London | Tuesday ZIMBABWES main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai urged Britain not to turn its back on its troubled former colony during a meeting with new Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on Monday. Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), met Straw at the Foreign Office for the first time since Straw replaced Robin […]
KENYAS President Daniel arap Moi has called for the death penalty for those who deliberately infected their sexual partners with the HIV virus, which can lead to Aids, and life imprisonment for rapists. “The time has come for those who deliberately infect others to die and those who rape to be jailed for life,” Moi […]
THE Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) on Sunday said it had agreed to extend a R320-million ($40-million) loan to expand the Mozal aluminium smelter in Mozambique. The completion of the second stage of the smelter will double its output to 506_000 tonnes of aluminium per year, and will cost one billion dollars, the bank […]
A REBEL leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday said more than 100,000 refugees from the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR) were in urgent need of help. “More than 100,000 Central Africans” have crossed the Oubangui river into areas in northeast DRC controlled by the Congolese Liberation Front (FLC), said the rebel […]
TANZANIAN exports to the European Union (EU) increased by 74% to 405 million euros in 2000, compared to the previous year, thanks to the lifting of a ban on EU fish imports from Lake Victoria, the European Commission (EC) delegation here said Monday. “Fish exports now account for 28% of the total value of Tanzania’s […]
SHAREHOLDERS in South African media, entertainment and telecoms group Johnnic Communications (Johncom) on Monday approved the unbundling of Johncom’s stake in mobile phone company M-Cell. Johnnic Senior Corporate Finance Manager Monica Steinlechner said all shareholders present at the meeting voted in favour of the move. Johncom is distributing the bulk – 34,4% of a total […]
EGYPT on Sunday condemned an Israeli air raid which took out a Syrian radar base in Lebanon, branding it an “unjustified provocation” and a badly-timed escalation of the regional situation. “It’s an unjustifiable Israeli escalation that comes at a moment when contacts are underway to calm the situation in the Middle East region” and resume […]
GUERRILLAS in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have freed a Swedish hostage after 45 days of captivity in exchange for a second-hand Volvo truck, the Swedish television news programme Rapport said on Saturday. The evening newspaper Expressen said Bjoern Rugsten, 33, was freed by the Mai Mai group thanks to the […]
STATE-run radio Nigeria, which boasts being the largest radio network in Africa, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The radio, established in 1951, is the oldest in Nigeria and has a reputation for employing and training most of the country’s known broadcasters. The radio gave birth in 1962 to the Voice of Nigeria, the international service, […]
THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Sunday scolded the Congo-Brazzaville government for excessive spending, massive customs fraud and the slow pace of privatisation, saying the country could not yet qualify for debt relief. An IMF delegation visiting oil-rich Congo said money doled out to the country’s bloated civil service would make it difficult to meet […]
THE Kalashnikov rifle is one of the past century’s greatest inventions, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi said as he welcomed Mikhail Kalashnikov to Libya, sources quoted by Interfax news agency said. “The Kalashnikov assault rifle is one of the most important inventions of the 20th century and will long remain so for most countries in the […]
HEAVY flooding on Sunday left about 200 families homeless in Nigeria’s central Benue State, official radio Nigeria reported. The affected residents of Ogbadigbo municipality were taking refuge in churches and mosques in the area, the radio said. The rains lasted for about two hours, it said. – AFP
Kampala | Sunday MORE than 240 people have been killed in a violent witch hunt around the town of Aru in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during the past two weeks, the Ugandan military said on Saturday. The lynchings appear to have started when a rumour spread in the border area that witches possessed […]
GRIFFIN SHEA, Harare ZIMBABWE’S powerful trade unions on Saturday declared a two-day national stayaway for next week, despite warnings from government that the protest over fuel prices was illegal. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) decided after a special meeting Saturday “to carry out a two-day mass national protest on Tuesday July 3 and […]
EMSIE FERREIRA, Cape Town | Saturday TEN years ago the foundation stones of apartheid fell when the laws that divided people into black and white and forced them to live apart were wiped from South Africa’s statute books. The Population Registration Act of 1950, which required that everybody be classified at birth as belonging to […]
Cape Town | Saturday RESEARCHERS in South Africa and Britain have isolated the gene that causes retinitis pigmentosa, a leading cause of inherited blindness affecting one million people worldwide, a report said on Friday. Two scientists from the University of Cape Town and one from Britain have identified the culprit gene as RP13, which carries […]
Pilanesberg | Sunday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki, several ministers and some 60 journalists on Saturday ended an extraordinary meeting aimed at mending the troubled relationship between his government and the press, a report said. Mbeki closed the two-day meeting in Pilanesberg northwest of Johannesburg with an admission that government was partly to blame for […]
Shirley Kemp News that Wetherlys has signed up with BOE subsidiary NBS comes as no surprise after months of its alluding to a tie-up of this nature. The question is whether the change in strategy will spur investors to buy the share back up past the R2 level. Two elements of the deal make it […]
Journalists are, perhaps justifiably, notorious for over-estimating their own importance. Nonetheless, we believe that the meeting this weekend between editors and the Cabinet is of great significance to our attempts to develop a healthy and resilient democracy. There are corrections that need to be made on both sides if the media and government are to […]
Anthony Holiday Hear the vengeful racist talk among whites in rural pubs after there has been a farm burning or a farm killing. Sense the envious anger among the black dispossessed in squatter camps from the Boland to our northern borders and beyond. In short, taste the lethal potion of racism and land-loss and you […]
Emmanuel de Roux While working as an art teacher in his home town of Drohobycz in 1942, the prominent Polish Jewish writer and artist Bruno Schulz was asked by Felix Landau, an SS officer, to decorate his children’s bedroom with frescoes. It was a request that Schulz was not in a position to refuse. The […]
ARCHEOLOGISTS have discovered the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh with the aid of a papyrus document they now realize could help them find more royal tombs, antiquities officials said on Thursday. A German working on the west bank of the Nile near present-day Luxor found the tomb of Nubkeperre Inyotef, who is believed to have […]
Jack Monedi Right to Reply We acknowledge that there are problems with the social security system. However, our response to the Mail & Guardian’s articles (“North West suspends pensions for the disabled”, June 1 to 7 and “They’ve taken away our dignity”, June 8 to 14), does not aim to highlight them but to explain […]
Justin Arenstein and Mfanakaziwa Ndaba Mpumulanga Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu consolidated his position this week by purging four of his most outspoken critics from the provincial legislature and axing two unpopular MECs. The purge of the “Nandos Club” so called because they meet at a Nandos outlet in Nelspruit to allegedly plot against the premier is […]
African mould broken as Western firms are to be put in the dock on bribery charges Chris McGreal Multinational companies are about to go on trial in Lesotho where they are accused of paying huge bribes to a local official, a case virtually unprecedented in Africa. European and Canadian engineering companies, four of them British, […]
Tom Lodge The last time an election for the African National Congress presidency was contested was 50 years ago when a minor chief from Groutville, Albert Luthuli, displaced the incumbent, James Moroka, at the ANC’s annual conference in 1952. Moroka’s fall resulted from his decision to adopt a separate defence from his colleagues when on […]
THE Canadian foreign ministry announced on Thursday that Canada is to open an embassy in Tripoli to be headed by Charge d’affaires George Jacoby, the first Canadian diplomat to take residence in Libya since the two countries established ties in 1968. “The presence of a Canadian diplomat and embassy in Tripoli opens a new era […]
Alec Hogg boardroom talk In a week when Naspers kept faith with its spend-now-harvest-later philosophy, Johann Rupert’s Venfin progressed its claim to being the most astutely positioned media business of them all. It is also well positioned to move on Naspers itself should the country’s largest media group stumble in the most critical 12 months […]
Glenda Daniels Consumers have to prepare for massive tariff hikes as privatisation plans by the government steamroll ahead. The cost to the consumer of the privatisation of electricity, water, telephone, transport and municipal services is going to be exorbitant in cash terms. And in delivery terms, huge questions are emerging. But this is not going […]
Adrienne Carlisle and Nawaal Deane Hoosein Mohamed, a senior partner in a prominent Cape Town law firm, was arrested by the Scorpions on Wednesday for milking the Road Accident Fund (RAF) of large portions of the pay-outs meant for indigent victims. His law firm, H Mohamed and Associates, first hit headlines in 1999 when the […]
Sipho Seepe no blows barred Stripped of all the hype and pomp, the Millennium African Recovery Programme (MAP) amounts to no more than Africans committing themselves to continental economic recovery, sustainable development and democratic governance. It is a recycling of ideas articulated by leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and our own Mangaliso Sobukwe […]
AMNESTY International said on Wednesday that it was concerned freedom of expression is under attack from the government in Guinea-Bissau as two journalists face charges of defamation. The London-based human rights group said in a statement that other journalists in Guinea-Bissau have also been detained and harassed in recent months for criticising government policies. Joao […]