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/ 22 September 2004
More than half the commercial farmers in the Eastern Cape will face bankruptcy if they are forced to pay a land tax set at 2% of market value, according to research released on Wednesday. That rate would lead to an 89% drop in profits for farmers in the province and have other equally serious knock-on effects.
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/ 21 September 2004
Rabbit meat could be the food of the future for poor South Africans, according to a team of researchers from the University of the Free State. In a paper released at a Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa conference, they said the animals are a cheap and easy-to-raise form of low-cholesterol protein.
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/ 16 September 2004
The jury was out on the effectiveness of Thursday’s public-service strike in the Western Cape as unions claimed a massive turnout while the provincial government sought to downplay its impact. In Cape Town, police estimated about 17 000 strikers snaked their way through the city.
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/ 13 September 2004
The department of health is being taken to court again by Aids pressure group the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which is demanding the department release its detailed anti-retroviral rollout programme. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has already filed notice of her intention to oppose it.
The fire that claimed the lives of three Pollsmoor inmates is only part of a cycle of violence that prison staff fear has yet to reach its bloody climax. That climax, they say, may be the stabbing of one of their own colleagues. There have been three fires in the prison’s cavernous admissions centre over the past three days, the first on Sunday and the others — including the fatal one — on Monday afternoon.
The 115-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) still has a relevance and a role to play, South Africa’s permanent representative at the United Nations, Dumisani Kumalo, said on Monday. ”NAM still remains [as] relevant today as it was in 1961 when it was launched in Belgrade,” said Kumalo during a media briefing on the eve of a NAM Ministerial Conference in Durban.
Torrential rain on Thursday brought chaos to Cape Town, flooding shack areas and roads and causing major traffic snarl-ups. Several people were ferried to higher ground by boat from the aptly named River Club in Observatory when the nearby Liesbeeck River burst its banks. Informal settlements were also affected.
The challenge South Africa faces ahead of the 2010 Soccer World Cup is to build not only stadiums, but a world-class team, bid company CEO Danny Jordaan said on Sunday. On Tuesday an announcement will be made about South African Football Association teams that will visit the cities earmarked to host the matches.
The amount involved in the parliamentary travel voucher scam could reach R16-million, Speaker Baleka Mbete said on Friday. She was speaking at a media conference the wake of this week’s court appearance by seven travel agency owners and employees, and speculation that MPs could be next on the Scorpions’ list.
The Democratic Alliance has called for a halt to the Western Cape’s multimillion-rand film city project, claiming that wrong decisions were ”deliberately made”. However premier Ebrahim Rasool’s office says due process was followed, and that anyone unhappy with what happened can launch a court challenge.