Staff Reporter

Jaspreet Kindra Men in rural KwaZulu-Natal constantly said they did not need to change their sexual behaviour because “the big man” President Thabo Mbeki believed sex and HIV/Aids were not linked, according to an Anglican bishop. “That is the message that is destroying human lives across this country, and for which President Mbeki is being […]

Harare | Thursday THE editor-in-chief of Zimbabwe’s only private daily newspaper, The Daily News, and the former head of the paper’s parent company, were on Thursday picked by Harare police for questioning, the editor and other sources said. The paper has been fiercely critical of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s government. Geoff Nyarota and Wilf Mbanga, […]

HANNES DE WET, Pretoria | Thursday THE New National Party on Wednesday night sealed its split from the Democratic Alliance. “The NNP will now finally part ways with the Democratic Party-DA with immediate effect,” NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk told reporters after a special meeting of the NNP federal council in Pretoria. He said changes […]

Bujumbura | Thursday SOME 80 Burundian school children kidnapped this week by Hutu rebels are tired but in good health, one of their teachers who managed to escape the kidnappers said Wednesday. “The children are in good shape, despite being physically tired from walking and carrying the goods the rebels pillaged,” the teacher told Radio […]

MORE than 116 000 legal abortions have been performed in South Africa over the past three years, according to Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. In a written reply to a parliamentary question, tabled on Wednesday, she said a total of 116 611 “terminations of pregnancy” were performed in provincial state hospitals during 1998, 1999 and 2000. […]

Harare | Wednesday ZIMBABWE’S government plans to ban foreign and independent local monitors from observing upcoming presidential elections, the state-run Herald newspaper said on Wednesday. On the recommendation of Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, government plans to amend Zimbabwe’s Electoral Act to allow only civil servants to monitor the polls, the paper said. Last year, non-government […]

NIGERIAN army units on Saturday raided two villages and killed at least three people in the area where a massacre was committed late last month, a local reporter said. Uja Emmanuel, a reporter for the newspaper The Anchor, said army units had raided the villages of Abako and Moor on the border of Benue and […]

Abuja | Wednesday NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo is to present on Wednesday his 2002 budget proposals to parliament, unveiling scaled back spending plans in the wake of recent falls in the price of oil. Obasanjo will announce spending plans for the next calendar year of 844-billion naira ($7,6-billion), sharply lower than the combined total of […]

Cape Town | Wednesday WESTERN Cape premier Gerald Morkel is expected to seek an interdict from the Cape High Court on Wednesday to block the New National Party’s bid to split from the Democratic Alliance. His urgent application is expected to be heard only hours ahead of a meeting of the NNP federal council in […]

A JUSTICE and peace commission formed by Malawi’s Roman Catholic church on Monday protested at what it described as an increase in “state-sponsored violence” aimed at silencing critics of the government. The condemnation came in the wake of church claims that activists of the ruling United Democratic Front, who call themselves “young democrats”, last month […]

Bujumbura | Wednesday HUTU rebels in Burundi on Tuesday kidnapped scores of school children and their teachers, a day after 36 people were killed in rebel attacks and less than a week after the installation of a new power-sharing government, a local government official said. The kidnapping took place early in the morning in Buruhukiro […]

Accra | Wednesday GHANA’S Information Minister Jake Obetsebi-Lamppey said this week that six senior policemen would be charged with manslaughter over the country’s worst football tragedy which claimed 126 lives. Obetsebi-Lamppey told a news conference here that the responsibility of the May 9 disaster at Accra Sports Stadium lay “squarely” with the police. The tragedy […]

JAMES ASTILL, Nairobi | Thursday KENYAN victims of the American embassy bombing in Nairobi three years ago expressed anger at their failure to win compensation yesterday, and dismay at the large sums being promised to victims of the September 11 attacks. The disparity could only be explained if Americans were considered to be “superior victims”, […]

Johannesburg | Tuesday A SOUTH African robbery suspect who abandoned his car during a robbery to avoid capture was arrested the same night when he reported the theft of his car to local police, Johannesburg newspapers said on Tuesday. The suspect has been dubbed the “dumbest criminal” by police in Benoni, east of Johannesburg. Police […]

Mpumalanga | Tuesday RELYING on 1999 election talk, New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk on Monday said the Democratic Alliance would lead supporters in the same way as former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith had isolated whites in Zimbabwe. Van Schalkwyk was lobbying members of the NNP provincial head council at the Eastdene Community […]

UGANDA has imported two white rhinos from a ranch in Kenya in a process to start breeding them in Uganda, Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC) said on Monday. “The two animals, which were transported on trucks from Solio Ranch in central Kenya’s Laikipia district, have arrived at the UWEC in Entebbe and will be kept […]

AMER OUALI, Algiers | Tuesday THE drought-stricken people of Algeria are praying in the mosques for rain as the skies stay desperately blue and water-rationing makes life increasingly difficult. For weeks Algerians have been walking about in summer T-shirts with no sign of winter arriving, their eyes fixed on the clear blue sky in the […]

TEN people were killed and many hundreds fled their homes in weekend fighting between Christians and Muslims in northern Nigeria, witnesses said on Sunday. The fighting broke out late on Friday and continued on Saturday between rival communities in the locality of Gwantu in the Sanga local government area of Kaduna State. Troops had been […]

PHILIPPE BERNES-LASSERRE, Johannesburg | Monday AFTER three months of hearings, a probe into a stampede at a Johannesburg football stadium has heard an astonishing catalogue of errors, omissions and negligence surrounding the death of 43 spectators. Lack of police co-ordination, security guards taking bribes to allow those without tickets to enter, television cameras blocking ambulances, […]

A COUP attempt in the breakaway Comoran island of Anjouan has been foiled and its mastermind, former leader Lieutenant-Colonel Said Abeid Abderemane has fled, a military source said on Sunday. An unnamed military source announced on Radio Anjouan that “the army and loyalist forces are in control of the situation,” after the attempted putsch by […]

CAPE TOWN, Dirk van Zyl | Monday NEGOTIATING teams from the African National Congress and the New National Party met on Sunday to discuss the structures of future co-operation between the two parties. This would be based on principles agreed on at a number of meetings between the two working groups during the past week, […]

SUSAN NJANJI, Harare | Friday ZIMBABWE’S government on Thursday unveiled the troubled nation’s 2002 annual budget, seen as clearly populist, and admitted it had failed to salvage the crumbling economy. Zimbabwe’s finance minister Simba Makoni painted a bleak picture of Zimbabwe’s economy, predicting another year of economic depression. The economy is expected to shrink 7,3% […]

THABO Mbeki will lead a South African delegation to attend the General Debate of the 56th annual Session of the UN General Assembly starting in New York on November 10. Mbeki will be the third speaker to address the General Assembly in his capacity as the chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) behind Brazil and […]

A PREGNANT woman sentenced to death by stoning by an Islamic court in Nigeria has fled her home. Safiya Tungar-Tudu (33) was sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of adultery by an Islamic court in the northwestern town of Gwadabawa, in Sokoto State, northwest Nigeria, on October 9. Earlier this week, she disappeared […]

GOUDINI | Sunday A MEETING of more than 1 000 Democratic Alliance supporters in a packed hall at the Goudini Spa, near Worcester, on Saturday, unanimously supported a motion calling for the NNP federal council’s recent decision to pull out of the DA to be rescinded. The delegates — largely from the New National Party […]

PRESIDENT George W. Bush on Thursday extended US sanctions on Sudan by one year, citing “continuing concern” about Khartoum’s record on terrorism and human rights. The punitive measures were imposed on Sudan in November 1997 by then US president Bill Clinton. In late September, the UN Security Council lifted UN sanctions imposed on Sudan after […]

EMMANUEL GIROUD, Bujumbura | Saturday BURUNDI’S new government, aimed at giving ethnic Hutus a greater share of power, faces a mammoth task in ending fighting, easing mistrust and creating a more balanced army currently dominated by minority Tutsis. A three-year interim administration was set up on Thursday in a major step toward stopping eight years […]

RESCUE workers searched on Thursday for a second day looking for 20 people missing after an accident on the Nile river in southern Egypt, which left two confirmed dead. The accident happened late on Tuesday when two motor boats, one empty and the other carrying around 30 people, collided near a village in the region […]

Cape Town | Saturday ALL eyes will be on Goudini Spa outside Worcester in the Western Cape on Saturday as premier Gerald Morkel and several of his MECs are expected to attend a meeting to drum up support for his line against the NNP’s national leadership. The balance of power in the ruling NNP/DP coalition […]

A RETIRED colonel is training 6 000 militiamen in Nigeria’s central Taraba State, which is locked in a bloody inter-ethnic feud with neighbouring Benue State, Radio Nigeria reported on Thursday. The radio quoted the commander of the 232 battalion in Yola, Brigadier General D. Yaji, as having told Taraba State Governor Jolly Nyame that that […]