Johannesburg- Around 1,000 people gathered in northern Johannesburg on Saturday to pay their respects to Miriam Makeba, South Africa's iconic songstress and anti-apartheid activist, who died six days ago in Italy.

Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan was among a number of senior government officials who attended the emotional memorial service in the Coca-Cola Dome.

Johannesburg - Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, former US president Jimmy Carter and Mozambican activist Graca Machel will visit Zimbabwe later this month to assess the humanitarian crisis in the country, it was announced Friday.

They will be visiting on behalf of The Elders, a group of leading international statesmen and women that was formed by former South African president Nelson Mandela last year to tackle some of the world's most intractable conflicts.

South African Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu and former Irish president Mary Robinson are among some of the other members of the 11-person group.

Johannesburg - International environmental lobby group Greenpeace opened its first office in Africa on Thursday in Johannesburg.

In a statement Greenpeace said having an office in Africa was part of its commitment "to tackling the most urgent environmental problems facing the continent - climate change, deforestation and overfishing."

Greenpeace also said it would open a second office later this month in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and a third in Dakar, Senegal in 2009.

Johannesburg - Twenty-five people were killed in South Africa's eastern Mpumalanga province Wednesday when two trucks, one of which was taking people to work, collided head-on and overturned, SAfm public radio reported.

The radio report said only two out of 27 people involved in the early-morning crash had survived. It was not clear whether they were injured.

Emergency workers were at the scene to try to remove victims trapped in the wreckage.

Mpumalanga is a busy transit corridor linking Gauteng province, Africa's wealthiest region where Johannesburg is located, with Maputo and Beira ports across the border in Mozambique.

Johannesburg - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said Monday it had been forced to reduce its food rations to millions of hungry people in Zimbabwe due to a lack of funding.

In an update on its feeding programme in Zimbabwe, the WFP said it had been forced to cut its cereal rations from 12 kilograms to 10 kilograms per person per month and its pulse rations from 1.8 kilogram to 1 kilogram per month in order to make the food go further.

Johannesburg  - South African artists are calling for the country's beloved songstress and anti-apartheid icon, Miriam Makeba, to be given a state funeral following her death in Italy on Sunday.

Makeba, 76, who was known affectionately as Mama Africa, suffered a heart attack shortly after a performance on Sunday evening in southern Italy in support of author Roberto Saviano's campaign against the Camorra, the local version of the Mafia.