Duncan Guy

The SA Transport and Allied Workers' Union has threatened to make its national strike on Monday next week the launching pad of a second round of downing tools. This follows the union's claim that Transnet, at the weekend, went ''behind labour's backs'' and signed an agreement to transfer Metrorail to the SA Rail Commuter Corporation by the end of this month.

Khutsong community stalwart Jomo Mogale on Wednesday called for a by-election in the troubled township where residents are boycotting the local government poll. He said the few voters who had trickled in to cast their ballots were mainly candidate councillors themselves.

Traditional leaders would be given powers at local government level under African Christian Democratic Party rule, party leader Kenneth Meshoe said on Sunday. He was speaking in a church at Barcelona informal settlement in Daveyton, Ekurhuleni, on the East Rand.

Word from Cape Town that Parliament had rubber-stamped a Bill that put an end to cross-border municipalities triggered violent protests in Khutsong on Wednesday. By evening, a police officer had been badly burnt during a petrol-bomb attack and five houses had been torched.

Two houses were set on fire on Wednesday during protests in Khutsong outside Carletonville as thousands of residents protested the proposed incorporation of Merafong municipality into North West from Gauteng. They took to the streets in a mobilisation march after a clash with the police.

Aubrey Welken, a South African Secret Service agent imprisoned for a year in Zimbabwe, arrived at Johannesburg International airport on Tuesday. Speaking to the media, the middle-aged Welken, with shoulder-length grey hair, said: ''It was a tough time, but I am okay.''

Parliament will have an attentive audience on Wednesday when residents of Merafong municipality gather to hear the result of their demand to remain part of Gauteng province. On Monday, a protest march ended in the handing over of a memorandum calling for the proposal that Merafong be incorporated into North West to be withdrawn.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has been in talks with Equatorial Guinea's representative in Pretoria in an effort to secure the release of two air-crew members stranded there as pawns in a dispute between aviation companies. Spokesperson Nomafela Kota confirmed this on Wednesday.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has appealed to the government of Equatorial Guinea to either charge or release two South African air-crew members being refused exit from the oil-rich West African state. Sechan Pillay and Ruwaide Kalbine have been unable to leave since November 17.

Residents of Merafong who want their municipality to remain a part of Gauteng shouted down speakers who wanted incorporation into the North West province at a public hearing in Carletonville on Friday, convened to hear views on a demarcation crisis in the area.

''An awful lot'' needs to be done before mid-December when financial closure is expected to be reached between stakeholders of the Gautrain project, local construction partner Murray & Roberts said on Tuesday. The executive director of the company, Arnold Miller, said there was nonetheless no reason to suppose that financial closure could not be reached.

Taxi drivers slowly edged their minibuses around boulders placed in the roads of Khutsong, in the Carletonville area, after a day of protests on Wednesday over a proposal that the Merafong municipality be incorporated into the North West province. It is in Gauteng at present.