Johannesburg | Wednesday THE best is yet to come at the inquiry into the rapid depreciation of the rand in 2001, SA Chamber of Business (Sacob) chief executive officer (CEO) Kevin Wakeford said on Tuesday night. Wakeford, speaking at the Johannesburg Press Club, said the commission so far had been nothing more than an education […]
Windhoek | Thursday A BIZARRE spiny-backed cricket-like insect thought to have lived and died millions of years ago has been found to be thriving on a remote peak in Namibia, scientists said on Wednesday. The find has been likened to the discovery of the coelacanth, a prehistoric fish thought to have become extinct along with […]
Cape Town | Wednesday INMATES of Pollsmoor Prison juvenile section on Wednesday complained to national Correctional Services commissioner Linda Mti that they were being beaten by warders. Mti was visiting the prison ahead of Human Rights Day in a bid to raise inmates’ awareness of their rights. When he asked one group of several hundred […]
London | Wednesday BRITAIN’S International Development Secretary Clare Short delayed a 10-million-pound ($14-million dollar, 16-million euro) aid payment to Tanzania over its controversial decision to buy an air traffic control system, a British daily said on Wednesday. The Department for International Development (DfID) confirmed the payment had been withheld pending a report into whether the […]
JASPREET KINDRA, Johannesburg | Friday MEMBERSHIP of the African National Congress has dropped to less than a third of what it was three years ago, the ANC’s parliamentary caucus has been told. When approached by the Mail & Guardian, ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe confirmed there had been a fall in membership, but refused to […]
Addis Ababa | Monday THE African Union, which is to replace the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in July, on Friday launched an official Internet site at its headquarters in Addis Ababa. African ministers watched as OAU Secretary-General Amara Essy cut the red ribbon inaugurating the new French and English language websites: www.africa-union.org and www.union-afrique.org. […]
Islamabad | Monday FIVE people were killed and more than 40 were injured in a grenade attack on a crowded church in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Sunday, police and officials said. A US diplomat whose wife and daughter were killed in the savage attack was still in a serious condition on Monday, doctors said. […]
SIERRA Leone’s electoral body said on Wednesday that nearly 2,3-million voters have been provisionally registered for May’s presidential and legislative elections. A representative for the National Election Commission (NEC) said a list of the 2,276,518 voters would be displayed at registration centres throughout the country from March 9 to 13 for “verification and objection purposes […]
FIFTEEN people were killed and dozens wounded overnight when two rival Somali factions clashed in the Bulohubey district of south Mogadishu, militia leaders and witnesses said on Thursday. The fighting pitted the militia of powerful Mogadishu warlord Mohamed Qanyare Afrah and those of his rival, little-known Hashi Dhabarey. Dhabarey said that Afrah’s fighters had attacked […]
LACHLAN CARMICHAEL, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt | Thursday US VICE-President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday that weapons of mass destruction, the “tools of genocide”, were the next target in the US-led war on terror. However, his Egyptian host President Hosni Mubarak predicted that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would re-admit UN weapons inspectors, in line with Security […]
Washington | Tuesday OSAMA bin Laden’s half brother told CNN on Monday that the world’s most sought-after terrorist suspect is not only alive, but does not suffer from a kidney disease that would require dialysis. Sheikh Ahmad also said his brother Osama was not behind the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States. “He […]
THE trial of Sierra Leone’s notorious rebel leader Foday Sankoh for a slew of vicious crimes resumed in Freetown Monday with a potential death penalty hanging over his head. Sankoh, the elusive leader of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), appeared on March 4 before the Freetown magistrates court along alongside some 50 other defendants […]
Sokot, Nigeria | Monday AN Islamic appeal court in northern Nigeria is expected on Monday to overturn a lower court’s sentence of death-by-stoning passed against a 35-year-old woman for adultery. The Upper Sharia Court of Sokoto State in northwest Nigeria will hold the hearing early on Monday. The sentencing to death of Safiya Husaini here […]
Lagos | Wednesday THE Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) has signed a long term sales and purchase accord with ENI Spa of Italy for the delivery of 1,5-billion cubic meters of gas per year, an official statement said this week. Under the terms of the agreement NLNG will deliver 1,5-billion cubic metres per annum of […]
Khartoum | Monday SUDAN’S government received its first aid from the governmental Kuwaiti Development Fund since the 1991 Gulf War on Sunday with a $100-million dollar loan to finance a dam on the Nile river. The loan, repayable over 28 years at two percent interest with a seven-year grace period, will help finance the $800-million […]
THE International Monetary Fund on Tuesday said it would unblock $12-million in aid to Sierra Leone, as the West African country achieved adequate results in its three-year poverty reduction plan. “Sierra Leone has made remarkable progress in advancing the peace process during 2001,” said Eduardo Aninat, the deputy managing director and acting chairman of the […]
A SENSE of fatalism gripped Togo on Wednesday, a day after the government deferred long-delayed general elections set for March 10, citing a logjam within the national electoral commission. “We knew about the quarrels, but it’s really bad for the country,” a businessman said in disgust. “They must come to some sort of understanding to […]
LEADING Congolese musician Defao Matumona Lulendo, was charged in a Nairobi court on Friday with obtaining a credit from a Nairobi hotel fraudulently, Kenyan newspapers reported on Saturday. Lulendo, popularly known as General Defao, was charged with obtaining 594 400 Kenyan shillings (about $7 600 dollars) credit from a Nairobi hotel between October 2001 and […]
Luanda | Tuesday REBELS from the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) last week attacked and captured a town in the central Huambo province, in a violation of a ceasefire agreement signed only hours earlier, local radio reported on Monday. The attack on Mundombe left two army soldiers dead, while a ruling […]
Safety and Security Minister Steve Tshwete will introduce a new device on Tuesday that will tell if a person is a wanted criminal within five seconds. The device called the Morphotouch, is a mobile gadget the size of a cellphone. It has a screen where people place their fingerprints and it then reveals their identity […]
KWAZULU-NATAL police have reported the murders of at least two children including that of a 12-year-old boy who was burnt to death in the province since Monday. Durban south police representative Superintendent Danelia Veldhuizen said the 12-year-old burnt to death on Tuesday after his mother’s boyfriend set their Mariannhill house on fire following an argument. […]
Lisbon | Sunday A REPRESENTATIVE for Angola’s Unita rebels has called peace talks with the government were a sham and that the rebels holding them had been arrested, Lusa news agency said. It cited representative Rui Oliveira saying General Abreu Kamorteiro, the commander of Unita forces, and two other rebel generals had been arrested last […]
Luanda | Thursday ANGOLA’S government ordered a halt to its attacks on Unita rebels beginning on Thursday, and said it was ready to jump start a moribund peace deal by offering amnesty for rebel fighters. The announcement issued late on Wednesday follows the death on February 22 of Unita’s veteran leader Jonas Savimbi, who was […]
Luanda | Wednesday ANGOLA confirmed on Tuesday the death of General Antonio Dembo, who was seen as a possible successor to slain Unita leader Jonas Savimbi until he went missing late last month. “General Dembo is dead, but that doesn’t mean the war is over,” said General Carlitos Wala, who led the army troops who […]
Brazzaville | Thursday CONGO’S President Denis Sassou Nguesso has been returned to office with 89,41% of the votes, Interior Minister Pierre Oba announced on Wednesday. General Oba said the turnout in Sunday’s vote, where General Sassou Nguesso massively trounced his rivals, was 74,7% of an electorate of about 1,7-million, but the percentage of valid ballots […]
Harare | Friday THE candidate of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Eng Mudzuri, was elected mayor of the capital Harare in a vote held alongside the March 9-11 presidential poll, state media reported Friday. Harare, like most of Zimbabwe’s cities, is a stronghold of the opposition whose leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, lost the presidential […]
Harare | Sunday ROBERT Mugabe, re-elected president in a controversial vote last week, took the oath of office in Harare on Sunday in a ceremony boycotted by European diplomats. “I, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, do swear that I’ll be faithful and bear true allegiance to Zimbabwe and observe the laws of Zimbabwe, so help me God,” […]
MANUEL MUANZA, Luanda | Saturday THE Angolan army and Unita rebel leaders agreed on Friday to end Africa’s longest-running conflict, less than three weeks after the death of the man who launched the rebellion in 1975, Jonas Savimbi, the two sides announced in a joint statement. It said the agreement was reached during a meeting […]
Former judge Willem Heath to be quizzed on arms deal leaks Paul Kirk and Stefaans Brmmer Auditor General Shauket Fakie’s hunt for government employees or contractors who leaked details of the arms deal investigation intensified this week with confirmation that former judge Willem Heath was to be interviewed on Friday. Fakie confirmed he was overseeing […]
Drew Forrest President Thabo Mbeki is in a suffocatingly tight corner in the aftermath of a deeply flawed Zimbabwe presidential election, which returned Robert Mugabe for a fifth term by a 500 000-vote margin. By late Thursday, more than 24 hours after the results had been announced, Mbeki had significantly not pronounced on whether the […]
theatre Alex Sudheim Backstage, Royal hotel. The swish supper-theatre venue in Durban’s sole remaining five-star hotel hosts one-woman cabaret revue Next Stop. Starring Anne-Marie Clulow, erstwhile member of Ballyhoo and veteran of the stage, the show takes the standard trip down memory lane by including a clutch of showtunes as well as evergreens of popular […]
In “Surge in racist attacks” (March 8), I was presented as being “appalled” by recent incidents of racial violence, “but more cautious in condemning them”. I am appalled by the incidents of hate crime and racially motivated violence that continue to mark post-apartheid South Africa. I also condemn these incidents unequivocally and am distressed that […]