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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Timothy Wood American notes It is common cause that swashbuckling corporations are gaining power at the expense of governments. But the reverse is true as shown by General Electric’s (GE) stuttering merger with Honeywell. Worse still, it is unaccountable bureaucrats who are gaining ascendancy. GE, the United States’s fifth-largest company with sales of $130-billion, won […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo soccer The South African under-23 Amaglug-glug squad this week began preparing for the All Africa Games and the 2004 Olympics to be held in Athens. They kicked off the Sasol Four Nations Cup with a 1-1 draw against Mozambique at the Orlando stadium in Soweto on Monday and followed that up with a […]
Tracey Farren A Cape Town photographer was robbed, stripped and left in the bush with a sock stuffed in his mouth in February. A policeman rounded up the culprits on the same day and returned the man’s goods to him. Three of the suspects were below the age of 18 and this was their first […]
Mail & Guardian reporter The Mail & Guardian is moving to consolidate its position as the newspaper of the intelligentsia and political classes with a major redesign of the paper to be introduced next Friday. The redesign coincides with our record-breaking circulation growth among South Africa’s high earners and intellectuals. The most significant growth has […]
Site content and community were vital to plans to get rich quick. But sites with great content and large communities are still being forced to close, writes Jim McClellan In the mid-1990s, techno-gurus claimed that successful websites needed to focus on “the three Cs” content, community and commerce. Of these, content as in stuff to […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION What adds to the horror of the violence that frequently occurs is that it no longer surprises. Our daily news is stitched through with the often vicious reactions of a society as it reveals the ferocity of its embedded prejudices. This is the new and even more terrible “struggle” and, as if […]
THE United States administration’s point man for Africa, Walter Kansteiner said on Thursday the US would only restore normal relations with Zimbabwe when violence there ends and rule of law is reestablished. Kansteiner, the US assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, said there had been a significant deterioration in Zimbabwe’s human rights record, a […]
Niki Moore If the University of Zululand (Unizul) was a business, what happened there would be called a hostile takeover. Last Friday, Mangosutho Buthelezi was voted out as chancellor and Deputy President Jacob Zuma was voted in. Friday’s meeting of the university council should have been a fairly mundane affair, to discuss various matters related […]
Lynda Gilfillan DRINK That exotic margarita you’ve just knocked back may well have come from the Karoo. Tequila is being made in a great white barn of a building outside Graaff-Reinet and is exported to Europe. Agave Distillers, a partnership between South African and French investors Rockwood and Hines, is pioneering the distilling of tequila […]
Count Riccardo Agusta the Italian helicopter company heir and a top investor in South Africa sees no wrong in his relationship with mafia man Vito Palazzolo Stefaans Brmmer Count Riccardo “Rocky” Agusta has had a hectic decade. As a racing driver he endured Le Mans and Daytona. As an entrepreneur he invested around the globe. […]
AT least six people were killed and 13 wounded after fighting erupted in south Mogadishu on Thursday, witnesses and medical sources said. The clashes pitted militiamen of Somali warlord Hussein Mohamed Aidid against Somali Transitional National Government (TNG) policemen, the witness said. A medical officer said two people were killed and four wounded after a […]
James Campbell Glue by Irvine Welsh (Jonathan Cape) Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting was about a bunch of daft lads (or sub-psychopaths) whose violence and amorality were supposedly explained by their origins in soulless Edinburgh housing schemes. They devoured drink, drugs and wee lassies by the ton. The one thing that inspired them was tribal loyalty: they […]
Despite its drawbacks, the initiative opens the way for a new, positive international engagement with the continent Greg Mills The finer details of the Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery Programme (MAP) will be revealed, we are told, after the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in Lusaka next month. The MAP concept has apparently […]
The women’s African Cup of Nations was held in South Africa late last year but the national team has not been in action since and the momentum created by the tournament is ebbing away Marianne Merten Could you imagine Bafana Bafana striker Benni McCarthy working as a gaardjie, or guard, on a taxi route through […]
BEER giant South African Breweries (SAB) has acquired a controlling 76%- interest in Mysore Breweries Limited through its subsidiary company SAB India (SABI), the company said on Thursday. It paid $17,6-million dollars, or 500 rupees per share, for the stake. Under the terms of Securities and Exchange Board of India regulations, a simultaneous public offer […]