BRUSSELS | Friday A COURT in Brussels has found four Rwandans, including two Catholic nuns, guilty of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide after a landmark eight week-long trial. College teacher Vincent Ntezimana, 39, factory owner and former minister Alphonse Higaniro, 51, as well as nuns Consolata Mukangango, 42, and Julienne Mukabutera, 36, alias […]
A 20-strong team of Nigerian police officers will soon leave for Kinshasa to train their counterparts in the DRC, a representative said on Monday. A squad to be led by an assistant police commissioner will conduct a training exercise there at the request of the DRC government, said force representative Haz Iwendi. – AFP
A TEAM of British police are due in Zambia on Monday to help in the investigation of Friday’s murder of Paul Tembo, a former close aide of the Zambian president. Tembo was killed Friday by two unidentified gunmen in what is believed to have been a politically motivated murder. Tembo, 41 was killed on the […]
MEMBERS of the South African parliament on Thursday angrily debated the conduct of its speaker after months of accusations that she had tried to control an investigation into a $5.5 billion-dollar arms acquisition deal. Opposition parties charged that speaker Frene Ginwala of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had abused her power to protect fellow […]
POLITICAL stability, macroeconomic fundamentals and growth and a plan to combat Aids are necessary to attract foreign investment to southern Africa, a business leader said on Friday. “Those countries who compete successfully are those that rank high on this list of criteria,” said Niall FitzGerald, co-chairman of the giant consumer goods company Unilever. FitzGerald was […]
FARMERS in Nigeria get under half their harvest to market because of poor handling, bad roads, and marketing bottlenecks, the agriculture minister has said. Other problems cited were the scarcity and high cost of transportation in some rural areas and difficulties at the ports for exports. In the 1960s Nigeria was a major agricultural exporter […]
NIGERIAS hundreds of traditional rulers, royals and other dignitaries are battling a proposal in parliament to limit the use of traffic sirens. A bill currently working its way through the national assembly seeks to regulate the use of the siren by Nigeria’s rich and powerful to force a way through the country’s chronic traffic jams. […]
THE Nigerian Red Cross said Monday it is planning to send more aid to tens of thousands of people displaced by unrest in the central and north Nigeria. More than 50_000 people have fled their homes in Nasarawa State, in central Nigeria, since mid-June because of fighting between Tiv and other ethnic groups, according to […]
A SOUTH African bank has seized nearly a million rand (about $122_000) from popular leader Winnie Madikizela-Mandela after she failed to repay a loan, Sunday newspapers reported. Madikizela-Mandela secured a R600_000 loan from First National Bank on the basis of a lucrative “diamond-exporting transaction”, reports by The Sunday Times and City Press said. But the […]
GLENDA DANIELS, Johannesburg | Friday THE Johannesburg High Court this week found in favour of a handyman who worked at the brothel The Ranch, in a civil case brought against the Ministry of Safety and Security. Matthew Palmer claimed R800_000 in damages for brutal assault and unlawful arrest and detention when the police raided The […]
Disabled people are starving while officials shuffle paper in an attempt to decide whether to help them. Roshila Pillay reports Disabled people in the North West province have been queuing at clinics from 4am to have doctors examine them and confirm whether they can receive their R540 a month disability grant, since grants were suspended […]
Jaspreet Kindra KwaZulu-Natal Minister of Transport S’bu Ndebele may be facing criminal charges after he procured faxes and e-mails sent to provincial officials and politicians questioning his role in the taxi industry. Ndebele used the documents to attack the media, including the Mail & Guardian, claiming the news- paper was involved in a political conspiracy […]
Marianne Merten An intricate web of gangsters, anti-drug vigilantes, a schoolboy drug dealer and a suspected corrupt policeman operating in the Cape Flats underworld has emerged in Cape Town courts. Two leading members of the Americans gang are applying for bail on Friday June 8 after being arrested in connection with almost 2 000 Mandrax […]
Chiken Bizniz: The Whole Story is an award-winning film about a man who leaves his job at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to become a chicken mogul in Soweto. By all accounts it’s a regular crowd-pleaser. The Great Dance: A Hunter’s Story is a visually beautiful documentary about three San hunters tracking their prey while explaining […]
You have to be hard when you know your heart is going to be broken by the death of a child. Gail Johnson does not deserve the treatment she is getting, argues Charlene Smith The problem with Gail Johnson is that she has long red nails and wild red hair, she wears tight-fitting slacks over […]
Anthony Holiday Plato held that what people love makes them what they are. Politicians, with rare exceptions, love power and are often driven by the fear of losing it and of the form that loss may take. Thus what a politician fears most provides a crucial clue to what he is and why he acts […]
Niel Sonnekus This year’s Standard Bank National Arts Film Festival ranges from the darkly confrontational to the classic, with plenty of space for the experimental, the local and the sadomasochistic in between. Heading the festival is the work of Durban-bred film-maker Ian Kerkhof, who lived in Amsterdam from 1983 to 1999 because he didn’t “feel […]
Tim Wood american notes When fauna and flora take precedence over humans, there is a serious problem that has nothing to do with the ugly face of capitalism. The United States is frothing about its energy vulnerability. California is suffering rolling blackouts that threaten its neighbours and petrol prices are higher than they have been […]
Jaspreet Kindra Eskom should be providing electricity on a free lifeline basis where it has jurisdiction, says Wits University political economist Patrick Bond. He cites the Irene Grootboom case last year, which gave force to the constitutional guarantee of dignity in shelter and services as the basis for an argument for a lifeline electricity supply. […]
Mboniso Sigonyela Passenger vehicle sales for May are down in line with other indicators of consumer demand, but vehicle manufacturers should not lose hope as exports and commercial vehicles sales are increasing. The gains in commercial sales show that fixed investment is recovering while weakness of the rand, particularly against the pound, makes vehicle exports […]
Valentine Cascarino food Although Mozambican cuisine is one of the most delicious in Africa, it nevertheless requires patience from patrons as most meals take about two to three hours to prepare. But it’s worth the wait if you want first-hand experience of a cuisine that goes beyond prawns peri-peri, entering a realm caught up between […]
Kathryn Smith Fauna seems to be the order of the day at this year’s Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. Two of the featured exhibitions on this year’s main programme revolve around the semantics of the animal world, whether it’s Walter Oltmann’s monumental insects fashioned from woven wire and tubing, or Willie Bester’s take […]
Alec Hogg boardroom talk After years of being shielded by a complicated ownership structure and an M-Cell investment that dwarfed its operational earnings, media and entertainment business Johnnic Communications (Johncom) is about to be exposed to the full glare of shareholder attention. It is not a flattering picture. In virtually every area of its operations, […]
Nicholas Neveling Playwright Reza de Wet isn’t too bothered about the numerous literary prizes she has won or the big city fame she could achieve if she wanted to. “It’s the experience itself. It’s the felt life that’s all important. Some of my best experiences have been in very small productions that no one really […]
Lauren Shantall FINEART The village of Zuney hasn’t felt the shudder of a locomotive in more than a decade. The abandoned metal tracks have gone to rusty seed, overgrown with weeds, the wooden sleepers lie dormant, rotting. Once a day, many years ago, the linked carriages en route from Port Elizabeth to Port Alfred would […]
Classical and contemporary music is hoisting the flag high at this year’s impressive New Music Indaba. Music critic Paul Boekkooi looks at the sounds on offer Festivals are there to allow experimentation, or as Charles Ives would have it, “some serious stretching of the ears”. They are showcases for new and unusual talent, and a […]
Thebe Mabanga The legacy of South Africa’s literary icon Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda, known internationally as Zakes, is about to be further entrenched when his first adult novel Ways of Dying takes to the stage as a musical called Love and Green Onions. The novel has already been successfully dramatised by Lara Foot Newton in […]
Rock icon Daniel Johnston’s visit to South Africa is a coup for art and grunge Kathryn Smith Where singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston of Texas is concerned, people fall into two categories. Those who know (of) him are always armed with anecdotes ever more extreme, chaotic and hilarious than the last about this figure that has infiltrated […]
This is the make or break year for Cape Town baritone Fikile Mvinjelwa, writes Mathaha Mathaha A string of local and international awards, including the 2001 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music, have put Fikile Mvinjelwa under the spotlight. Is he destined for better, bigger things or will he fade? After Love and Green […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The disgraced former chair of the Central Energy Fund (CEF) awarded the head of the state oil company an annual salary of R1,2-million without following proper civil service procedures. Keith Kunene gave Renosi Mokate, CEO of the CEF, the R100 000 a month salary without consulting the parastatal’s board or seeking […]
Stewart Bailey Lonmin, the world’s number three platinum producer, is feverishly researching alternatives to the labour-intensive mining methodologies used in its South African operations before the HIV/Aids scourge rips deep into its productivity. Most mining groups in South Africa long dependent on the country’s cheap and abundant labour force are starting to feel the pinch […]
On Tuesday, exactly 20 years after the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), South Africa’s minister of health announced the government has no plans to make anti-retroviral drugs available in public hospitals. The country’s share of HIV/Aids cases is now approximately 11,5% of the world total Belinda Beresford The government’s persistent reluctance to provide […]