Staff Reporter

LOCAL cellphone manufacturers Alcatel and Malaysian company Telekom Cellular (TCSB) have signed a new three-year contract valued at R760-million for a major extension of their GSM 1800 network in Malaysia. TCSB is one of Malaysia’s leading cellphone operators, which markets its services under the name TM TOUCH. The orders come in addition to the 2500 […]

ZIMBABWE”s three major economic sectors — manufacturing, mining and agriculture — recorded declines in growth in 1998, Ziana news agency reported on Sunday. According to figures released by the Ministry of Finance, they were hit by inflationary pressures due to the plunging Zimbabwean dollar. The Agricultural sector was expected to record more growth, although crop […]

ZIMBABWE’s Forestry Commission warned on Sunday that it will destroy new settlements in state-protected forests, Ziana news agency reports. Reacting to complaints by evicted Molocorm Farm squatters, in the country’s Matabeleland North province, the commission said it will do everything possible to deter people from settling in protected forests. Molocorm villagers claimed that the land […]

THE Italian government has announced a grant of $455000 to an Ethiopian relief agency to help people who have been displaced by the border conflict with Eritrea. The aid, destined for the northern Tigre and north-eastern Afar regions, was handed over by ambassador Marcello Ricoveri to the head of the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission, […]

ZAMBIAN President Frederick Chiluba, due to have arrived in South Africa on Sunday, has postponed his visit indefinitely to allow him to continue consultations with the leaders of countries involved in the Democratic Republic of Congo peace process, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s office said on Sunday. Chiluba arrived in Harare on Sunday morning to consult […]

THE BOTSWANA pula is undervalued, says the Bank of Botswana but not by the 24% against international currencies that a report by Stockbrokers Botswana claims. The bank has also indicated it is unlikely to change its policy of linking the pula to the South African rand. It sells 90% of its manufactured goods to South […]

MOZAMBIQUE’s publicly owned airports company, ADM, says it needs $42-million for the rehabilitation of runways and other infrastructure, according to a recent report on the state of the country’s airports. The chairman of the ADM board of directors, Jose Cossa, quotted in the Sunday paper Domingo, said the company does not have the funds, and […]

A GROUP of some 200 supporters of vigilante group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs and the fringe Muslims Against Global Oppression staged a peaceful placard protest at the Cae Town Waterfront on Sunday, in protest at last week’s police action against Muslim protests around the visit of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. On Friday, at […]

THE North African state of Mali is to sell some of the government’s stake in the ailing state-owned telephone and electricity companies, Finance Minister Soumaila Cisse said on Sunday. He said the government’s stake in Energie du Mali, the local power company, will fall from 97,2% to 51%, he said. No figures were provided as […]

UGANDA Airlines has sacked 72 of its 280 employees, including senior managers, in a cost-cutting measure ahead of privatisation in March, airline officials said on Saturday. The government has been spending an estimated $12-million annually to subsidise the state-owned airline. Four international airlines — British Airways, Sabena, Air Mauritius and Alliance Air — have submitted […]

SEVEN people were shot and injured when two men armed with a shotgun and a 9mm pistol ran through a house in Kraaifontein near cape Town in the ealry hours on Sunday. Police spokesperson Superintendent Wicus Holtzhausen said the two men pulled up in a white bakkie and ran through a house, believed to be […]

Thokozani Mtshali Arrive Alive’s billboard campaign to reduce deaths on South Africa’s roads this holiday season has been greeted with scepticism by many motorists. The campaign was launched 14 months ago in conjunction with traffic departments, the Ministry of Transport and the South African Police Service (SAPS) in a bid to reduce road fatalities. But […]

FORMER European soccer champions Ajax Amsterdam will form an affiliated squad in Cape Town, the Dutch club said on Thursday. Ajax Cape Town will be set up to play in the South African Premier Soccer League, the club said in a statement. The Dutch side, for whom Benni McCarthy plays, is training in South Africa […]

IN a case of coals to Newcastle, buyers from Saudi Arabia are interested in acquiring 141 camels to be auctioned off by the Botswana police next month. Camels have been used for patrolling the Kalahari desert since last century. The Botswana police is cutting back its camel inventory from 171 ships of the desert to […]

Linda Chisholm:A SECOND LOOK If the matric exam did not exist, South Africans would have to invent it. As one of our major social institutions, the matric exam results each year signal whether we are succeeding or failing as a nation. This year’s results were no different. Whether they are a major or a minor […]

Few acts could have been better calculated to ensure that public confidence in the South African Police Service and the morale of police officers plummet than the armed robbery this week at one of Cape Town’s largest police stations. Coming on the heels of the New Year’s Day car bomb at the waterfront, it appears […]

Cameron Duodu: LETTER FROM THE NORTH In its January 6 issue, The Washington Post reported: “United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has obtained what he regards as convincing evidence that UN arms inspectors helped collect eavesdropping intelligence used in United States efforts to undermine the Iraqi regime, according to confidants who said he is deeply […]

Point for point, the two measure up, but the raw statistics are deceptive. What should be clear is that we are not really comparing like with like. Britannica is a text-based leviathan, a mass of information, some of it rather long in the tooth, sometimes too detailed, but often impressive in its scope, though making […]

Andrew Worsdale The Siege was the number-one box office hit in South Africa this week and has grossed R1 979 136. But many Muslim organisations would like the movie banned. Director Edward Zwick’s thriller has been causing controversy around the world. The film revolves around an FBI agent attempting to root out an Arab-American “terrorist” […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 10.15am. ONE in three South African schoolgirls are victims of sexual abuse, according to a study published on Thursday by a non-government organisation, Community Information Empowerment and Transparency. Of the victims, two out of three had never previously spoken of the abuse, the study of 1500 black and white youths […]

AFRICAN National Congress members disgruntled with Mpumalanga Premier Mathews Phosa’s leadership made personal submissions to the party’s president,Thabo Mbeki, during his low-key three-day visit to the province earlier this week. The series of meetings, initially planned as a review of the ANC’s organisational status, reportedly included a series of one-on-one meetings between Mbeki and unhappy […]

Donna Block Share World I have a New Year’s confession to make: my husband and I are personally responsible for keeping the world economy ticking over. This small feat has been accomplished by madcap, non- stop spending. You name it, we’re buying it with cash, cheques and credit cards. We are spending in shops, malls […]

AN investigation called by National Police Commissioner George Fivaz into allegations of perjury against Western Cape Assistant Commissioner Adam Blauw has been completed, Fivaz’s office announced on Thursday. The documentation has been forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions and will be released for discussion after the director has considered the matter.

A REPORT into the August bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa has faulted several government agencies for failing to properly assess the security threat. The report, released by the US state department on Friday, found that the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam had not been provided with adequate security against […]

THE National Party has lost its appeal against a decision by the press ombudsman that the Mail & Guardian was justified in publishing details of a police investigation into its leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk. The article, NP leader in bizarre sex probe reported that a Western Cape criminal, John Hermanus, had laid charges of sodomy […]

Adam Mars-Jones HEAVY WATER AND OTHER STORIES by Martin Amis (Jonathan Cape) Without the story State of England, this would be a dismaying volume to come from the champion British fiction writer of his generation. Unlike his tightly themed previous collection, Einstein’s Monsters, this one brings together early work (two stories from the Seventies, one […]

Emma Forrest First Person Among the strangest remakes in recent years is Cruel Intentions, a teen reworking of Dangerous Liaisons. Just what the world needs: a just-17 version of one of the great pieces of Western literature. It seems like a pathetic concept, the point being that you simply don’t play those sort of cynical, […]

THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON by Jane Smiley (Flamingo) Jane Smiley is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres, and in her new book she returns to rural life in the United States’s Midwest. This time, though, she goes back in time to the years leading up to the […]

FRANSCOIS-XAVIER HARISPE, Abidjan | Friday 9.00pm. THE fragile one-day-old ceasefire in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown crumbled on Friday as rebel insurgents intensified their attacks against positions held by the pro-government Nigerian-led intervention force, Ecomog. Information was scarce on what areas of Freetown are in rebel or Ecomog control, as most phone lines are down […]

Chiara Carter Moves by a South African company to create a free trade zone on a tiny island off the West Coast of Africa have been slammed by environmentalists. West African Development Corporation (Wadco) has won a contract to operate a free trade zone stretching across a third of the island of Principe – a […]

against Aids David Gough in Dar es Salaam Mashaka is the best-known truck driver in Tanzania, and his exploits are famous. He spends most of his time on the roads of East Africa, rarely sees his wife and has a girlfriend in every town. Mashaka became ill a few weeks ago and Tanzanians are holding […]

Chiara Carter and Marianne Merten In the mythology of the Cape Flats’s Americans gang, the six white and seven red lines on the stars and stripes flag represent crisp banknotes stained in blood. Criminologist Don Pinnock says this representation, integrated into the gang’s initiation ritual, illustrates key elements of Cape gangsterism – money, violence and […]