LAWYERS STUDY FOUR YEARS LAWYERS will only need to stuy for four years for their LLB degrees, rather than the current five. The Qualification of Legal Practioners Amendment Bill, which provides for an LLB-degree to be obtained in four years, also received unanimous support in parliament on Friday.
NO FIREWORKS JOHANNESBURG’S eastern council, which controls the largest chunk of Johannesburg and Sandton, has banned the use of fireworks without written consent from the chief fire officer. Allowances are likely to be made for religious festivals such as Friday’s Hindu festival of lights Deepavali. Other Gauteng councils including Pretoria and Krugersdorp, have similar plans. But the decision may be too late to affect next week’s Guy Fawkes Day, and may only be promulgated in time to prevent New Year’s Day crackers.
GAY SACKING CASE SETTLED An out-of-court settlement on Thursday has ended a lawsuit in the Johannesburg Labour Court brought by a gay man who claimed he’d been sacked for being ”a faggot”. Russell van den Berg told the court he’d come to an out of court settlement with the man who fired him, Hospitality Marketing International’s Peter Kastner.
‘VICTIMISED’ BY TRC IN a last-minute effort to delay the inevitable, the Junior Doctors’ Association of South Africa (Judasa) was planning to urge Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma on Thursday to hold off implementing compulsory community service until 1999.
Judasa, which has opposed the scheme of community service for newly-qualified doctors, also hopes to discuss the negotiation process on terms and conditions of service, location of service and supervision.
STUDENTS OWE MILLIONS A campaign to induce University of Transkei students to pay their fees has poured R10,1-million into the university’s coffers. But more than 3000 students still owe more than R15 million. The campaign included a series of newspaper advertisements appealing to parents and students to pay up, with a threat that debtors would not be allowed to write their exams.
JAILED GUERRILLAS OUT ON BAIL TWO former ANC guerrillas, jailed in 1993 for an attack on the Bophuthatswana consulate in Kimberley in 1993, have been freed on bail pending an appeal. Sipho Mbaqa and Nkosinathi Nkohla were each jailed for 12 years for the attack in which a student was killed and 40 people injured. But this week, two other ANC cadres applied for amnesty for the same attack.