Staff Reporter

MINING production fell 1,0% in 1998 compared to the previous year, Statistics South Africa said on Thursday. However, mining production for the fourth quarter of 1998 reflected an increase of 5,7% after seasonal adjustment compared with the third quarter of 1998. This increase was mainly due to the contribution of platinum mines. The value of […]

MINING concern Lonmin, previously Lonrho, plans to improve the liquidity of Duiker Mining over the next three years as part of the holding company’s ongoing restructuring. As well as rebuilding the listed coal mining firm’s liquidity, Lonmin is also considering expanding Lonplats, the group’s platinum firm. Lonplats saw record profits last year. While permission has […]

INTERNATIONAL rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday reaffirmed South Africa’s BB+ long-term foreign currency rating and said the country’s outlook remains stable. Although the rating is one notch below investment grade, it was widely interpreted as positive by the markets as a possible downgrade had been expected. SA has investment grade ratings from Moody’s […]

BELGIAN Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene will arrive 24 hours later than he was expected in South Africa — meaning he will miss a concert of Belgian singer Helmut Lotti in Johannesburg on Sunday. Dehaene was unable to leave Brussels on Saturday evening as scheduled because of a technical problem with the military plane on which […]

A RWANDAN court on Thursday condemned two people to death and sentenced five others to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity committed during the country’s 1994 genocide, according to legal sources.The court, specialising in crimes committed between April and July 1994, in genocide which left between 500000 and 800000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates dead, handed […]

THE South African national netball team leaves this week for a two-week tour of Jamaica and Britain. The Amablomme-blomme will play four international games in their first tour since the Commonwealth Games last year.

A MAN who covered his face with a farmer’s wife’s panties while robbing the family at gunpoint was sentenced to 10 years in jail in the Nelspruit regional court on Friday. Nkosinathi Sibiya (19) and an accomplice, who was shot dead during his arrest, broke into a farmhouse in Malelane last April while the family […]

BROTHERS Alex (37) and Elijah Ngirazi (23) on Friday admitted in a Zimbabwean court to murdering William Player, a great grandson of the man who founded the John Player tobacco dynasty. His body was found on Thursday, three weeks after he disappeared from his home outside the capital.”We have not positively identified him, but there […]

THE world’s biggest organisation of journalists on Friday called on Zimbabwe to end its current crackdown on the media and demanded that those responsible for the torture of two reporters are brought to justice. The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists said seven journalists had been detained since the start of this year in a crackdown […]

SOUTH Africa’s top 64 under-19 rugby players will vie this week for places in the 26-man squad to play in the IRB/Fira Junior World Championship in Wales between March 26 and April 4. The final squad will be announced on February 22. After warm-up games in March, the team will face first-round opponents Uruguay on […]

THE New Zealand Rugby Football Union has rejected a proposal for an expanded Super 12 competition which would have included a team from the United States. A preliminary discussion paper about expansion of the successful New Zealand-Australian-South African based contest to include the US did not receive a favourable response from the union, a New […]

THE results of the Dusi Canoe Marathon will be amended after canoeist Wayne Volek, who finished third in the race, was found guilty on Thursday evening of doping in the event. Canoeing South Africa’s executive committee suspended him from competition for two years, as stipulated by the International Canoe Federation rules on doping. Volek was […]

A British oil worker and his two-and-a-half-year old son were kidnapped Sunday in Nigeria, a few days after a another British oil worker was taken hostage. Martin Westbury, and his son, were seized by three armed youths in Warri in south-east Nigeria, an official working for Westbury’s employer, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell. The official […]

Chiara Carter A by-election in Lotus River on the Cape Flats this week showed the New National Party still has clout with coloured voters. Although the Democratic Party has begun making inroads in heartlands of working-class coloured voters, it stands little chance of supplanting the NNP overnight. NNP candidate Nur-ud-din Bell won the ward with […]

David Shapshak South African scientists have developed a low-cost, environmentally friendly water- stabilisation system which could revolutionise the way water is treated. The system’s benefits are untold in a country were water is scarce:providing safer drinking water, especially for rural areas, and potentially saving the country a fortune in maintaining the underground water pipes in […]

steel Ben Turok In 1958 when Marius Schoon applied for membership of the Congress of Democrats (COD), the Congress Alliance (as the African National Congress-led movement was then known) was actively fighting to defend its policy of non-racialism against those who wanted to establish the Pan Africanist Congress as a basically anti-white organisation. The ANC […]

Tangeni Amupadhi and Wonder Hlongwa Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal has grabbed the headlines in recent months, but a cluster of nearby villages in the Umvoti valley may well hold the unenviable title of murder capital of the world. Police estimate that since 1996, more than 600 people have been assassinated in what are described as “faction […]

LAGOS police have arrested 13 people and banned northern cattle herders from using a 50-year-old market after a clash with oil tanker drivers this week left several people dead. The ban came after oil tanker drivers threatened strike action. The drivers regularly hold Lagos to ransom by strikes, using the chronic fuel shortage — in […]

TWO Sierra Leonean government ministers thought to have been killed in the rebel invasion of Freetown may actually have been kidnapped by the rebels, authorities said on Friday.”Rumours persist that they are still alive and in the hands of the rebels,” a statement from the president’s office said of Public Affairs Minister, Mohamed Sesay, and […]

Donna Block Cooking up a little something for Valentine’s Day? How about this. A little sport, a dash of sex, a pinch of Wall Street and a lot of the Internet, and what have you got? The recipe for “sexcess”. This is what happened on Super Bowl Sunday when a 30-second advert promoting Victoria’s Secret’s […]

A series of confidential Foreign Office telegrams just released by the British Public Record Office sheds dramatic new light on the political storm that blew up in 1967 over England’s proposed touring party to South Africa. Alan Travis reports It was an urgent secret telegram from the Foreign Office in London to the British ambassador […]

THE Swedish government has pledged R450-million to South Africa over the next three years in the form of a development co-operation agreement. Signed by Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh and South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad in Cape Town on Friday, the agreement aims to fund education, housing, arts and culture and urban […]

There’s a school of thought that argues that the provinces should have limited taxation powers, writes Charlene Smith Amid reports of budgetary chaos at provincial level, the Financial and Fiscal Commission is increasing pressure on the government to allow the provinces limited taxation powers. The commission, which advises the minister of finance on provincial budgetary […]

Emeka Nwandiko Bathed in fluorescent light, Lisa Bornman points a 9mm Taurus pistol at a red bull’s- eye and fires. Despite the debate raging in the country whether handguns should be banned, Bornman takes weapons training to protect herself. She is part of a growing legion of women who believe a gun is the means […]

voting cattle If there is one similarity between the impeachment of United States President Bill Clinton in the USSenate and the campaign for South Africa’s next election, it is that we know what the outcome of both processes will be before they even get under way. While many analysts and members of opposition parties outwardly […]

LEGISLATION to liberalise Mozambique’s telecommunications sector is nearing completion and will be presented to cabinet and parliament for approval soon, the country’s deputy minister of transport and communications, Antonio Fernandes, said on Thursday. The new law will allow Mozambique’s state telecom company, TDM, to commercialise or partially privatise core services by teaming up with foreign […]

Peter Hooley and Hal Austin Television chat show host Oprah Winfrey, one of the wealthiest black women in the world, is to quit because she fears a killing on live television. Winfrey’s claim comes amid growing concern on both sides of the Atlantic at the increased culture of sleaze on some daytime TV talk shows. […]

Howard Barrell: OVER A BARREL Who would want to be President Nelson Mandela? Not me. And my reasons have nothing to do with spending nearly 30 years in prison. What would convince me I could do without international adulation and the Nobel Peace Prize would be the exasperation of having to placate, encourage and cajole […]

Ted Leggett When the Prevention of Organised Crime Act went into full effect at the end of last month, South Africa quietly entered into a whole new era in law enforcement, for better or worse. The Act gives criminal justice officials some very powerful weapons with which to wage their war on crime, but like […]

David Beresford Judge Willem Heath has been compared with everyone from Batman to Judge Dread. With indefatigable energy true to the comic-book tradition, “Hercules Heath” is at it again: staring down Gauteng’s Mathole Motshekga, preparing to haul half a dozen banks – including the Reserve Bank – before the bar of public inquiry, sparking a […]

Angola Howard Barrell South Africa has launched a diplomatic offensive to spur the United Nations and big powers into decisive action to halt Angola’s accelerating slide into all-out civil war. In Parliament this week, President Nelson Mandela called for a new international approach to bring peace to the Angola. At the same time, South African […]

POLICE arrested four men on Thursday night in connection with the murder of six men who died after being locked in a meat cooler truck in Vereeniging. Gunmen overpowered the six men of the JP Meat enterprise last week and locked them in a cooler truck where they suffocated. The robbers fled with a truck […]