Staff Reporter

London-listed financial services and life assurance giant Old Mutual announced on Tuesday that Old Mutual South Africa has made an offer to acquire the remaining 49% of its 51%-held subsidiary Mutual & Federal Insurance Company for R17,50 per share.

South Africa has imported a total of 246 268 tons of wheat for domestic consumption since October 4, the beginning of the 2003/04 marketing year, the South African Grain Information Service (Sagis) reported on Tuesday.

Entries for the 2003 Telkom ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Journalist of the Year Awards have closed, judges have narrowed down the field and the industry is poised for the announcement of winners to be made at a prestigious gala awards evening in Sandton on February 24 2004.

Museums aren’t the frightening places you might think they are. Thanks to the Net, you can go browsing and get a taste of what culture and history really look like. Try the International Gallery of Stewardess Uniforms. Or perhaps Amish buggy plates or Belly Dancing LP Covers. Ian Fraser brings the worldwide weird to you.

Harare used to be abuzz. Especially compared to the sleepier towns in the region, like Lusaka and Blantyre, for which it used to be something of a Mecca, second only to Johannesburg. That was in the days when it was called Salisbury.

Public service announcements featuring three “jive-talking, gaffe-prone condoms” that were produced by a group of volunteers from various Ottawa, Canada, production companies are airing up to 20 times a day on South African television, the <i>Ottawa Citizen reports</i>.

Every time I visit England I’m delighted at how much further English popular taste has degraded. It’s most encouraging to see the “dumbing down” of England is keeping to schedule, that the pandering to what the producers and proprietors no doubt believe is the generalised bog-level intelligence of their viewers, listeners and readers is kept on target.

Donors have pledged â,¬810-million ($1,03-billion) to fund the reconstruction of Burundi over three years, the Belgian minister for cooperation and development, Marc Verwilghen, announced on Thursday at the end of the fourth Forum of Partners for Development in Burundi.

Associate editor Ferial Haffajee is to become the new editor of the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>, it was announced on Thursday. Haffajee was a trainee at the newspaper in 1991. Haffajee (36) takes over from Mondli Makhanya, who is to take up the post of editor at the <i>Sunday Times</i> in February.

Whereas the job of the media is generally to look outwards, the SABC is in the often unenviable position of having the glare pointed squarely at Auckland Park. So it was this week. The corporation was in hot water with opposition parties for its decision to cover the African National Congress election manifesto launch jamboree in all its green, black and gold glory.

I wouldn’t recommend a weekend at the Harare Central Hotel if you are proposing to visit Zimbabwe. Some of the staff can be over-attentive and the room service leaves a lot to be desired. Mosquitoes nibbled at our bare feet all night while cockroaches the size of rats scuttled about. The toilets? Don’t even mention the toilets.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the Angolan government to manage oil revenues better and allow for greater fiscal transparency. "More than $4-billion in state oil revenue disappeared from Angolan government coffers from 1997 to 2002, roughly equal to the entire sum the government spent on all social programmes in the same period," HRW said on Tuesday.

An innovative multimanaged alternative investment strategies fund, designed to protect investors from some of the underlying risks of hedge funds, has been launched in South Africa. The Investment Solutions Multi-Manager Alternative Investment Strategies Fund is the first local fund of its kind.

While out for dinner recently, my brother said something unusually strange. He told us that an odd thing had happened to him, many years ago, at the tender age of 16 … And that set me thinking about fantasies. Is there a correlation between our fantasies and our actual desires?

Long before the first United States-bound travellers had their fingerprints scanned by the US Department of Homeland Security, farm workers in rural South Africa were using biometrics to clock in at work each morning. Workers on a grape farm near Upington now have their fingerprints scanned when they arrive and leave work each day.

Iden Wetherell, editor of the <i>Zimbabwe Independent</i>, is expected to appear in court on Monday following his arrest on Saturday evening for apparently "insulting" President Robert Mugabe.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=29267">Wetherell writes for M&G Online</b></a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=29475">Court unbans Zim paper, again</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=29428">Zimbabwe ruins African unity</a><br><li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=29480&t=1">Famine in Zimbabwe</a><br>

Eyes wide empty: International newspaper The Onion reports that the torture instruments of Saddam Hussein’s two dead sons, Uday and Qusay, are to be sold at auction in London. It is believed that a bitter ‘inside” fight has taken place between the leading auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christies, for the instruments. The favourite torture instruments […]

Olympics too stale: Palace Gate Scaling is being considered as a new sport to be recognised by the International Olympic Committee. This comes after a protester managed to scale the formidable iron gates in front of Buckingham Palace. A spokesman for Update the Olympics, a lobby group intent on bringing topical relevance to the games, […]