Staff Reporter

A PROMINENT 49-year-old Northern Province businessman was sentenced to 15 years jail on Monday after gunning down a man who accidentally crashed into his luxury car. Madala Silence Siwele shot Josiah Mohala twice in the chest and head seconds after the accident while in an apparent rage at his injuries and about the damage to […]

A ROGUE Mpumalanga lion’s month-long bid for “a better life” has ended after foresters shot the young male near Barberton. The lion led conservation trackers on a wild chase for over one month since escaping from either the Kruger National Park or Mthethomusha Game Reserve near White River on July 21. The lion travelled an […]

A RARE indigenous plant in Mpumalanga and Swaziland has been named after a Wits University botany student that discovered it. Marc Stalmans (42) discovered the plant, which has been named Hemizygia stalmansii (Labiatae) while researching the ecology of the Songimvelo Game Reserve in March 1994 for his PhD. “I feel honoured and humbled. It is […]

BRYAN PEARSON, Johannesburg | Tuesday EVEN in death anti-apartheid stalwart Govan Mbeki is continuing his fight against injustice in South Africa he has decreed in his will that he be buried in a rundown cemetery to draw attention to the graveyard’s neglect. Mbeki, father of South African President Thabo Mbeki, died peacefully last Thursday at […]

SOUTH African ex-president Nelson Mandela has pledged to visit the Americas’ only communist-ruled country by the end of the year, official media in Cuba reported on Monday. Mandela met with President Fidel Castro at the UN racism conference in Durban, South Africa, and “I promised him (Castro)” the visit, local media reported, quoting Mandela as […]

ZAMBIAN President Frederick Chiluba has asked a local court in Zambia to dissolve his marriage with first lady Vera, his wife of 32 years, a court source said on Monday. Chiluba, through his cousin Besters Chola, applied for divorce in a local court in Chifuba, a small Copperbelt town. He said Vera had initially refused […]

AN elderly chief whose tribe is split between Swaziland and Mpumalanga in South Africa plans to take a 14-year-old Swazi girl as his seventh wife when she matriculates. But the Swaziland Action Against Abuse (Swagaa) organisation has accused Chief Tikhontele Dlamini of the Lomshiyo clan in Low’s Creek in Mpumalanga and Entfonjeni in northern Swaziland, […]

Kigali | Tuesday RWANDAN President Paul Kagame welcomed the announcement that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would hand over to UN observers some 3 000 Rwandan Hutu rebel fighters. Speaking at a joint press conference with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who arrived in Kigali late on Monday, Kagame said: “It’s a step […]

VIOLENCE broke out in Zambia’s Kabwata urban constituency as voters prepared for a crucial legislative by-election in four days’ time. There were no reports of casualties from the clashes involving the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) and the newly formed opposition Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD). “We have arrested one FDD member who […]

Johannesburg | Monday WORLD leaders and the global medical fraternity voiced sorrow at the death of Christiaan Barnard, the pioneering South African heart transplant surgeon who died in Cyprus on Sunday at the age of 78. “His death is a great loss to the country after all the contributions he made. He was also very […]

Harare | Monday THREE South African spies jailed in Zimbabwe have revealed that the former apartheid South Africa government sponsored a small dissident group that sparked the 1980’s civil strife that left thousands of civilians killed in Zimbabwe’s western Matabeleland province. In an exclusive interview granted to the state-run Sunday Mail, the former South African […]

Durban | Monday MOVES are afoot for South African President Thabo Mbeki to take a major role in Middle East negotiations, several sources said on Sunday as charges of genocide against Israel dominated a UN conference on racism in the east coast city of Durban. Mbeki met in Durban on Saturday with Palestinian Authority chairman […]

FIVE members of the same family were murdered on Saturday by armed assailants in Boukaid, near Tissemsilt, some 260 kilometres southwest of the capital Algiers, local witnesses said on Sunday. – AFP

HUNDREDS of vendors rioted in Malawi’s capital Lilongwe for four hours on Saturday, after city authorities demolished their street stalls overnight, police and witnesses said. The rioters looted two shops and fought running battles with anti-riot police in anger against the demolitions. The city officials demolished the stalls in the Old Town section of the […]

TWENTY-nine people were killed and some 50 injured in an ambush on a civilian convoy in northern Angola blamed on the rebel Unita movement, the Lusa news agency said in Lisbon on Sunday. A minibus and two coaches were ambushed by assailants on a road some 50 kilometers from the seaside city of Sumbe, in […]

AMINU ABUBAKAR, Kano | Monday LTHE toll reported missing or dead after flash floods swept through northern Nigeria leapt on Sunday to more than 116, after floods ripped through Jigawa State. Some 102 people are missing, feared dead, in Jigawa State, northeast Nigeria, after water released late Thursday by an overflowing dam swept through towns […]

ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe has left for Libya, where he is attending festivities marking the 32nd anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the Libyan monarchy. Mugabe left for Libya from Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo, where he opened a new mint ahead of the city’s mayoral race on September 8-9. While opening the mint, Mugabe […]

Johannesburg | Saturday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki has agreed to meet with leaders of the country’s largest trade union federation following a two-day general strike, the ruling party’s online publication said on Friday. Mbeki’s decision comes after a request for a meeting by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which launched a […]

Tripoli | Sunday LIBYAN leader Muammer Kadhafi, speaking on the 32nd anniversary of the nation’s revolution on Saturday, said Washington’s inability to catch Saudi extremist Osama Bin Laden demonstrated that “crazy” Western powers cannot deal with the new nature of warfare. Kadhafi (59) also praised Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reforms, and warned Sudan’s […]

EGYPTIAN customs officers have seized 85 200 Viagra-like anti-impotence pills at Cairo airport smuggled in from Syria, in the country’s largest ever such haul. The trafficker admitted trying to smuggle the pills, with a market price of about two million Egyptian pounds (about $500 000), on behalf of a Syrian living in Alexandria on Egypt’s […]

THREE women were charged late on Friday in connection with an alleged international prostitution ring suspected of trying to take 100 women from Senegal to Libya. The Senegalese government said this week that 100 women who were stopped from leaving Dakar to attend a cultural festival in Libya would have been victims of an international […]

A CACHE of weapons has been discovered in the central Angolan town of Cuito near the former residence of Unita rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, the Lusa news agency reported on Friday. Some 60 RPG-7 rockets, munitions, uniforms and food supplies believed to have been buried ten years ago were found on Thursday by workers digging […]

SIXTY-six soldiers and 14 civilians charged with plotting a coup and other political offences in the Democratic Republic of Congo went on trial on Wednesday. The trial before a military court began in the town of Likasi, in southeastern Katanga province, the report said. According to human rights group ASADHO, the accused have been divided […]

Durban | Friday The World Conference Against Racism had to convey the message that the people of the world were determined to unite to repair the “gross human damage” of the past, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. “Nobody ever chose to be a slave, to be colonised, to be racially oppressed. The impulses of […]

ZAMBIAN police on Thursday ordered more than 3 000 people who signed a petition calling President Frederick Chiluba a thief to surrender themselves for arrest. “All those who signed the petition consciously should report themselves to the police and put up their defamatory remarks against the president in writing,” said Lemmy Kajoba, police representative. Seven […]

Johannesburg | Saturday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki has agreed to meet with leaders of the country’s largest trade union federation following a two-day general strike, the ruling party’s online publication said on Friday. Mbeki’s decision comes after a request for a meeting by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which launched a […]

A WARRANT of arrest was issued for an Mpumalanga environmental affairs official on Thursday when he failed to appear in court on fraud charges of more than R30 000. The warrant against Lucky Mnisi of Barberton was withheld however, until he and his colleague, Zama Silinda of KaNyamazane appear in the Nelspruit District Court again […]

DEMOCRATIC Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila on Thursday held talks in Johannesburg with trade officials, Congolese exiles and former president Nelson Mandela and called for closer ties between South Africa and his wartorn country. Kabila, visiting South Africa with 10 of his cabinet ministers, told reporters: “I have come to try to build […]

Johannesburg | Thursday AN outbreak of foot-and-mouth cattle disease has spread to four areas in the Beitbridge district, on the South African border, Zimbabwean state radio said Thursday. The outbreak was first detected two weeks ago in the second city of Bulawayo, 350 kilometers southeast of Harare, but the disease has now been found on […]

BARRY STREEK, Cape Town | Friday THE Democratic Alliance has put Cape Town’s controversial mayor, Peter Marais, on compulsory leave and suspended two DA councillors in the city for their role in the “streetgate” affair. The councillors now face a criminal investigation for fraud, which stems from an inquiry by advocate Willem Heath into the […]

PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday DESPITE assurances to the contrary, one of the Big Brother contestants has not been cleared of all charges relating to his illegal possession of a machine gun and an unlicensed 9mm pistol. This week it emerged that Bradford Wood has a murky history – having in the past been charged […]