the city or if a coalition of rival Marehan and the Habr Gedir […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Sunday 11.30am POLICE at Cape Town’s airport have seized about 30 semiautomatic and automatic guns and several rifles from security staff of Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi, due here Sunday, a South African official said. The arsenal was seized when about 113 members of Kadhafi’s security force flew into Cape Town […]
DEPUTY Speaker Baleka Mbete was on Monday re-elected for a second five-year term, weathering a challenge from the Democratic Party — the first in its role as official opposition — in which the party nominated its own candidate for the post. Mbete had already been nominated by fellow African National Congress MP Bertha Gxowa, when […]