They know that most South Africans don’t care about Kosovo, but the Yugoslav community of Johannesburg feel strongly about what’s happening in their motherland, writes Kit Peel It seems there is no stopping the United States president. To divert the limelight from the famous “safe sex” Starr report, Bill Clinton began one of the most […]
THE results for voting on Robben Island were announced by the Independent Electoral Commission at 8pm on Wednesday evening. Of the votes cast, the ANC took 56, the New National Party 13, the Democratic Party 3, the African Christian Democratic Party 2, and the Pan African Congress, United Democratic Movement and Freedom Front one each.The […]
IEC officials in certain areas are under enormous pressure. At the Rotary polling station in KwaZulu-Natal, electoral officer Themba Cele said he feared his officials would not be able to cope with the 8000 people who had registered to vote there. “We have one scanner, one voters’ roll. We just can’t cope with the number […]
A GROUP of European parliamentarian observers on Thursday praised South Africa’s elections and found that they meet international standards. Dr Jan Nico Scholten, president of the European Parliamentarians for Africa, said these elections have set a high standard that any country in the world would be proud to obtain.” He noted that there has been […]
ANGOLA’S communications minister, Hendrik Vaal Neto, says newspapers and radio stations will be closed down if they do not take a more patriotic stance reporting the country’s civil war. Neto says recent news reports insulted the government and discouraged young men from heeding a military conscription campaign. Meanwhile, both the Angolan armed forces and the […]
A BOMB scare at Gallagher Estate in Midrand saw ANC officials celebrating their party’s imminent election victory hastily evacuated. Everybody was ushered out of the building while security forces combed the area. However, the mood in the parking lot of the sprawling conference centre remained jubilant and party members, undeterred by what seemed to be […]
THE African National Congress is neck and neck with the Inkatha Freedom Party for control of KwaZulu Natal, while the ruling party looks set to wrest the Western Cape away from the New National Party. Early returns indicate that the ANC may poll the highest returns in the only two provinces it did not win […]
THE United Democratic Movement is calling for an investigation into alleged irregularities in the counting of ballot papers at Qumbu, in the Transkei. UDM spokesperson Mabiza Mfamela says two prominent ANC members in the area compelled the electoral officer at Lwandlwana to divide the polling station in two, thereby creating an unofficial voting station at […]
MEMBERS of the new Lagos state assembly engaged in a free-for-fall fist fight, throwing punches and hurling chairs around the chamber ahead of its formal opening on Wednesday, all broadcast on television. Tables were overturned and chaos reigned in the assembly. The reason for the brawling was a dispute over the election of the assembly […]
THE national parks of South Africa and the United States have agreed to work together after the director of the US National Parks Service toured several local reserves, said spokesperson for the National Parks, Adel Smit, on Thursday. She said the director of the US National Parks Service, Robert Stanton, visited the Kruger National Park, […]
THE European Union says it will lift all remaining sanctions against Nigeria and resume development aid from Thursday. In a statement, the 15-member bloc says its decision follows the inauguration of the civilian government whose president, Olusegun Obasanjo, was sworn in on Saturday. The EU imposed the embargo in 1995 to protest the execution of […]
AN official with the World Health Organization has urged African countries to improve their capacity for collection, processing and dissemination of health information. The WHO country representative Edward Maganu said in Lusaka on Tuesday while officially opening a four-day training course on the African Index Medicus that more often than not, African countries depend on […]
A SUDANESE government council on human rights on Wednesday demanded a probe into the “murder” of a Sudanese national when he was being deported from Germany, after losing valid residence papers. Amir Ajeib died on Friday on a flight from Frankfurt to Cairo after being tied up. He was 31. “The murder of the Sudanese […]
WEDNESDAY, 1.00P: AMID the instability of South African markets, a positive outlook in South Africa’s macroeconomic indicators has pulled the country up the ranks of the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness report, rising from a low base of 44 to 42. More notable, however, is an assessment of South Africa’s micro indicators, which show dramatic […]
THE PAC is facing a major leadership overhaul following its dismal performance in the elections. PAC president Stanley Mogoba says the party is going to have to rethink its structure, leadership and organisation if the pattern of the results continues. Mogoba says the PAC hoped to get 10% of the vote, but that seems elusive. […]
PRESIDENT Charles Taylor has said that Liberian authorities will destroy all arms and ammunition surrendered by ex-combatants and now held by the United Nations and African peacekeepers. He made the announcement in a radio broadcast late on Wednesday, saying that the decision was taken following consultations with the National Legislature, but gave no details of […]
MICHAEL METELITS, Johannesburg | Thursday 11.30am. THE ANC is on track for a two thirds majority, having breached the 64% level with over half the votes counted in the elections. The ruling party’s figures have been steadily moving upwards on Thursday morning, sharply picking up from 5am until 10am. With rural areas where the ANC […]
A TOP Malawian opposition leader, John Tembo, was ambushed by unknown thugs in his home district in the centre of the country, ahead of elections due on June 15, press reports said on Wednesday. Tembo, vice president of the Malawi Congress Party of the late dictator Kamuzu Banda, was on Monday returning from a campaign […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, London | Thursday 5.00pm GOLD prices fell to a new 20-year low point early on Thursday in a continuing downward movement prompted last month when Britain unveiled plans to sell off more than half its gold stocks. The morning fix on the London bullion market gave a gold price of $263,85 an ounce […]
CHRISTIAN Solidarity International, a non-governmental organisation involved in a controversy over Sudan’s slave trade, said on Wednesday it had freed almost 1400 slaves in May. CSI has liberated a total of 9112 Sudanese slaves since the start of its campaign in 1995. The Zurich-based NGO frees the slaves by buying them. The method has been […]
NELSPRUIT police detonated a suspicious package on Wednesday evening. It was not immediately known is the package was a bomb. An earlier bomb threat outside a primary school in the Mpumalanga town of Lydenburg turned out to be nothing more than a package in the trash that police dogs mistook for a bomb.
THE Justice Department has agreed to transfer all its officials out of the former KaNgwane homeland capital of Louisville after they went on strike last week and staged sit-in protests at courts in Nelspruit. The 60 officials went on strike to protest against regular water and power cuts that forced them to drive up to […]
THE President and Cabinet unanimously agreed to the nomination of Mr Justice Sandile Ngcobo to the Constitutional Court, according to a statement by the office of President Nelson Mandela. The statement responded to media reports of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s intervention to appoint Ngcobo. Attempting to clarify the process, the statement notes that the Judicial […]
IN one of the quickest elections in the country, voting at the tiny Eastern Cape town of Paterson was over by 10.45am. 350 voters had made their crosses by then — the town’s roll only had 210 registered voters. This represents a 100% turnout, although the figure includes voters with ID books showing registration receipts.
THE Independent Electoral Commission has denied SABC radio reports that election material was left unguarded at some polling stations in the former KwaNdebele. Provincial electoral officer, Steve Ngwenya, said on Tuesday that the reports were based on unconfirmed allegations by political parties that ballot papers and boxes had been left unguarded at Mjodjami polling station […]
TUESDAY, 2.30PM: THE International Monetary Fund on Monday approved a $175-million, 13-month stand-by credit to Zimbabwe, which is destined to assist the government in funding its 1998 economic reform programme. Some $52-million of the loan will be made immediately available to the government, while the remainder will be paid at quarterly intervals, subject to the […]
MPUMALANGA health and welfare authorities have set aside R4-million to boost the distribution of female condoms across the province in the battle against Aids, said chief medical officer, Dr Kelvin Billinghurst, on Tuesday. He said the female condom, which is inserted into the vagina and also covers the external genitalia, was initially regarded as a […]
INDONESIA has invited former Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale to monitor Indonesia’s parliamentary elections on June 7, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs announced on Tuesday. The institute said that Sexwale will leave for Indonesia on Wednesday. Forty-eight parties will be contesting what is expected to be Indonesia’s fairest election since 1955.
POLLING stations opened late on Wednesday in several parts of Mpumalanga because more than 300000 ballot papers were not delivered to the right places. IEC provincial media officer Leon Mbangwa said some ballot papers intended for Standerton, White River, Middelburg, and the Lowveld District Council were delivered instead to the IEC offices in Nelspruit. “We […]
ABOUT 3000 people are waiting in voting queues filling the park surrounding Yeoville’s Community Centre where Gauteng’s second largest polling station is based. Voters are waiting on average of four and a half hours to get to the polls. The IEC says the pace is picking up, with voters going into the two voting halls […]
MICHAEL METELITS, Johannesburg | Wednesday 12.10pm. THE Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) claims that several employers, some large-scale, are requiring employees to work on Wednesday, election day. The party alleges that businesses are “conniving with certain political parties to deny workers the right to vote so that these parties benefit from the outcome […]
UP TO 200 people are feared to have been killed in intercommunal fighting in southern Nigeria’s oil-producing Delta region. Reports in most newspapers on Wednesday put the toll of the clashes, which began on Saturday with an attack on the town of Arunton, at around 200, the worst in the area for some time. The […]