South Africa

1,5m more women than men register for elections
JOHANNESBURG -- The offer by politicians of improved basic services are more appealing to women than men because these issues are closer to home, Durban political analyst Professor Caroline White said yesterday. She was reacting to the fact that ...

Ten parties pay to contest all elections
JOHANNESBURG -- Ten of the 15 political parties which each paid R100000 to contest the national elections have each coughed up a further R180000 to participate in all nine provincial polls on June 2 as required by the Independent Electoral Commiss...

Sowetans accuse police of being corrupt, abetting criminals
JOHANNESBURG -- President-designate Thabo Mbeki was warned during a tour of Soweto yesterday not to visit the township only for electioneering purposes. The warning was issued by an elderly man during a meeting at Uncle Tom's Hall in Orlando West...

Party proposes abolition of tax, usury
CAPE TOWN -- One of the newest parties to hit the South African political scene, the Abolition of Income Tax and Usury Party, has come up with the novel idea of doing just that to create wealth in the country. The party is led by Mr Stephen Goods...

More women on ANC's revised candidates lists
JOHANNESBURG -- The African National Congress yesterday unveiled its revised lists of election candidates, which reflected a few significant changes. Removed from the lists were the names of Deputy Finance Minister Gill Marcus, who is to take up ...

DP, ANC complain to IEC in poster war campaign
JOHANNESBURG -- The election campaigns of the DP and the ANC have spilled over into an advertising war, with both parties complaining to the Independent Electoral Commission about each other. The ANC fired the first salvo on Monday, complaining a...

Moral renewal call 'insincere'
JOHANNESBURG -- Opposition parties yesterday described the African National Congress's launch of a 14-page document on Monday on moral renewal as insulting insincerity. The United Democratic Movement said the event was shameless ANC electioneerin...

Leon compares ANC with worst of old NP
DURBAN -- DP leader Tony Leon yesterday compared the ANC to the former National Party government, saying it was a sad reflection that the ANC had assumed some of the worst characteristics it had so strongly opposed in the NP. Leon said one of the...

Numsa pledges votes for ANC
JOHANNESBURG -- The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa yesterday pledged its 220000 members would back the ANC in the June 2 election. This pledge reinforces the Congress of South African Trade Union's backing for the ANC's election c...

Call for world order focusing on poor
CAPE TOWN -- South Africa had to continue at a more rapid pace to change the lives of its people, especially the poorest of the poor, by eradicating what remained of apartheid and its legacy, President Nelson Mandela said in Pakistan yesterday. ...

'Change will not hamstring police power'
PRETORIA -- The Justice Department yesterday denied reports that police officers are being hamstrung by a 1997 amendment to the Criminal Procedure Act that governs the use of deadly force against criminals. ''All it does is to say the obvious: yo...

Judges reject Luyt's accusations of bias
JOHANNESBURG -- Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs yesterday said the court's strength lay in the fact it was made up of people from different backgrounds. He was speaking at a hearing at the Constitutional Court into an application lodged by...

Jo'burg engineer kills hijackers outside home
JOHANNESBURG -- "There was an aura of pure evil there. I have never felt it in my life before," said a visibly shaken engineer, who shot and killed two would-be hijackers outside his Fontainebleau, Randburg, home on Monday afternoon. The two sus...

Cadre assumed dead when blown up
PRETORIA-- An MK cadre was "throttled until he went limp" before his body was blown up with a landmine in 1986, former security police lieutenant Willem Momberg said yesterday. He told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's amnesty committee ...

Boipatong killer accused of lying
JOHANNESBURG -- The testimony of a 23-year-old man before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the Boipatong Massacre was yesterday disputed and he was called a "blatant liar". Andries Nosenga, imprisoned for 16 years for his part in dri...

Pagad denies link to terrorism in report
CAPE TOWN -- A United States report linking anti-drug group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs to terrorism was of no consequence, according to Pagad's legal adviser and spokesman Cassiem Parker, Network Radio News reported yesterday. Parker s...

Rape survivor to picket court
JOHANNESBURG -- High-profile rape survivor Charlene Smith, who recounted her April 1 ordeal in a national newspaper recently, will join a picket outside the Jeppe Regional Court on Friday when Lynton Halstead, a man who was acquitted on rape charg...

Police heads may roll after gang boss walks
CAPE TOWN -- Police heads may roll following scathing criticism by a high court judge here of incompetent detective work which led to the acquittal of a suspected gang boss, Western Cape community MEC Mark Wiley warned yesterday. He was respondin...