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 […]
THOMAS DEVE, Harare | Thursday A DEADLY computer virus has run amok in Zimbabwe, hitting possibly hundreds of unsuspecting e-mail subscribers. One of the worst hit companies is The Daily News. The newspapers main e-mail address was yesterday bombarded with hundreds of messages carrying a computer virus that steals documents from a users files or […]
Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWE has suspended accreditation of BBC journalists seeking to cover events in the country, accusing them of unethical and unprofessional conduct, the state-run Herald newspaper reported on Thursday. The daily quoted a letter from Information Minister Jonathan Moyo to the BBC’s bureau chief in neighbouring South Africa saying that the measure was […]
Mbabane | Tuesday THE United States has warned Swaziland that it stands to lose world markets and membership in world bodies should the country fail to revoke a controversial decree, it was reported on Monday. In a letter to the Swaziland government, a senior US official voiced serious concerns about the decree, which gives King […]
FACED with a crisis situation in which grief-stricken mourners were being asked to dig graves for their dead relatives because of a strike by grave-diggers, the Harare City Council yesterday engaged casual workers. The council also enlisted 18 members of the municipal police to assist the casual workers to dig graves at Granville Cemetery in […]
Lagos | Tuesday NIGERIAS national Tae Kwan Do coach Yusuf Yahaya took ill on a South African flight and died after he was refused hospitalisation in Johannesburg because he lacked an entry visa for South Africa, officials said on Monday. Yahaya was returning to Nigeria with the national Tae Kwan Do team aboard a South […]
SUDAN had the second-largest number of refugees in Africa, after Burundi, at the start of 2001, and attempts to find solutions to this and other problems had borne limited fruit, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday. The civil war in Sudan had shown few signs of abating and continued to […]
THE death of the secretary-general of Sierra Leone’s rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), Solomon Rogers, in jail has been received “badly” by members, the chairman of the RUF’s peace council Omrie Golley said on Monday. “His death was received by all in the RUF pretty badly. At this point in time there are a lot […]
THE South African Broadcasting Corporation has refused to apologise to the Namibian Government and President Sam Nujoma for having allegedly “tricked” him into an interview. Special Assignment Editing Manager Chris Marguord told The Star newspaper in South Africa that the SABC had consulted its lawyers and would not apologise. Marguord said it was disturbing to […]
Johannesburg | Tuesday THOUSANDS of employees working for South African power company Eskom will down tools on Tuesday when three unions embark on a national strike following a wage dispute with the electricity supplier. Over 20 000 members of the MWU-Solidarity, the National Union of Mineworkers and the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) […]
PHILIPPE BERNES-LASSERRE, Johannesburg | Tuesday SOUTH Africa’s leaders are delighted that Africa captured the attention of the powerful G8 nations at their summit in Genoa, Italy, but analysts said Monday they were waiting for results. Bheki Khumalo, representative for President Thabo Mbeki, echoed the declaration by Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi that the summit marked […]
SAKHILE MOKOENA, Hazyview | Tuesday IN a sweltering shed in the sub-tropical hills of Mpumalanga’s Lowveld, a farmer called Daan Jacobs and 12 workers sweat over avocados. They are turning the creamy fruit into an oil that is used in beauty products for women in the United States and Japan. “Our products are in high […]
HOT on the heels of orchestrating a watered-down resolution on Zimbabwe at last week’s final OAU summit, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday he agreed with concerns that unrest in Zimbabwe had the potential to provoke unrest elsewhere in southern Africa if it were not brought under control. Speaking during a two-day visit […]
PRESIDENT Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia announced on Sunday the lifting of a decree preventing some politicians from standing for election, news organizations reported. “Former politicians are now free to come back and form parties. The decree that made people seek political asylum abroad is now history,” PANA reported Jammeh as saying at a ceremony […]
SOUTH African platinum stocks are seen coming under renewed selling pressure on Thursday because of more weakness in the price of the white metal, putting downward pressure on the overall market, traders said. The market has been pushed lower this week by steep reverses in platinum counters as investors watched platinum and palladium prices touching […]
NIGERIA’S second largest port, in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt, is in danger of collapsing because of corrosion of underwater structures, officials stated on Thursday. The port in Port Harcourt was built some 88 years ago and many of its structures are now crumbling, officials said, confirming reports in the Nigerian press. On […]
IRIN Copenhagen | Monday A DANISH company, the DLH Group, has decided to stop importing Liberian timber in reaction to a public call by three non-governmental organisations that it stop dealing with Liberian logging companies implicated in arms trafficking. DLH imported logs from the Liberia-based Oriental Timber Company and Royal Timber Corporation into Europe. Greenpeace, […]
THE 35-thousand entrants in the Cape Argus Pick n Pay Cycle Tour earlier this year spent R66-million in Cape Town, according to a impact study carried out by the Cycle Tour and the City of Cape Town Council. If travel to and from the city is included, the direct economic benefit of the Tour is […]
A MINIBUS traveling from the coastal town of Kismayo in Somalia on its way to Mogadishu, 500km to the north, on Wednesday detonated a land mine at Erile near the town of Barawe, after covering just over 200km. This was the fourth such incident in the same area in a week. A local businessman, said […]
A STOLEN 800-year-old Ethiopian cross and a treasured book have been restored to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church after being found in France. The two treasured artefacts were handed over to the priests of their churches at a ceremony on Thursday presided over by the Orthodox patriarch, Abouna Paulos, and attended by Culture Minister Woldemichael Chamo. […]
MUNGO SOGGOT, STEFAANS BRMMER AND DAVID SHAPSHAK Johannesburg | Friday 14.45: ACCORDING to Telkom, its deputy chief operating officer Bheki Langa on Friday resigned from the company. Telkom is therefore dropping its disciplinary enquiry, but will proceed with an investigation into the allegations directed at Langa. Langa contends that he has been looking at other […]