PETER CUNLIFFE-JONES, Lagos | Wednesday FORCED to sea by Liberia? Shot at off Ghana? Pushed out by a gunboat off Benin? Henning Kielberg, the Swedish captain of a cargo boat at sea off the west African coast with more than 150 passengers aboard for four weeks, recounted his version of the saga. “This is not […]
THE presidents of Zambia, Angola and Namibia are to hold a one-day mini-summit in Zambia on Tuesday to discuss security along their shared frontiers, said a foreign ministry representative. “The tripartite mechanism for political and security cooperation meeting involving Zambia, Angola and Namibia will today open at Lusaka’s Hotel Intercontinental,” said the representative. The tripartite […]
UP to 27% of the active urban population in Ethiopia is unemployed, most of them aged between 15 and 24, according to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) official. Assefa Bequehe ascribed the unemployment problem partly to “the sluggish performance of the Ethiopian economy over the last 20 or 25 years.” The Horn of Africa country […]
ZIMBABWE’S central bank is soon to issue a Z$500 note and a Z$5 coin. News reports quoted Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe spokesperson Ignatius Mabasa saying on Sunday that the new denominations were “for the convenience of the public”. There have been calls for several months for new denominations to be introduced as rampant inflation forces […]
Monrovia | Wednesday UNCONTROLLED logging in Liberia is playing havoc with the country’s rich forest resources and environment and helping President Charles Taylor’s government to stay afloat despite UN sanctions. Environmentalists in Liberia deplore the phenomenon. Elsewhere, there is growing criticism that timber is helping fuel sub-regional tensions on the borders of Liberia, Sierra Leone […]
AT least 10 people have been killed, six of them at the weekend, in Sudanese government bombing raids on the southern town of Raga, which fell to rebels earlier this month, the Roman Catholic church said on Wednesday. A mother and her baby were among those killed in an air strike on Sunday, according to […]
A COTTON producer and five other companies in western Cameroon have been ordered to pay pollution penalties of up to 24-million CFA francs ($31_000) an official source said on Monday. Cameroon Industrial Cotton (CICAM) has until June 30 to pay a five million CFA franc ($6_500) fine for the reckless release into the environment of […]
THE rogue hippopotamus that attacked and killed a security guard at an up-market Mpumalanga resort died of stress during a large-scale capture operation in the Sabie River on Monday afternoon. The adult bull hippo, described as a “trouble-maker” that regularly fought with other hippos, was cornered and darted by Mpumalanga Parks Board (MPB) but died […]
AT least six people were killed in a shooting incident on Tuesday at a Ugandan polling station during legislative elections. The bloodshed began in Bubulo East constituency when the bodyguard of one candidate, Simon Mulongo, shot the brother of a rival, according to police representative Asuman Mugenyi. “Then the mob got the bodyguard and lynched […]
VETERAN journalist and editor of the Malawi News, Horace Somanje, was buried in Blantyre on Monday after he died on Saturday following a short illness. The Journalists Association of Malawi (Jama) said Somanje’s death was a great loss to the nation and the journalism fraternity. He was founding chairman of JAMA and contributed to the […]
THREE African leaders at a security summit on Tuesday in Zambia condemned Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi for abandoning a peace accord signed six years ago and pressing on with a 25-year civil war. Presidents Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Frederick Chiluba of Zambia held a one-day mini-summit to […]
UGANDANS go to the polls on Tuesday to vote in legislative elections held in the wake of a moderately volatile campaign and under a system which prohibits political parties from functioning normally. At stake are 214 of the 295 seats in Uganda’s seventh parliament since independence. The other seats are reserved for special groups such […]
SIX people died in a massive protest against the government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on June 14, according to a new official toll. A previous official toll had put the number of casualties at four dead and 946 injured. The protest was the biggest seen in the north African country since it declared independence from […]
SWAZI and South African pro-democracy groups on Monday condemned a repressive new decree which reinforces King Mswati III’s powers over the judiciary, allowing him to bypass recent judgments challenging the monarchy. “This barbaric decree … has served to reinforce the legalised and institutionalised reign of political terror in the kingdom under the tyrannical rule of […]
Cape Town | Tuesday CONSERVATIONISTS on Monday said only 7% of the thousands of penguins oiled after a carrier ship sank off South Africa a year ago, have been seen breeding again, indicating that spills might make the birds sterile. About 33% of those who were clean but were evacuated to swim back are breeding” […]
A POWERFUL political group from northern Nigeria said on Monday it has hired 20 lawyers to counter claims made to the country’s human rights panel over the two military coups of 1966. The Arewa Consultative Forum’s general secretary, Inuwa Abdulkadir, said the lawyers were hired to counter claims made by the Ohaneze Ndigbo, a group […]
TWO South African organisations that have threatened to invade farms have accused the government of wrongfully arresting 19 alleged land invaders in Kuruman in the Northern Cape. The Mpumalanga Labour Tenants Committee (MLTC) and the Free State Farming Community on Monday expressed their “anger and disappointment” with the arrests. The 19 members of the Groot […]
ABOUT 50 Ugandan army and police officers have fled their country for Rwanda, where they are seeking political asylum. The Ugandan Monitor newspaper at the weekend named some of the officers who fled as Colonel Samson Mande, a former military attach in Tanzania who in January appeared before a court martial on terrorism charges, Lieutenant […]
THREE passengers were killed and about 50 injured when a train derailed on Cameroon’s main north-south line between the capital Yaounde and the northwestern town of Ngaoundere, CAMRAIL announced on Monday. An official in the national railway company said that the train had been carrying more than a thousand passengers when it derailed on Sunday, […]
AN Egyptian factory manager and 13 of his colleagues died when a weekend fire swept through their tile factory south of Cairo following a gas leak, police said on Monday. Rescue workers on Sunday recovered 12 charred bodies, including that of manager Adel Abdelatif, upon entering the gutted Pharaohs Factory in Ushim, 100km south of […]
STRIKING public workers in Zambia have scaled down their demands from a 100% pay hike to a “reasonable” salary increment, a union leader said on Monday. “We have come down from our initial demand. We have asked the government to give us a reasonable offer,” said Darison Chaala, secretary general of the Civil Servants Union […]
THE speaker of the state assembly in Kano, northern Nigeria, ousted by lawmakers this week because he lightens his skin, insisted on Saturday on his “right to bleach”. Ibrahim Abdullahi Gwarmani told a daily newspaper: “I know the Koran very well and my bleaching should be viewed as my personal liberty. It does not violate […]
LEGISLATORS in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous Zanzibar and Pemba said on Thursday they want the twin Indian Ocean islands to be allowed to join the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), despite longstanding opposition from Tanzania’s federal government. Several members of Zanzibar House of Representatives (parliament) have expressed concern over federal opposition to the move, despite numerous […]
A WOMAN was killed and her six-year-old son was injured on Sunday after they stepped on an anti-personnel landmine near Burundi’s capital Bujumbura, witnesses said. “We heard a landmine explosion and then a little girl covered in blood arrived saying her mother and brother were lying on the floor and could not move,” said a […]
UGANDAN troops have overrun a camp of northern Ugandan rebels inside Sudan, killing 22 rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Ugandan military commander Brigadier Henry Tumukunde said on Sunday . Tumukunde said Ugandan troops crossed some 20 kilometres into Sudan on Wednesday and attacked a small LRA camp at the village of Lumarati. A cache […]
A SWEDISH -registered ship in difficulty off the west African coast with 186 Liberian passengers aboard is trying to make it to Ghana with little fuel remaining, according to the Swedish captain’s wife. “We have no idea where the ship is,” said Eva Furberg, wife of the ship’s 52-year-old Swedish captain, Henning Kielberg, by phone […]
THE Sunday Times reports today that South African National Defence Force chief has admitted that he received a R500_000 Mercedes Benz at a massive discount from the same company that allegedly supplied a similar vehicle to ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni, while negotiations over the country’s R43-billion arms deal were underway. General Siphiwe Nyanda received […]
MOROCCO has accepted a United Nations plan offering its territory Western Sahara wide autonomy as a basis for future negotiations, the country’s UN representative announced on state television on Saturday. “Our country, which does not adhere to all the propositions, has accepted the plan as a framework and basis for future negotiations in a constructive […]
SA President Thabo Mbeki left on Monday for Washington for a two-day visit to brief US President George W. Bush on his Millennium Africa Recovery Programme (MAP) and boost bilateral ties. “The president was expected in Washington by around 7:30 in the evening,” said his representative Tasneem Carrim. Mbeki’s working visit to the United States […]
BRENDAN BOYLE, Cape Town | Monday SOURCES within the ANC say President Thabo Mbeki’s altercation on Youth Day with former first lady Winnie Madikizela-Mandela could result in a challenge to his leadership. Mbeki pushed her away, knocking off her cap, and loudly reprimanded her when she arrived late at a Youth Day rally and leaned […]
Bujumbura, Burundi | Sunday BURUNDI mediator Nelson Mandela is on the verge of announcing a major breakthough in efforts to end the eight-year-old civil war in the small, densely populated central African country, officials said. Mandela is expected to make the announcement at a summit soon of all Great Lakes heads of state, Burundi presidential […]
MALAWIS finance minister has presented a 42.3-billion kwacha ($566-million) budget, and slammed the nation’s loss-making parastatals. Finance Minister Mathews Chikaonda told parliament in the administrative capital Lilongwe that the budget for 2001-02 fiscal year was aimed at achieving economic stability to spur growth and reduce poverty. “A total expenditure of 42.3 billion (kwacha) is projected, […]