Groundbreaking legislation on childrens’ rights was approved by the National Assembly on Wednesday — nine years after it was first mooted. The Children’s Bill lowers the age of majority from 21 years to 18, outlaws virginity testing, paves the way for a register of child abusers and cracks down on child trafficking.
A Durban schoolgirl has made her mark on the medical world by becoming the youngest ever contributor to the internationally respected South African Medical Journal. Thirteen-year-old Safura Abdool Karim’s contribution was a study of ”Playstation thumb” among a sample of her former schoolmates at Crawford Preparatory.
Controversial Beaufort West politician Truman Prince on Wednesday night committed himself to promoting the rights of women after being found guilty by an African National Congress disciplinary committee. The three-person committee sitting in Cape Town suspended Prince’s ANC membership for six months.
Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhenkesi Stofile has thrown his weight behind a call by the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee for South African Rugby Union president Brian van Rooyen and other senior figures in the union’s management committee to step down.
The hearing of the Richtersveld community’s multibillion-rand land claim has been postponed to October 25 — and could continue into 2006. Land Claims Court Judge Antonie Gildenhuys, who has been hearing evidence in Cape Town over the past four weeks, said on Friday that seven weeks have been set aside for the October session.
The court case against vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath is a distraction from the real work of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), its national chairperson Zackie Achmat, said on Friday. Earlier, Rath’s lawyer argued Rath should have a chance to reply to ”vilifying statements” Achmat and the TAC made against him in their papers.
State diamond-mining company Alexkor was only partly responsible for the degradation of the wetland at the mouth of the Orange River, the Land Claims Court heard on Friday. The court is hearing a claim by the Richtersveld community for up to R2,5-billion in compensation, and the return of more than 84 000ha of land.
State-owned diamond company Alexkor as recently as four years ago wanted to mine the Ramsar wetlands site at the mouth of the Orange River, it emerged on Thursday. The revelation is contained in a confidential memorandum produced at the Richtersveld land-claim hearing in Cape Town, now in its second week.
The decision to press a land claim was taken by the whole Richtersveld community and not just a section of it, an anthropologist told the Land Claims Court on Wednesday. She was testifying in support of the Richtersvelders’ demand for the return of 85 000ha of diamond-rich land and compensation that could total R2,5-billion.
A Richtersveld elder on Tuesday told how as a young man he laboured for less than 40c a day on the state diamond diggings that his community is now reclaiming. The community is claiming 85 000ha of land and compensation of up to R2,5-billion, including R1,5-billion for diamonds extracted from the ground.