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 […]
A PORTION of the Kruger millions may have been found in Ermelo, in the southern part of Mpumalanga, by local farm workers, The Citizen newspaper reported on Friday. The Ermelo Town Council are now discussing security measures to protect the farmer and workers at the centre of the drama, the newspaper said. A Zulu family […]
A TEENAGER will appear in court on Monday charged with murder after the death of a Nigerian boy in London, less than a year after the killing of Damilola Taylor. Jude Akapa, 15, is thought to have been attacked as he walked home from his Roman Catholic boy’s school in Blackheath, southeast London, on Wednesday. […]
ZIMBABWE prostitutes are now demanding that their clients pay in US dollars in preference to the local currency, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday. The paper said prostitutes in the city centre were charging tourists $200 a night, as the country suffers its worst economic crisis since it achieved independence from Britain in 1980. […]
A COURT in southwestern Rwanda has sentenced 10 people to death for their role in the 1994 genocide which left up to 800_000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead, legal officials said on Tuesday. The court in Gikongoro commune sentenced eight Rwandans to life in prison, and five others to terms of between six and […]
DIVERS have found the remains of ships, pink granite statues and a black granite stela from the pharaonic port of Herakleion, which had been lost to the sea for centuries, French explorer Franck Goddio announced on Thursday. “These new archeological discoveries, particularly the stela, allow us to identify the city as being that of Herakleion,” […]
Freetown | Monday SIERRA Leonean rebels have freed another group of child soldiers and the United Nations said on Sunday the move showed the peace process in the West African country was gaining momentum. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels are notorious for making children fight in the country’s decade-long civil war and urging them […]
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
Sechaba ka’Nkosi A retired public prosecutor from the Johannesburg Magistrate Courts’ traffic division has launched a lone crusade against wheel clamping and fining at shopping malls. Roy Welsh has embarked on a mission to put the two practices on trial, believing that they violate motorists’ constitutional rights to a free and fair trial. He is […]
Glenda Daniels The Department of Labour has slammed employers for using “racist assumptions” as excuses not to hire black people and to test prospective employees for HIV/Aids. In the latest Department of Labour equity report, 31% of employers cited HIV/Aids as a barrier to implementing equity. The equity legislation was formulated by the government to […]
Peta Lee She-Mail Ever dropped a pumpkin from a respectable height and watched it splatter into mushy pieces on concrete? That’s more or less what happens to babies and toddlers who aren’t strapped into car seats during an accident. “They look just like smashed pumpkins,” says Maxine Hall, general manager of Durban’s Amahosp Medical Rescue […]
If a political party is intent on posing as a paragon of virtue it would be wise to behave like one. The Democratic Alliance has been prone to postures of this kind. Yet, for the second time in the six months since it took power in the city of Cape Town, it has been found […]
TENS of thousands of people who fled fighting in the Central African Republic capital Bangui are sheltering from heavy rain in nearby forests, eating wild fruit to survive, witnesses said on Wednesday. Unconfirmed estimates of the exodus, mainly of women, children and elderly people, range up to 50 000 in the wake of a failed […]
A lawyer’s letter has revealed how Umgeni Water tried to cover up its illegal activities Paul Kirk The Mail & Guardian has obtained documentary proof that a cash-strapped parastatal organisation, Umgeni Water, has illegally tapped the telephones of serving and past senior employees as well as members of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ […]
Debi Diedericks ‘Have you ever driven a car on a flat piece of land as fast as you can blindfolded?” Obie Oberholzer asks. I shake my head. “The longest I’ve lasted was four minutes.” That is the spirit of famous South African photographer Obie Oberholzer whose work work will be on exhibit at the Standard […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Here you are one evening, an ordinary husband, chatting with your neighbour’s husband on the pavement outside your house. Suddenly, around the corner comes an SABC television cameraman. He don’t say nuttin’, he don’t plant ‘taters he just keep his camera rolling along. Then he piss off hastily out of sight. A […]
A handwriting expert has confirmed that some of the petition lists had been entirely composed by the same person Mungo Soggot The office of Peter Marais, the Democratic Alliance mayor of Cape Town, has been presiding over a vote-rigging exercise to have two prominent streets named after former presidents FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. […]
BRITISH Royal Engineers have defused a 112.5 kilogram bomb in the northern Sierra Leonean town of Kambia, state radio reported on Thursday. The bomb was discovered by the Sierra Leone army in Kambia, about 80 kilometres north of Freetown, after the town was evacuated by Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels following a disarmament pact. The […]
Roshila Pillay Senior academic staff at Vista University are furious about the extravagance of one of the campus rectors, who commutes between Pretoria and Bloemfontein at a cost of about R1 700 a trip. Professor Talvin Schultz, the principal both of Vista’s Bloemfontein campus and the Thaba Nchu College of Education (which is now managed […]
A recent court ruling challenges us to consider how environmental rights should be balanced against socio-economic rights Jenny Hall, Robyn Stein and Claire Tucker At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, poverty “alleviation” was recognised as a key to achieving “sustainable development”. When we host Rio+10 next year, this issue will, no doubt, be an […]
Steven Friedman worm’s eye view For a while the African National Congress leadership has been eager to use its majority in Parliament to impose its will. In the public accounts and safety and security committees, the ANC has used its votes to ensure that the will of its leaders is served. Outside the house, groups […]
Three days before the 1998 Tour de France a little-known team assistant, Willy Voet, was stopped by customs officials on the Franco-Belgian border. What they found in the back of his car stunned the world of professional cycling. This is his story Willy Voet was born in the Belgian town of Hofstade on July 4 […]
POLICE in Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos have taken into care 16 children aged from one-and-a-half to nine and are questioning a businesswoman suspected of trafficking in children. The children were found by police late on Tuesday packed into a mini-bus in Lagos. Police had taken the children to a juvenile welfare centre in the city. […]
Roshila Pillay The rector and vice-chancellor of Vaal Technikon, Aubrey Mokadi, has allegedly been abusing technikon funds. Senior technikon staff and students frustrated with Mokadi’s running of the institution are accusing the rector of victimisation, mismanagement and nepotism. This is not the first time the rector stands accused on these charges. In 1998 the Mail […]
Sam Moiloa, Johny Mphou and Trevor Ngwane a second look When Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils gave his budget speech on May 15, he dropped a bombshell that few listeners noticed. Kasrils endorsed what many environmentalists say is the single most damaging attack on nature in world history, the Three Gorges dam […]
Paul Kirk Petrol dealers in the coastal areas of KwaZulu-Natal are gearing up to give the cold shoulder to hot petrol. At the end of this month the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) will convene a meeting to discuss what is to be done about hot, warm and cold petrol. As petrol heats it […]
Garry Mulholland CD OFTHEWEEK The real clue to What the Manics Did Next had nothing to do with launching their sixth album in Cuba, nor their much-hyped return to a revolutionary punk-rock agenda. Nope, the real clue was tucked away on the B-side of last year’s limited-edition, back-to-basics, number one single Masses Against the Classes, […]
A Namibian policeman is to be charged with murder and attempted murder after shooting two South Africans, killing one and wounding the other. Namibian police representative Chief Inspector Hofni Hamufungu said charges had been laid against the policeman but declined to release his name. The policeman apparently opened fire last Thursday on Bloemfontein shop-fitter Manuel […]
Jane Martinson in New York Struggling dot.com enter- prises face a new competitor in the battle for online sales the United States government. Newly published research shows that the world’s largest online retailer is not a former bookseller but the administration itself, which sold $3,6-billion worth of goods last year. In contrast, Amazon previously regarded […]
Letters to the best man Chez Uhuru 228 Musgrave Road iThekwini To: Dr Essop Pahad The Presidency Union Buildings Tshwane Dear Dr Pahad, This morning I awoke in a bath of perspiration, emotionally exhausted after a nightmare of diabolical proportions. I have been so troubled by these visions from hell that I have been unable […]
Tom Jaine Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris (Doubleday) First Chocolat, then Blackberry Wine, now oranges. If the next is called Walnut, Joanne Harris will have the full dessert. A preoccupation with food makes her list of child characters in this latest bulletin from the French countryside read like an index to a […]