FIFTEEN southern African and Indian Ocean island countries on Friday adopted a health cooperation plan for disease prevention and control. The World Health Organisation said the “health cooperation framework and action plan” was agreed upon at the end of a five-day meeting in Harare of the countries’ health and interior ministers. The WHO said the […]
FOUR teenagers who were convicted of murder on Thursday will be medically tested to verify their claim that they are under 18, and minors in the eyes of the law. The Nelspruit Regional Court found that the four, along with Mathews Thabe (18) murdered Amos Nkosi (46) on March 15 after Nkosi refused to move […]
VETERAN human rights campaigner Ellen Khuzwayo, who was admitted to hospital after collapsing on election day last week, was on Friday still “very ill” and being assessed on a 24-hour basis. Khuzwayo, (84) who was admitted to the Tshepo Themba Hospital in Dobsonville, Soweto, is undergoing a series of tests to ascertain the nature of […]
ONE person was killed and 25 wounded when gunmen opened fire on a group of people enjoying a braai at Hanover Park in Cape Town late on Saturday, police said. Police spokesman Captain Neville Malila said Sunday the occupants of two cars drove past a house in Hanover Park and opened fire with an automatic […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Leeds | Sunday 8.00pm. STEVE Waugh played yet another masterful innings to lead Australia into the semi-finals of the World Cup on Sunday, scoring an unbeaten 120 as his team reached 272 for five to beat South Africa by five wickets in a Headingley thriller. The result means the two rivals will meet […]
AUTHORITIES in Cote d’Ivoire say the on-going privatisation of government corporations earned the state some 280-billion CFA francs. Some 80 loss-making corporations were identified for Privatisation under the late President Felix Houphouet-Boingy in 1991. The government said at the weekend that 54 companies out of the lot had been privatised by 31 December 1998. Privatised […]
THE South African government welcomed the agreement reached yesterday to cease hostilities in Yugoslavia, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Friday. It also welcomed the adoption of the UN Security Council resolution on Kosovo and the decision to resort to political efforts to resolve the crisis.
NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo Monday sacked the head of the state-run electricity company, National Electric Power Authority (Nepa), and three of the company’s executive directors, his office announced. Obasanjo ordered the dismissal of Hamza Ibrahim and approved the resignation of the executive directors of generation, transmission and engineering, finance and accounts, and distribution and marketing. […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 12noon SENIOR Inkatha Freedom Party official Philip Powell is under investigation for treason. The probe follows Powell’s exposure last month of a huge cache of explosives and ammunition in northern KwaZulu-Natal. Powell led police to seven tons of heavy weaponry and ammunition near the IFP stronghold of Ulundi. The arsenal […]
OW CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 7.00pm NEW National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk’s office in Parliament stood empty on Friday afternoon, stripped of everything but government-issue furniture in preparation for its new occupant — Democratic Party leader Tony Leon. The drawers of the imposing wooden desk, with inlaid fake-leather writing pad, yawned open; an […]
SOUTH Africa were still favourities Australia’s odds to win the World Cup were cut to 5-2 from 3-1 following their 44-run win over Zimbabwe on Wednesday. But bookmakers William Hill still made Australia only third favourites to win the tournament which ends on June 20. Latest odds: 6-4 South Africa 9-4 Pakistan 5-2 Australia 12-1 […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kinshasa | Saturday 5.00pm. DEMOCRATIC Republic of Congo (DRC) President Laurent Kabila called late on Friday for total war against neighbouring Rwanda, the main backer of a 10-month-old rebellion against his government. “The Congolese people must arm themselves. The war must be total,” Kabila said on state radio after talks with Namibian President […]
SARAH BULLEN, Cape Town | Thursday 8.00pm JAY NAIDOO has quit as Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting and will be leaving parliamentary politics at the end of his current term of office, the African National Congress announced on Thursday. The ANC said in a statement that Naidoo is leaving active political life due to […]
The winner of the Lillian Hellman/Dashiell Hammet award is not a standard academic, reports Mercedes Sayagues Judged on her writings alone, Dr Patricia McFadden appears to be an African Valkyrie in metal breast-plates, who sees the world through rigid prisms of gender and race. But when you meet her, she is a warm woman with […]
Several familiar faces are missing from the South African team to meet Italy on Saturday – and their replacements have the talent to keep them on the sidelines, writes Andy Capostagno Nine changes and four uncapped players on the bench. You could be forgiven for thinking that Nick Mallett has gone mad. But it is […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 6.45pm PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela on Friday repeated praises he had heaped on his successor Thabo Mbeki, saying the country was in good hands under Mbeki’s leadership. “He has self-confidence. Not only is he competent, he has vision and courage to carry on what needs to be done,” Mandela said in […]
The size of the ANC’s electoral victory need not be an issue of burning concern, writes Richard Calland So, it’s all over. And frankly, thank goodness for that. Elections are a necessary – though often engaging -evil. However, it was not that this campaign consumed so much energy and resources, or even that it was […]
Loose cannon Robert Kirby `The time has come for work.” The muted but somehow resonant assurance with which Mr Thabo Mbeki closed off his “victory speech” at Gallagher Estate; a speech which, uncommonly for any latter-born politician, expressed more by virtue of its restraint than its rhetoric. To even the most gloomy of sceptics, Mbeki’s […]
Marianne Merten Voting is still a tale of two cities on the Cape Peninsula where just a busy highway makes all the difference. In the coloured area of Bonteheuwel on the Cape Flats, residents spent election day at home, visiting friends and making the best of an extra public holiday in the little gardens where […]
John Arlidge and Jamie Doward The Internet, once dubbed the Wild West of the 21st century, is getting its first taste of the law: an electronic sheriff is surfing cyberspace. Big firms, which are losing up to 3-million each a year as workers surf the Web looking for new jobs and downloading pornography, are set […]
John Matshikiza With the Lid Off Response to the saga of my looted home has been huge. Many people have recounted similar misfortunes; most have been amused and appalled at the same time (it is like being in the middle of a horror movie, where the extremity of the situation makes you burst out into […]
Libby Young The two best known “facts” about the Internet are that most people are looking for sex online, and that finding what you’re looking for is very difficult. This, of course, could be true of life in general, but as with life these facts are not always as hard and fast as they seem. […]
Stephen Bierley in Paris Tennis Andre Agassi, the pigeon-toed, scrub-headed Las Vegas American they call “Mr Electricity”, among more derogatory names, staged the comeback of his life to win the French Open with a remarkable 1-6, 2-6, 6- 4, 6-3, 6-4 victory over Andrei Medvedev. By doing so he became only the fifth man in […]
Andrew Muchineripi Soccer They say there is no rest for the wicked, and it looks like we can add Bafana Bafana to the list, despite the fact that I have no knowledge of any misbehaviour by the national soccer squad. A tough African Nations Cup battle with Mauritius has just passed and there will be […]
Aaron Nicodemus It was a bright Sunday afternoon when Tsepo Molemohi (11) went to play his favorite game – soccer – on a field between Central Western Jabuvu and White City in his Soweto neighbourhood. Before he left, he kissed his mother goodbye. Tsepo, with his soft voice and wide smile, always told his mother […]
slowly Five years into the new radio and where is the gender equality, asks Charl Blignaut It’s the Monday morning after the elections and AMLive co-anchor Sally Burdett is having a small domestic breakdown. She still can’t quite believe she got through the biggest political broadcast of the year in one piece. “Uh … Yes,” […]
Wonder Hlongwa Against police denials that there was a political motive in the killing of two women in KwaZulu-Natal’s volatile Richmond area, the families of the deceased insist they were indeed political. The two women, Zantu Ndabezitha (40) and Babongile Dlamini (43), were gunned down in separate incidents eight hours before Wednesday’s elections. The families […]
Howard Barrell Perhaps, more than anything else, force of personality and raw political will explain how Tony Leon grabbed the title of official leader of the opposition. For if any one individual and his image dominated the election campaign – more so perhaps than even Thabo Mbeki’s or Nelson Mandela’s – it was that of […]
You write a novel, the proof copies get passed around, panic sets in. Will they like it? Is it well enough written? Did I do justice to the characters? You wait to hear the cut and thrust of intellectual argument spearing down your literary faults. But no, what I got instead was quiet corner confessions […]
Friday night Matthew Simpson Wi-i-ind down. Another week in the trenches has come to an end and I’m lying on my bed, sucking a cigarette, hoping Shan won’t notice when she gets home, because smoking in the bedroom is strictly forbidden. Right now, though, I couldn’t care less. I’m making plans. In fact, the plans […]
Local hero Charl Mattheus is facing a Russian assault at this year’s Comrades Marathon, writes Michael Finch It was April 7 1996, the day after Russian Dmitry Grishine had almost shocked national marathon champion Zithulele Sinqe at the Two Oceans Marathon. Sinqe scraped home for victory by five seconds, but it wasn’t Grishine’s second place […]
Peter Dickson A single rusted road sign at Nqadu near Willowvale indicates that these are the 20th-century lands of King Xolilizwe Sigcawu, paramount chief of all the Xhosa. But his majesty is not here on election day, preferring to escape to his farm at Kentani and vote there. By midday, at the voting station just […]