Staff Reporter

AN Angolan government HIV/Aids awareness campaign in Angola is drawing criticism from women’s rights activists, church leaders and politicians who say its message is too blunt, Channel Africa reported on Tuesday. The campaign includes TV spots featuring sex scenes and interviews of young women who are asked if they have ever used a condom. “This […]

The government should leave the media to get on with their job NO blows BARRED Sipho Seepe There is general agreement that in a democracy, especially in the context of transition, people should become agents of change. This participation lends legitimacy to both the processes of transformation and to government policies and practices. In this […]

A PRIDE of about 60 marauding lions have “gobbled down” more than 100 cows, goats, sheep, donkeys and horses in a rampage in southern Ethiopia, the state news agency reported on Tuesday. “A pride of lions that emerged from a forest in Chena woreda (district) … gobbled down 101 domestic animals” on Saturday, a police […]

A mine affected by the NUM threat to down tools says it will sink if the union carries out its plans David McKay Durban Roodepoort Deep (DRD) chief executive Mark Wellesley-Wood says he would be forced to hand the company over to liquidators if the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) makes good on threats to […]

Paul Kirk A senior Durban municipal officer allegedly used a fake driver’s licence to obtain an official luxury car, traffic officials confirmed this week. The acting chief executive of the south operating entity of the Durban Unicity Council, Sandile Thusi, is also alleged to have channelled hundreds of thousands of rands worth of council contracts […]

POLICE in Kenya have shot dead seven suspected gangsters after disarming them and while they were lying face down on the side of a busy road near the capital, press reports said on Thursday, quoting eyewitnesses. Witnesses cited by the newspapers said the seven were on a bus heading out of Nairobi that was pulled […]

A routine dig ahead of roadworks at the KwaZulu-Natal park has led to the discovery of two prehistoric skeletons Niki Moore It’s the perennial conflict between progress and preservation: the construction of a road network in the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park can potentially do enormous damage to valuable and sensitive archaeological sites. But if […]

Neal Collins Philemon “Chippa” Masinga a man many feel could have gone on to be a force alongside compatriot Lucas Radebe at Leeds will return to English football this winter. But not at the top level. Masinga has left Bari, where he enjoyed a successful five seasons, for relegated Coventry City in the first division. […]

MPUMALANGA health MEC Sibongile Manana has appointed a four-member task team to monitor and “beef up” management at the notorious Themba Hospital near White River. Themba has been dubbed the “hospital of hell” after three children were left brain damaged during botched procedures in 1996. – African Eye News Service

THE Nigerian subsidiary of Italian oil group ENI on Tuesday signed an agreement with the government to build a 450-megawatt power plant in southern Nigeria, an official statement said. The gas-fired plant, to be built in Kwale in Delta State and expected to cost around $350-million to build, would be expected to come on stream […]

Bruce Whitfield Omega Holdings, majority shareholder China’s Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC), is offering minorities 8c a share and is planning to delist the ailing company, which it says will be out of business by September unless it gets the approval it needs for the takeover. Omega, which listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in […]

Marianne Merten It took five minutes for the auctioneer’s final gong to signal the change of owner of Kromvlei fruit farm near Elgin lock, stock and barrel for half its market value. No amount of cajoling could get the 60-strong crowd assembled on the steps of the white manor farmhouse to top the R11,75-million bid. […]

ABOUT 300 medical doctors and 7 500 nurses at Zimbabwe’s government hospitals went on an indefinite strike on Tuesday over pay grievances. “We are on strike since yesterday. We are demanding a review of our salaries because we feel doctors are grossly underpaid,” said Sibert Mandega, president of the Hospital Doctors Association. Specialist doctors meanwhile […]

ABOUT 200 angry South African shack dwellers on Wednesday occupied a piece of land in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township, emulating a large-scale land invasion outside Johannesburg earlier this month. Police said the squatters moved on to the private land during the afternoon and demanded the government build them houses. The land invaders measured out plots, […]

Suzan Chala Vereeniging residents are facing possible health hazards, including cholera, owing to the spillage of raw sewage material into rivers in the area. Sewage pumps in the town have been breaking from time to time over the past three years, spilling raw sewage into the Suikerbos, Klip and Vaal rivers. The rivers serve as […]

Suzan Chala The Johannesburg Maintenance Court is always crowded with women claiming child support from the fathers of their children. However, it would be incorrect to assume that the men sitting on the benches and crowding the narrow passages are all defendants. There is an increasing number of single men claiming maintenance from women. These […]

AUSTRIA has sold 20 tanks to Botswana, Pretoria-based Austrian diplomat Caroline Gudenus said on Wednesday. “There was a deal for 20 new tanks, plus an option for 20 second-hand ones. The new ones have been supplied, but the sale of the second hand ones was not permitted to go through,” Gudenus told the Sapa news […]

THE west African country of Burkina Faso hopes to launch a “green revolution” through a new company that will try to augment agricultural production and improve food security. Burkina Agriculture Minister Salif Diallo said the new entity Soprofa, a joint venture between the government and Swiss group Aiglon, “would greatly contribute in eradicating rural poverty […]

The ANC’s alliance partners want to draw up a new economic strategy Jaspreet Kindra The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has asked the South African Communist Party to develop a viable alternative to the government’s economic strategies. This, the union federation argues, would prevent the handing over of the African National Congress to […]

A TEENAGE boy with a cricket bat chased away five gunmen attacking his father at their Pretoria home on Wednesday, The Star newspaper reported on Thursday. “The 16-year-old boy hit five gunmen for a six,” the newspaper said. Police representative Inspector Percy Morokane said the intruders forced open burglar bars at around 2:00am on Wednesday, […]

Vivienne Gray A new initiative to improve the literacy levels and impart computer skills to police officers is under way in KwaZulu-Natal as a pilot project carried out under the auspices of “business against crime”. The project is sponsored by Rotary, and conducted by Media Works’s adult basic education and training (Abet) programme. Three police […]

A FIRE on Tuesday destroyed a wing at the five-star Elephant Hills Inter-Continental Hotel in Zimbabwe’s northwestern resort town of Victoria Falls, police and tourism officials said. The fire damaged part of the hotel casino and destroyed the left wing of the 276-room hotel. No casualties have been reported. State television reported that the fire […]

crossfire Oupa Bodibe Union investment companies have become the Achilles heel of the South African trade union movement, attracting claims that unions have moved away from their original purpose of representing workers and abandoning their socialist principles for an uncritical embrace of the market. Dale McKinley’s article (“Unions on the capitalist bandwagon”, June 22) falls […]

BENIN does not have enough money to hold local elections because most of the budget was blown during the presidential election in March, the winner of that election, President Mathieu Kerekou, said on Monday. “Of the nine billion CFA francs ($12,3-million) set aside for the presidential and municipal elections, we only have 500-million CFA francs […]

Belinda Anderson M-Cell subsidiary MTN’s R3,681-billion syndicated loan will be used to pay off its initial investment in Nigeria and to give it a kick-start to the initial phases of the project. M-Cell director Paul Edwards says the ability to raise the funds is a vote of confidence in a difficult period for telecommunications. MTN […]

A NIGERIAN lawmaker has called for the arrest over corruption claims of former military ruler General Abdulsalami Abubakar, a press report said on Wednesday. Senator Kanti Bello from the northern state of Katsina said Abubakar, who ran Nigeria for 11 months before handing over power to the civilian government of President Olusegun Obasanjo in May […]

Belinda Anderson South Africa’s newest media mogul believes the media landscape, once consolidated, will consist of two or three major players an independent group, an Afrikaans group and an empowerment grouping. Recently appointed Nail CEO Saki Macozoma ended speculation that he might facilitate a large financial services merger between Standard Bank, Metropolitan and Liberty. aloeCap […]

EIGHTEEN Northern Province health officials were arrested during predawn raids on their houses on Monday in connection with stealing medicine, linen and other supplies from Jane Furse Hospital. This brings to 65 the number of officials arrested across the province this year. Police recovered stolen medicine, linen and cutlery at the homes of the Jane […]

The heralded tour by the Bolshoi Ballet presents classical high points, but no real luminaries Ballet Andrew Gilder I could not help wondering, on the way to watch a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet, whether the troupe visiting South Africa was the same as that which performed for the recent meeting of the International Olympic […]