Europe South Asia Asia Pacific Americas Middle East Africa BBC Homepage World Service Education
BBC Homepagelow graphics version | feedback | help
BBC News Online
 You are in: World: Africa
Front Page 
World 
Africa 
Americas 
Asia-Pacific 
Europe 
Middle East 
South Asia 
-----------
From Our Own Correspondent 
-----------
Letter From America 
UK 
UK Politics 
Business 
Sci/Tech 
Health 
Education 
Sport 
Entertainment 
Talking Point 
In Depth 
AudioVideo 
Friday, 14 January, 2000, 16:33 GMT
Africa Media Watch




In Media Watch this week:

Angola war spreads mayhem

Media in southern Africa have been reporting the impact of the Angolan Government's offensive against Unita strongholds near the border with Namibia, with Angola's neighbours voicing alarm at the suffering caused by one of Africa's longest-running conflicts.

South Africa's Sunday Times reported that inhabitants of Namibia's north-eastern Kavango region were "fleeing their homes and abandoning their ploughed lands," as fighting intensified on both sides of the Angola-Namibia border.


Armed Angolan The Angolan war is having a wide impact
"While civilian fatalities and injuries mount, along with looting and stock theft, MPLA recruiters are marching Namibians (said to be volunteers, although some are only 14 years old) from the tribal areas of Kwangali and Sambyu to training camps at Mangarara and Calai in southern Angola.

"This is being done with the blessing of the Namibian Government," the paper wrote.

"In the latest twist, scores of Zimbabwean soldiers are joining the force, which apparently also has many South African mercenaries."

The Angolan government denied the reports that it was recruiting Namibians to fight against Unita.

South Africans "helping Unita"

Angola's ruling MPLA meanwhile accused certain South African politicians and businessmen of backing Jonas Savimbi's Unita movement and continuing the help given to Unita by the former apartheid government during the Cold War.

"We pointed out that political and business circles in South Africa are still bent on destabilising Angola," MPLA Secretary-General Joao Lourenco told Angolan state radio after talks with South African President Thabo Mbeki.


Injured tourists The recent shooting of French tourists has scared others away
"We trust our ANC friends, and believe in the measures that the ANC has taken through its government with a view to thwarting those political and business circles, which insist on backing the wrong horse," he said.

Mr Lourenco said he told President Mbeki that Angolan government forces had seized quantitities of South African arms supplied to Unita.

Tourists abandon Namibia

The killing of three French children in north-eastern Namibia earlier this month has badly hit the tourist industry in the area, The Namibian reported with the headline "Tourism left reeling".

The paper said there had been a flood of holiday cancellations after the killings, with safari lodges in the Caprivi and Kavango regions forced to dismiss their staff and shut their doors.

Microsoft magic?

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo hopes US computer giant Microsoft can work some of his magic on Nigeria's struggling economy, according to the Nigerian paper The Guardian.


Nigerians using computers Can computers save the Nigerian economy?
President Obasanjo is reported to have offered Bill Gates - who has since stepped down as Microsoft's chief executive - "a package of incentives and opportunities" to invest in Nigeria. But the paper cautioned that the initiative "seems very ambitious".

"Nigeria has been racked by years of misrule and is trudging along with decaying facilities. Microsoft, on the other hand, was voted in 1998 by Fortune magazine as the eighth of the 100 best American companies to work for," wrote Etim

The paper said that along with seeking foreign investment, the government "should equally be concerned with the disappearing enterprising spirit in Nigerians."

Tanzania's dwindling forests

Illegal loggers are devastating Tanzania's forests, threatening to turn the country into an ecological disaster zone, the Pan-African News Agency reports from Dar es Salaam.

Up to 500,000 hectares of forest are being lost annually, according to Tanzania's Permanent Secretary for Natural Resources, Philemon Luhanjo.

Mr Luhanjo admitted that corrupt forestry staff sometimes helped the loggers, many of whom were decimating wildlife populations through hunting.

He said the authorities had started enlisting the help of local communities in forest conservation, and were mounting extra police patrols to stop the illegal loggers, who operate throughout the country, including in forest reserves.

Cockroach invasion

Residents of Cape Town have been struggling against a different kind of plague: flying cockroaches.


Cape Flats Cape Town: Warm weather blamed for plague
South Africa's Sunday Times quoted one woman in the Cape Flats as saying "they were white - I heard that maybe they were German or American cockroaches".

A local council official said a spell of hot weather had encouraged the cockroaches to breed.

One woman complained that no matter how much pesticide she used, she could not get rid of them.

Next Media Watch on 21 January

Search BBC News Online

Advanced search options
Launch console
BBC RADIO NEWS
BBC ONE TV NEWS
WORLD NEWS SUMMARY
PROGRAMMES GUIDE
Africa Contents
Country profiles

Internet links:
South Africa's Sunday Times
The Namibian
Nigeria's The Guardian

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
Links to other Africa stories are at the foot of the page.


E-mail this story to a friend

Links to more Africa stories

^^ Back to top

News Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Entertainment | Talking Point | In Depth | AudioVideo
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To BBC Sport>> | To BBC Weather>>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© MMIII | News Sources | Privacy