South Africa Police

Prints of the anti-apartheid film "Cry Freedom," seized by police from 30 South African theaters on its opening day in July, 1988, have been returned and the distributing company said Monday it will re-release the film April 27, nearly two years after its originally scheduled premiere. United International Pictures, the film's distributor here, said in a statement that it saw no remaining obstacles to the nationwide release of "Cry Freedom."

Mixing business and politics doesn't always make for good business or even good politics. But it sure can make for a wild ride in the South African marketplace. Consider the case of Zenzeleni Clothing, an unusual enterprise founded by a politically active black trade union, staffed with laid-off union workers and chasing a piece of the anti-apartheid T-shirt market. Back in January, Zenzeleni's chief executive, Glen Cormack, received a telephone order for 1,000 T-shirts with the emblem of the African National Congress and the words: "ANC Lives.

pretoria, south africa -- Andre Durant, a policeman from this leafy African capital, was kidnapped more than nine months ago by unidentified gunmen in Iraq. Apart from one brief phone call, in which Durant managed to shout a strangled "I love you" to his wife, he hasn't been heard from since. There are no yellow ribbons trimming Durant's quiet suburban Pretoria house. There has been no drumbeat of sympathetic news coverage about his case.

House robberies: up by 27% for the year ending in March. Business robberies: up 41%. Sex crimes: up 10.1%. Carjackings: up 5%. "The crimes you fear most are on the rise," was how one South African newspaper put it. No set of numbers is more politically sensitive here than the annual crime statistics, which were due for release before the April parliamentary elections, but were delayed until last week.Police Commissioner Bheki Cele, a close ally of President Jacob Zuma, has the difficult task of turning around the nation's surging crime rate -- which affects South Africans in poor townships and informal settlements more than those in wealthy suburbs.

Convicted death squad leader Eugene de Kock confessed Tuesday to four terrorist bombings of anti-apartheid and church groups in London and South Africa during the 1980s but insisted that he acted under official orders at all times. The former police colonel also admitted a horrific litany of other offenses, including torching a Pretoria building with elderly nuns sleeping inside.

A parcel bomb exploded and killed a man today as postal workers unloaded a train from South Africa, police said. Seven others were injured.

Vandals slashed fuel hoses at eight Royal Dutch Shell service stations in Utrecht overnight in an apparent protest against the oil company's presence in South Africa, Dutch police said Monday.

Vandals cut pump lines and contaminated oil tanks with paint at four Shell service stations in the Netherlands to protest Royal Dutch Shell's investments in South Africa, police said Tuesday. Police said two Shell stations in The Hague and two others in Eindhoven were smeared with anti-apartheid graffiti.