FOUR survivors of a deadly ambush last week by Angola’s Unita rebels of a passenger train east of Luanda have died in hospital of their wounds, a medical doctor said on Thursday. Their deaths bring to 256 the number of people killed in the attack. More than 160 people were wounded. Doctor Waldemiro Diogo said […]
Paris | Saturday ACCORDING to information gathered by Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF – Reporters Without Borders), members of Malawi’s youth league of the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) assaulted Brian Ligomeka, correspondent of the South-African agency African Eye News Service, on 12 August 2001. The journalist was covering the arrival of foreign heads of state […]
Harare | Saturday ZIMBABWE may declare a state of emergency if a bill is passed in Washington that threatens sanctions against the country, Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge said on Friday. He told state television in an interview that Zimbabwe would campaign against the bill, but if it failed to stop its passage into law, a […]
FORMER South African president Nelson Mandela will continue radiation treatment for his prostate cancer after considering all options, his office said on Wednesday. Mandela’s representative Zelda la Grange said in a statement that two physicians, a radiotherapist and five urologists — including Mandela’s own urologist — met on August 3 to review the 83-year-old’s treatment. […]
MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday A BILL of at least R220 000 – excluding legal fees of tens of thousands of rands – is expected for the two official probes into whether public submissions on the renaming of two Cape Town streets might have been manipulated. The costs for the current inquiry by corruption […]
SURVIVAL International, a world-wide organisation supporting tribal peoples, has intensified its battle with the government of Botswana over the situation of the Basarwa. In their annual report, published to coincide with the United Nations’ Day for Indigenous Peoples (9 August), the organisation has identified the most vulnerable tribe in each of three continents; Africa, Asia […]
SULPHURIC acid has accidentally spilled into the municipal water reservoir of Kitwe, Zambia’s second largest city in the northern Copperbelt mining region, a municipal official said on Wednesday. The spillage occurred after a train transporting the chemical derailed. Municipal authorities in Kitwe, 400 kilometres north of Lusaka, have shut down the water supplies to the […]
NO less than 52% of severely injured patients admitted to the casualty section of the Johannesburg Hospital are HIV, The Citizen reported on Thursday. The figures were collected by Professor Ken Boffard, on the basis of blind sampling of blood drawn from patients over the last year. The figures cannot be accurately extrapolated to the […]
Harare | Saturday ZIMBABWE may declare a state of emergency if a bill is passed in Washington that threatens sanctions against the country, Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge said on Friday. He told state television in an interview that Zimbabwe would campaign against the bill, but if it failed to stop its passage into law, a […]
POLICE in Botswana’s Thamaga Village are investigating an incident case in which a 40-year-old pastor of the Botswana Babirwa New Jerusalem Church drowned while baptising his followers. It is reported that the congregation had a night vigil the day before and the following morning went to a nearby river for a baptism ceremony. The pastor, […]
Lagos | Friday VIGILANTES in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos crucified and then set ablaze a suspected robber, in the most grisly demonstration of violent vigilantism, the newspaper Vanguard reported on Friday. Akanni Arikuyeri, a suspected armed robber, was seized and nailed to a cross by the members of the anti-crime vigilante group, the Odua Peoples […]
A MOZAMBICAN woman and her three-year-old child who illegally tried to enter South Africa through its largest game reserve were trampled to death by an elephant, a Kruger National Park representative said on Thursday. William Mabasa said the woman and child were part of a group of about 14 Mozambicans who tried to get into […]
PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday FROM June 1 last year to July 4 this year, 106 police were dismissed from the South African Police Service in KwaZulu-Natal. Seven of them were convicted of murder. These figures were released last week by the minister of safety and security in response to a question in Parliament about […]
CRICKET Peter Robinson Along with soaring sales of pool chemicals and taxi blockades (although this last tends to be an event for all seasons), one of the rites of the South African spring is to watch the national cricket selectors trip over their own feet as they stride purposefully towards the new summer. Two years […]
About 98% of the Cape Town Opera choir is black, writes Barry Streek Opera in South Africa, especially in the “racist” Western Cape, has suddenly gone black. In the process, the image of opera as elite, Eurocentric art and entertainment has all but disappeared. Today 98% of the Cape Town Opera choir is black, as […]
Social and regional alliances are some of the strategies that will be discussed at a labour conference next week focusing on how to deal with the problem of globalisation and the changing nature of work. The conference is entitled Challenges Facing Labour in Southern Africa: Marginalisation or Revitalisation?. Topics for discussion include: labour in a […]
A NEW oil pipeline fire is threatening to force Anglo-Dutch oil group Royal Dutch/Shell to cut exports by 200 000 barrels per day, a newspaper report said on Friday. The newspaper This Day quoted Shell representative Precious Omoku as saying production was threatened by the fire which Shell blamed on vandalism of its oil pipelines […]
analysis Neeran Naidoo The impact of telecommunications and information and communication technologies (ICT) on economies, countries and societies is speculative in nature. Much of the current analysis is pinned on case studies. There is little evidence from which to predict the outcome of the trend towards knowledge economies apart from the fact that we need […]
President Robert Mugabe’s speech on Saturday made it quite clear that he is becoming increasingly willing to resort to anarchy and violence in order to gain political popularity and retain power. His warning to farmers that they must not retaliate or expect police protection when confronted with violence by axe-wielding mobs of thugs bent on […]
Q&A: Nicky newman Matthew Krouse Johannesburg comes under fire in The Architecture of Fear, a frightening documentary expounding every city-dwellers worst fears. Unwittingly, it’s a dark comedy of paranoia. Well-known individuals, such as photographer David Goldblatt and confidence coach Mike Lipkin, as well as a host of suburban reprobates reflect on the way Jo’burg fortifies […]
KHADIJA MAGARDIE, Johannesburg | Friday THE frenetic pace of activity in Geneva around the finalisation of the draft declaration for the World Conference against Racism is being matched by those working around the clock to touch up the controversial “unofficial agenda”. As organisers limber up for the official conference, various NGOs, individuals and groups have […]
channel vision Robert Kirby Speaking on last Sunday’s Carte Blanche, visiting BBC interviewer Tim Sebastian recalled a comment once made to him by Northern Ireland mandarin Gerry Adams. “How long have you been in Northern Ireland?” asked Adams, after being interviewed by Sebastian. “Since this morning,” said Sebastian. “It shows,” said Adams. Last week’s series […]
The Zimbabwean army is to be deployed on white-owned farms to “speed up” redistribution of land and to “protect” black settlers from violent farmers, says the government. Land Minister Joseph Made told the state-owned Herald newspaper that the military is being called in because the pace of farm seizures is too slow. Harare is portraying […]
Jo’burg people are portrayed as complex and creative in the work of Patrick de Mervelec Matthew Krouse Patrick de Mervelec’s exhibition Jo’burger, currently at the Pretoria Art Museum, is the result of a labour-intensive work of love. This master of French photography, now living in South Africa, has initiated a body of work “born out […]
Johannesburg | Friday THE first steps towards creating a single currency and a single central bank for Africa were taken at a meeting of the association of the continent’s central bank governors, its newly elected chairman said on Thursday. South African Reserve Bank governor and new Association of Central African Bankers (AACB) chairman Tito Mboweni […]
DaimlerChrysler denies there is a government-company strategy to deal with the motor strike Glenda Daniels DaimlerChrysler’s chairperson has crushed union suspicions that the government advised the company to threaten to withdraw from South Africa to stop the protracted automobile strike. Union insiders said they suspected that DaimlerChrysler, “being friends” of the government, was urged to […]
The government says it is working on a strategy to improve the delivery of much-needed systems Barry Streek Minister of Education Kader Asmal has disclosed in Parliament that two-thirds of South African schools (17907 schools) are without adequate sanitation and 11,7% (3188 schools) do not have any sanitation at all. There were 27148 schools in […]
Jubie Matlou One training institution that has cut a niche for itself in information and communications technology is the Learning Information Networking Knowledge Centre (Link) of the Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management. Cellphone provider Vodacom made funds available for the study of new information and communications technologies and their possible effects […]
MUNGO SOGGOT, Johannesburg | Friday IN what would be a first in modern times, South Africa is within reach of a budget surplus. Tax collections have far exceeded expectations during the first few months of the fiscal year. At the same time, government expenditure is not keeping up the pace amid ongoing concerns that several […]
Thabo Mohlala House number 63, Shelley Road, Lombardy East, is owned by Transnet. It has a big yard, five rooms and two bathrooms. Since April Piet Mabotja*, a young security officer from Lebowakgomo in the Northern Province, has been standing guard around the clock for a pittance R20 a month. Four months later, Mabotja is […]
The South African Women’s Arts Festival could have done with a little more humour and less exclusivity Thebe Mabanga It was not so much art with feminine chic but rather art with feminine grit as vain plain Janes, poets and prancers came out to play at the fifth offering of the South African Women’s Arts […]
Mungo Soggot In what would be a first in modern times, South Africa is within reach of a budget surplus. Tax collections have far exceeded expectations during the first few months of the fiscal year. At the same time, government expenditure is not keeping up the pace amid ongoing concerns that several departments lack the […]