SOUTH African IT group Datatec said on Tuesday it had upped its stake in US unit Westcon to 90,2%, to allow for management changes ahead of Westcon’s planned listing in the United States. Datatec said it paid $22-million, funded from internal cash resources, to the original founders of Westcon and some other shareholders for the […]
Violence flared in a Zambian parliamentary by-election involving the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) and the opposition, police representative Lemmy Kajoba said on Sunday. The clashes began late Friday night and continued Saturday, during campaign meetings for the by-election to be held on Tuesday in a densely populated constituency in the capital Lusaka. “Several […]
THE Rwandan army has captured the commander of the extremist rebel Hutus in northwest Rwanda. “Colonel Bemera surrendered peacefully with five of his men while he was encircled by our forces at Mukingo,” said army representative, Jean-Bosco Kazura. Since May 20, fighters from the Interahamwe, an extremist Hutu militia who carried out the 1994 genocide […]
Harare | Tuesday A WHITE Zimbabwean farmer has been arrested in connection with the death of a black man who received land on the farmer’s property under a controversial government resettlement scheme, police said on Monday. Philip Bezuidenhout allegedly ran over Phibian Mapenzauswa on Saturday and dragged him under his truck for 20 metres at […]
THE South African Reserve Bank said on Monday it had appointed a former judge to investigate troubled Regal Treasury Private Bank Ltd. The central bank said it had appointed Advocate John Myburgh as the commissioner to conduct the investigation into Regal, which was put under curatorship in June. That followed large withdrawals by depositors, which […]
A TOP US aid official will launch a seven-day mission in Sudan on Sunday to assess efforts to battle famine in parts of the country ravaged by drought and devastated by civil war. Andrew Natsios will travel in northern and southern Sudan and meet government officials and aid workers, the US Agency for International Development […]
THREE former Rwandan officials were arrested in Europe on Thursday on suspicion of crimes committed during the 1994 genocide, said the chief prosecutor of the UN tribunal for Rwanda Carla del Ponte. Emmanuel Rukundo, a former chaplain in the Rwandan army, was arrested in Geneva, while Emmanuel Ndindabahizi, a former finance minister, was arrested in […]
Johannesburg | Sunday SOUTH Africa’s favourite church leader and veteran fighter against apartheid, Desmond Tutu, on Saturday celebrated the 25th anniversary of his consecration as a bishop, with tributes pouring in from around the world. Speaker after speaker at a packed St Mary’s cathedral in downtown Johannesburg paid tribute to Tutu, who turns 70 in […]
A 40-vehicle convoy carrying a dismantled 60-ton oil drilling platform set out from Tunisia on Tuesday on a 400km desert trail to southern Algeria where it will be assembled and put into operation. The caravan was carrying seven main elements of the $55-million platform which will measure nine metres high and eight metres horizontally when […]
SECURITY agents in Nigeria have destroyed more than 2_400 light arms recovered from armed robbers and smugglers, state-run NTA television reported on Thursday. The weapons were destroyed on Tuesday at the premises of the Defence Industry Corporation of Nigeria, based in the northern city of Kaduna, NTA said. -AFP
MALAWIS top prosecutor said on Thursday he has filed charges of treason against three people in connection with an alleged coup attempt in March. “The treason trial against the three should start in the High Court soon,” said Fahad Assani, director of public prosecutions. The accused are 33-year-old Sudi Sulaimana, and two unnamed, low-ranking soldiers. […]
THE Lesotho Queen Karabo Mohato Bereng Seeiso, the wife of the head of state King Letsie III, is expecting her first baby in October, said the Queen Mother, Her Majesty Queen Mamohato Bereng Seeiso. Queen Karabo was married to King Letsie in February last year after which she discontinued her Bachelor of Science studies at […]
FORMER Ivory Coast foreign minister Amara Essy, who was elected the new secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), was on Thursday accorded a hero’s welcome upon his return from Lusaka. Thousands of excited crowds ringed the road from Abidjan airport to the administrative quarter of Plateau, where the president’s office is located. They […]
BRITISH Airways (BA) has announced the start of commercial flights between London and Addis Ababa on October 5, Ethiopian private economic weekly Capital reported on Monday. Two flights a week each way will be operated by BA’s independent franchise partner, British Mediterranean Airways. “All flights will operate through Alexandria, Egypt,” the airline said. Planes will […]
Algiers | Monday Some 500 knife-wielding religious extremists carried out a “punitive expedition” against suspected prostitutes in central Algeria, slashing about 20 women, while elsewhere in the violence-wracked country a massacre of 11 people was reported on Sunday. The attack on women living alone in poor districts of Hassi Messaoud, a major oil centre some […]
AN Egyptian teenager jumped into the Nile and drowned because his sweetheart turned down his requests for a kiss, police in the conservative Delta town of Banha said on Thursday. High school student Saber Darwish, 17, climbed onto the riverside wall Wednesday night after the second time his young companion Hanaa refused to seal their […]
THE Ethiopian High Court has acquitted 10 men accused of genocide and crimes against humanity under the regime of ousted dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, the news agency ENA reported on Thursday. The men were accused of “torture and extra-judicial killings” while they were serving Mengistu’s Marxist regime. The court also handed out 22 guilty verdicts […]
Harare | Monday A WHITE Zimbabwean farmer ran over and killed a would-be settler and dragged the body for several meters under his van before dumping it at the roadside in the east of the country, police said on Monday. Febian Mapenzauswa, 31, had just arrived at Tara Farm in Odzi near the town of […]
THE Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), protesting over the government’s economic policies, said on Tuesday that the federation was seeking solidarity action from workers’ organisations in neighbouring countries, particularly from South Africa’s powerful trade unions. “We want Cosatu (the South African union federation) to blockade our common borders next time we take industrial action,” […]
Johannesburg | Monday THE chief whip of South Africa’s ruling party on Sunday denied any wrongdoing in a controversial $5,5-billion arms deal, saying he was the victim of an unsubstantiated witchhunt. In a full-page advertisement published in the Sunday Independent, Tony Yengeni said a claim that he received a luxury 4X4 Mercedes Benz in return […]
NAMIBIA will withdraw all its troops from the DRC by the end of August, South African Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said on Thursday. Lekota, speaking to SABC radio from Windhoek, said Namibian Defence Minister Errki Nghimtina had told him his country’s troops “will be totally out of the DRC by the end of next month”. […]
UGANDAN troops have been deployed in parts of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to end a witchhunt which has seen an estimated 800 people hacked to death, an army representative said on Thursday. Lieutenant-Colonel Phinehas Katirima said Ugandan army units in DRC had arrested over 70 people accused of involvement in the witch-hunt. They […]
MPUMALANGA Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu on Wednesday condemned the ongoing farm attacks in the province. This follows four attacks that were reported in a single day on Monday. One farmer was shot in the stomach, a couple was beaten and a pensioner tied up. The incidents brought to 24 the number of farm attacks reported to […]
A 22-year-old man has been fined 100 kwacha ($1.50) by a lower court for throwing an empty beer bottle toward Malawian President Bakili Muluzi’s convoy last month, court officials said on Thursday. The official said Robson Gilinjala was arrested by Muluzi’s security agents and charged with conduct likely to cause breach of peace. Gilinjala pleaded […]
DEFENCE minister Mosiuoa Lekota will defend a R1,9-million civil claim brought against him by two farm workers allegedly tortured by army commando members, even though he “doesn’t have a leg to stand on.” Defence spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi said on Wednesday that Lekota was unhappy about defending the claim. “Legally speaking he has no leg to […]
A BUSINESSMAN from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has bought one of South Africa’s top vineyards from a descendant of the first French Huguenot settler to plant vines in the Cape region. George de Villiers on Wednesday said he had sold 33 hectares of his Mont Rochelle estate at Franschhoek northeast of Cape Town […]
ART Antoinette du Plessis Most frequently, academic literature on the subject of tourist art is concerned with aspects of the production of artefacts for sale to tourists. Less easy to research with any kind of pretence of academic rigour is the other end of the equation the tourist/traveller as patron, as consumer, as communicator. How […]
Thabo Mohlala State prosecutors are to receive huge salary increases backdated to January 1, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna has announced. This year prosecutors protested against their salaries and working conditions by embarking on a series of go-slows, adding to an already deteriorating problem of a backlog of cases across South Africa’s […]
Ngwako Modjadji National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi is probing allegations of corruption, drunkenness, incompetence and maladministration at the Ennerdale police station, south of Johannesburg. The investigation was launched this week after Ennerdale residents forwarded a complaint to Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete regarding alleged corrupt practices at the police station. Police officials in […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo “Every game that we play is about winning the three points, prestige and honour,” said Bafana Bafana coach Carlos Queiroz in announcing the squad to face Malawi this weekend in Durban. Since taking over the squad late last year Queiroz has taken every game seriously and he’s not about to change that for […]
In this special report Khadija Magardie opens a window on one of the country’s most dangerous occupations policing, where pressure to fight crime is coming at an increasingly heavy cost There is a claustrophobic yet expansive, rushed yet benign feeling to the onset of early evening in Johannesburg, almost a sense of foreboding. At best […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) this week delivered a scathing attack on one of Zimbabwe’s leading cabinet ministers. In Cosatu Weekly the federation accused Zimbabwe’s Information Minister Jonathan Moyo of being an “immature politician”. Moyo criticised Cosatu last week for supporting the two-day strike organised by the Zimbabwean […]