The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for a fourth militia leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for recruiting child soldiers to fight in the country’s devastating civil war, prosecutors said on Tuesday. Bosco Ntaganda was charged for his actions during the conflict in the eastern province of Ituri.
Gold Fields said on Tuesday that four miners had been killed in two separate underground accidents at its Driefontein and South Deep gold mines on the West Rand. Vishnu Pillay, head of Gold Fields’s South African operations, said the company deeply regretted the loss of life and said safety was still their number one priority.
Telkom has introduced a second area code for Johannesburg, which will operate alongside the existing 011 code. "Following an announcement of a move to the mandatory 10-digit dialling, Telkom has recently been allocated … the first batch of numbers in the 010 area code for use within the same geographic boundary as the existing 011 code," Telkom said on Tuesday.
Police in Mozambique are killing and torturing people with near total impunity, according to a report by Amnesty International released on Tuesday. "Police in Mozambique seem to think they have a licence to kill, and the weak police accountability system allows for this," Michelle Kagari, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Africa Programme, said.
An English cricket club has banned its players from hitting sixes to avoid complaints from the neighbours, the <i>Sunday Telegraph</i> newspaper reported. Harrogate Cricket Club in Yorkshire, northern England, has told players they will automatically be given out if they loft the ball towards the surrounding houses.
The death toll from a bomb that ripped through a bus outside the Sri Lankan capital rose to 26 on Saturday after two more passengers died of their injuries, police said. The bomb exploded inside the overcrowded bus, blowing off its roof, as it pulled out of the Piliyandala terminal into rush-hour traffic on Friday.
Central African Mining and Exploration, which owns interests in fluorspar and PGM projects in South Africa, on Friday said it had made a significant coal discovery in Mozambique. The company said in a statement that the discovery was made during the ongoing systematic exploration programme covering the 21 licence areas in the Tete province.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday rejected foreign criticism of his country as international pressure mounted for him to stand down. "Zimbabwe has a history and heritage and it will never be afraid. Zimbabwe is not for sale and Zimbabwe will never be a colony again," Mugabe said at the opening of an international trade fair in Bulawayo.
South African mobile services operator MTN said on Friday that it had not received any "specific proposal" from any company regarding a takeover of the company. MTN was responding to a report that India’s Bharti Airtel is considering a bid for the company.
The recent ruling by the South African Human Rights Commission on the complaint lodged by Talk Radio 702’s Katy Katopodis against the Forum of Black Journalists has to be the most eloquent and devastating testimony that our Constitution does hold fundamentally anti-black sentiments.
Dozens of Zimbabweans were arrested on Friday outside the Chinese embassy in Pretoria during a protest over a ship that attempted to offload weapons destined for Zimbabwe, police said. "A total of 129 protesters were arrested staging an illegal protest. The police asked them to disperse and they refused so, they were arrested," a police spokesperson said.
The South African government was again left red-faced when its indifference regarding a Chinese arms shipment for Zimbabwe resulted in a public outcry and court action, here and abroad.
South Africa’s producer price index (PPI) rose by 11,8% year-on-year in March from 11,2% in February, Statistics South Africa data on Thursday showed. Dawie Roodt, economist at Efficient Group, commented: "I am afraid all these price increases from producers will start filtering to consumers."
World oil prices paused within sight of the $120 level on Thursday after a mixed report on United States energy stockpiles, dealers said. In Asian afternoon trading, New York’s main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in June, slipped 25 cents to $118,05 per barrel.
Heavy fighting between rebels and government soldiers subsided in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday, a day after intense artillery battles left hundreds killed or wounded, according to officials on both sides. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam said they were planning to return the 30 bodies of government troops they captured.
Twenty years into the pandemic, people are looking for new ways to live with HIV and, for some, alternative medicine has become part of the answer.
Global resources giant BHP Billiton announced on Wednesday that it has secured a significant long-term gas-supply agreement with a leading Australian energy company, Origin Energy, to supply gas to south-eastern Australia. The supply of gas will commence in late 2009.
An invasion of venomous spiders has forced an Australian hospital to evacuate patients and temporarily close its doors, reports said on Wednesday. Authorities decided the infestation of redback spiders at Baralaba Hospital in Queensland state’s Banana Shire Hospital was too dangerous for patients, Australian Associated Press reported.
The alleged downing by a Russian MiG-29 of a Georgian reconnaissance drone could be a foretaste of battles to come as Georgia seeks Nato membership and protection from the West, analysts say. The dramatic confrontation in the skies over Abkhazia pitted one of the most modern Russian fighter planes against the unmanned aircraft.
The South African SMME Forum has lodged documents with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa to register its formal objection against Eskom’s application for substantial electricity tariff increases. "Eskom’s application and subsequent conduct amounts to nothing short of business vice and extortion," it said.
The judiciary, the National Prosecuting Authority and the legal profession are important pillars of our democratic order. To perform their respective functions their independence should be respected and protected from the executive, the media and the public at large.
If law firms want to perform well in the charter scorecards designed for the legal profession, they should not only have black shareholders, but also remunerate their black employees well. This is according to a report on the profession’s scorecards, compiled by a technical committee appointed by Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Brigitte Mabandla.
Justice for the poor and more work for black lawyers. If one had to summarise the aim of the recently adopted legal services sector charter in one sentence, that would be it. The charter, hailed as a breakthrough for the transformation of the legal profession in South Africa, was adopted by all the country’s lawyers and advocates at the end of last year.
The world’s biggest steel producer, Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, will buy a 16% stake in South African coal producer Coal of Africa (CoAL), CoAL said in a statement on Monday. ArcelorMittal will pay £66,7-million for new shares "representing approximately 16% of CoAL’s issued capital", the statement said.
While commuters are still digesting last month’s rise in minibus taxi fares of as much as 20%, the bus industry has announced that the latest increase of diesel by R1,28 a litre will add between 3% and 4% to the cost of operating bus services. Diesel costs represent between 20% and 30% of the total operating cost of a bus.
Now that it is virtually certain that the deadlocked March 29 presidential election in Zimbabwe is heading for a run-off, the worrisome question is whether, and how far, the embattled Robert Mugabe turns to scorched-earth campaign tactics — unleashing the military, police, national intelligence and war veterans, with traditional leaders’ support.
Supporters of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF have set up a network of torture camps where they have been assaulting opposition activists, a leading rights group said on Saturday. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said that suspected supporters of the opposition were being rounded up and then beaten.
Two British men were found guilty on Thursday of harassing a local celebrity dolphin during a booze-fuelled late-night swim in the English Channel. Michael Jukes (27) and Daniel Buck (26) were each ordered to do 120 hours of community service and pay £350 in costs at the Dover Magistrate’s Court on the south-east English coast.
Meg Samuelson asks if we can leave open the door to the South African literary house.
<b>ON CIRCUIT:</b> The Croatian Film Festival, <i>How She Move</i>, <i>Mad Money</i> and <i>Street Kings</i>, starring Forrest Whitaker.
The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine asks SA Nobel literature laureate Nadine Gordimer not to attend a literary event in Israel.
Ed Pilkington looks at the feud involving the <i>Sex and the City</i> spin-off tour businesses in New York.