Johannesburg - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez was in South Africa on Tuesday for talks with President Thabo Mbeki on strengthening ties between one of the world's largest oil producers and Africa's second-largest consumer of the commodity.

Chavez arrived in South Africa on Monday evening for the three-day visit, his first to the country whose leader, Mbeki, he describes as "my friend."

On the eve of the talks, the South African Foreign Ministry announced the two leaders would sign a major agreement on energy cooperation.

South Africa, Africa's second-largest consumer of oil after Egypt, currently gets most of its oil from the Middle East but is keen to diversify. Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

Johannesburg - A cold front bringing with it snow, storms and minus degree temperatures to South Africa has cost several people their lieves as well as destroyed thousands of hectares of bush and pasture land, according to local reports Monday.

Highland regions of the West Cape Province around Capetown were hit by snow, while three other provinces were plagued by bush fires of several kilometres that were whipped up by strong winds.

One official compared the burning areas to a battlefield, saying the fires were out of control.

Rescue workers and government officials spoke of between 10 and 15 people dead, including the pilot of water bomber plane that crashed over the weekend.

Johannesburg, Aug 30 : Married Hindu nurses at Durban''s Addington hospital would soon be allowed to use ‘bindis’ on their forehead.

Peggy Nkonyeni, the KwaZulu-Natal MEC for health, said that Hindu nurses at the Addington hospital should be allowed to use the symbolic red dots after the hospital in a revised dress code had prohibited married Hindu nurses from wearing their traditional red ‘dot’, cultural strings, nose rings and studs.

Johannesburg - Negotiators from Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) resumed talks on a power-sharing government in South Africa on Friday, a South African official confirmed.

Foreign affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa told SAPA news agency the talks between Zanu-PF and the two MDCs - one led by Tsvangirai and another smaller faction led by Arthur Mutambara - had resumed more than two weeks after they reached deadlock.

Johannesburg/Luanda - Angolans go to the polls later this month in the first national election in the war-scarred country in 16 years. President Eduardo dos Santos' party is expected to win easily.

Dos Santos, 68, who has maintained a tight grip on power for 29 years, had repeatedly delayed parliamentary and presidential elections on the grounds that the country's ruined infrastructure made them unfeasible.

The elections to the 220-seat National Assembly on September 5 and 6, while deemed unlikely to dent the majority of dos Santos' MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), are seen as a dry run for presidential elections scheduled for next year.

Johannesburg, Aug 23 : South African Xenophobia victims have said they would fear for their lives if they had to return to the communities they had fled.

Most women were concerned about the safety of their children, who were also not at school, said Patrick Chauke, chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs during his visit to a shelter for those displaced by the violence in Midrand.

He said the aim of the visit was to also make the refugees understand the importance of reintegration.

“We do no want to force them back to the communities they had left during the xenophobic attacks,” said Chauke.

He said that if reintegration failed, they would be taken to another area.