Staff Reporter

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 9.30am. SPRINGBOK and Mpumalanga Pumas scrumhalf Dan van Zyl is hoping for a recall into the Springbok rugby side after signing a contract to play for Western Province on Monday. Van Zyl toured Europe with the Springboks last year, but has fallen out of favour with national coach Nick Mallett […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Tuesday 9.30PM. ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe has arrived in Durban for the Non-Aligned Movement summit, after there was some doubt about whether he would attend. Angolan President Eduaro Jos dos Santos, Namibian President Sam Nujoma, as well as the leaders of Rwanda and Uganda are also here, meaning that all the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday, 6.30PM. DETAILS of an agreement between government and teachers’ unions on rationalisation and redeployment is expected to be made public within a fortnight, Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu said on Monday. There are still “one or two matters” to attend to, he said, but is confident that redeployed teachers will […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Tripoli | Tuesday 10.30PM. THE Arab League is to send a delegation to Libya to hold talks on the stalled Lockerbie-bombing trial deal, the League’s Libyan representative, Salma Rashed, said on Tuesday. A diplomatic official said the trip was part of Arab League secretary-general Esmat Abdel Meguid’s “efforts to find a quick solution […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maputo | Monday 10.00PM. THE agricultural development programme between Mozambique and South Africa, known as Mosagrius, has run into a serious financial crisis. Helder Muteia, Mozambican deputy minister of agriculture and fisheries, said the 26 South African and Mozambican commercial farmers who settled in the fertile northern Mozambican province of Niassa in mid-1996 […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Border | Sunday 8.30PM. BORDER came just one point away from beating their illustrious neighbours Western Province on Sunday, after a brilliant comeback from 12-0 down at halftime. But in the end, a bounce off the left-hand upright is what denied them victory, letting Western Province go home with a 15.-14 win. After […]

CHRISTIAN FIGENSCHOU, Johannesburg and LEONARD NDZHUKULA, Vaalwater | Monday 3.30pm. FOLLOWING the murders on Saturday of two elderly Cape farmers, a Northern Province farmer’s wife was attacked by four men who stabbed her 16 times at her Vaalwater farmhouse on Sunday evening. Dina Muller (60) told police that four men, including a soft-spoken farm labourer […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10.00PM. A NEW Sunday broadsheet aimed at black readers, Sunday World, is to be launched in March next year. Joint publishers Times Media Limited and New Africa Publications announced on Monday that the paper will be distributed in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Northern Province and North-West. TML chairman Cyril Ramaphosa said the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Sunday 8.30PM. AFTER being a goal up in the very first minute, Hellenic lost 2-3 to Sundown in their first-leg Rothmans Cup clash in Pretoria on Sunday. The quick goal came when midfielder Bradley August slammed a piledriver into the crossbar, which bounced off into the path of striker Roger Theunissen, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maritzburg | Sunday 8.30PM. IN the first major match in the newly-restored Maritzburg oval, upgraded for R7-million, Shaun Pollock’s SA Commonwealth side romped home against Kwa-Zulu Natal with 307 for five, winning their one-day limited overs match on Sunday by 40 runs. Leading batsman on the South African side was Jacques Kallis, who […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Monday 10.00PM. THE G8 grouping of industrialised countries and the institutions over which they exercise influence have a monopoly over determining policies that affect the entire globe, an economic advisory panel told a foreign ministers’ meeting at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Durban on Monday. However those policies are not neccessarily […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 8.30PM. GOLDEN LIONS scored seven tries in an entertaining match in Johannesburg on Saturday to beat Eastern Province by 43-22. But Province played a spirited game and go home with a bonus point, thanks to scoring four tries. Lions went ahead in the ninth minute with a try by flanker […]

JOHN GROBLER in Windhoek | Friday 1.00pm. INSURANCE companies operating in Namibia are threatening to pull out before the implementation of controversial legislation requiring them to pay increasing amounts of their income on premiums to the government. Sanlam (Namibia) MD Bob Meiring this week called for calm and consultation, expressing hope that sense will prevail […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Sunday 7.00PM. MPUMALANGA Parks Board’s embattled chief executive, Alan Gray, dismissed reports on Sunday that a secret R340-million loan scheme using the region’s game parks as collateral was illegal. The scheme was branded as illegal by finance minister Trevor Manuel on Saturday and is being investigated by the Heath special investigative […]

CHRISTIAN FIGENSCHOU, Johannesburg | Monday 9.00am. TWO more farmers were murdered in criminal attacks this weekend, prompting the Democratic Party to call for urgent action by government to adress the crisis. On Saturday, a retired Spoornet worker, Andre Stander (65) was murdered on his farmstead in Dysseldorp near Oudtshoorn in the southern Cape. Police spokesman […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10PM. THE magazine and newspaper subsidiary of Naspers Limited, Nasionale Media Limited, has bought the financial journal Finance Week and will merge it with existing publications to form a new financial weekly. Finance Week’s operations will be integrated with those of Nasionale Media’s two financial journals, F&T Weekly and Finansies […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Monday, 6.30PM. THE Heath special investigative unit spent four hours raiding the Mpumalanga Parks Board’s head office in Nelspruit on Monday morning after serving search and seizure papers on MPB chief executive Alan Gray. Unit investigators declined to comment on Monday, insisting that their investigation into the drafting of three promissory […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Sunday 8.00PM. FAMILIES of Zimbabwean soldiers killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been prevented from protesting outside President Robert Mugabe’s offices in Harare. Family members said at the weekend that Central Intelligence Organisation agents had threatened them. “We were harassed by youths at night who told us that all […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 9.15am. SOUTH African Airways on Friday morning reached an agreement with its unions, averting a strike planned for Friday afternoon. “The agreement, which has the unanimous endorsement of the negotiating teams of all unions, will be submitted immediately for discussion by the represented employees,” the South African Railway and Harbour […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Sunday 9.00PM. RWANDA will send troops into the Democratic Republic of Congo if the latest peace efforts under the leadership of South African President Nelson Mandela fail, Rwanda has warned. Rwandan Foreign Minister Anastase Gasana, in Durban to attend the Non-Aligned Movement summit, told reporters on Saturday that the genocide of […]

PAUL EJIME, Durban | Sunday 7.00PM. POLITICAL and security issues, including the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo and global disarmament, especially the situation in Asia, have so far dominated the preparatory meeting of the 12th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Durban. The ambassadors’ and senior officials’ meeting, which was opened early on […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Port Elizabeth | Friday 10.30PM. FEDSURE Medway turned on the turbo when it counted most to win the 1998 Lipton Challenge Cup for the first time on Friday. Co-skippered by Pete Shaw and Steve du Toit, and crewed by Ken Venn, Bruce Keytel and Mike Clarke, the Gordon’s Bay Yacht Club team sailed […]

Cecil John Rhodes’s bones are in danger of being tossed in the Zambezi, writes Mercedes Sayagues Few places are as charged with spiritual energy as the Matopos hills in Zimbabwe. Granite boulders twist into contorted sculpture, thorny vegetation is splashed with flowers and 20 000-year-old San paintings adorn caves. This is the place to touch […]

Alex Sudheim On show in Durban Around 10 years ago in Pretoria, architect William Raats was looking at an Australian magazine which featured modern buildings decorated with beautiful Aboriginal art works. He thought to himself: “If only we had something like that here,” upon which he promptly realised that of course we do – and […]

The level of government pension funding may be cause for concern, writes Mike Metelits The level of funding of government employee pensions, along with the method of paying for these obligations, may be distorting how foreign investors look at the level of indebtedness of South Africa, and thus how they rate our future prospects and […]

Maureen Barnes The prime minister of Malaysia – Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, to give him his full title – got into a helicopter on one of his frequent inspections of his country and, flying over a remote area of designated protected forest, he saw evidence of illegal logging. In a fury, he flew back […]

Eddie Koch Conservation authorities are so worried about tuberculosis (TB) in buffalos that they are preparing to shoot thousands of the animals in Lowveld game reserves. Rangers in KwaZulu-Natal’s Hluhluwe Umfolozi Park have already begun culling infected animals. Thousands of buffalo in the Kruger Park have been infected by TB, originally spread by domestic cattle […]

Iden Wetherell He is being compared to Britain’s combative wartime leader Winston Churchill in local media tributes which border on the hagiographical. But whether this proves to be President Robert Mugabe’s finest hour ultimately depends on the outcome of the war he is busy directing in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In a decision that […]

Stewart Dalby Spending it It used to be said that television would see an end to newspapers, but newspapers are still with us. Similarly, the computer was supposed to herald the paperless society. What use pens, then? In fact, pens are very much with us and vintage fountain pens are now highly valuable and collectable […]

You may be surprised to learn that Africa’s stock exchanges have outperformed most other emerging markets in the year to date in dollar terms – and that’s despite war in the Congo, bombs in Kenya and Tanzania and the general perception of the continent as a haven for corruption and chaos. You may be further […]

KZN fraud probe Wonder Hlongwa Senior government officials in KwaZulu- Natal could soon face prosecution for their alleged involvement in a fraudulent cheque scam involving millions of rands. The province’s deputy attorney general, Chris de Klerk, said the police investigation into the matter is finished. Police have told him they will hand him the docket […]

Robert Kirby ONE MIRACLE IS NOT ENOUGH by Rex van Schalkwyk (Bellwether) About a quarter of the way through Rex van Schalkwyk’s very disquieting book I had moments of a curious temporal shift. So much of what I had been reading could well be the Kafkaesque testimony presented to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission of, […]