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/ 5 September 2003
Parliament has adopted new liquor legislation under which companies must include plans in their registration for combating alcohol abuse and which outlaws the dop system — the part-payment of wages in alcohol.
Western Cape divers will be the main beneficiaries of the new 10-year perlemoen harvesting rights that places a moratorium on quotas for recreational divers and eliminates larger fishing companies from competing for the rapidly dwindling mollusc.
As in the old apartheid days, police will escort the luxury buses that transport MPs from their parliamentary villages to work. That’s if proposals by the joint committee on members’ support are approved.
Allan Boesak, the liberation cleric and founder member of UDF, jailed for fraud and theft of donor money in 2000, did not qualify for a presidential pardon, according to the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development.
Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) moved to close, once and for all, its chapter on the controversial multibillion-rand arms deal — and to reaffirm its own integrity. It will table a resolution in the National Assembly insisting on Auditor General Shauket Fakie’s integrity — and officially dismissing media reports that the final arms report was edited.
At a heavy metal strip mine operated by the Anglo American subsidiary, Namakwa Sands, a project is under way to prevent large tracts of land from remaining unusable in the wake of mining.
Five of the country’s largest political parties face litigation to compel them to reveal their sources of private funding.
Battle lines between the ruling African National Congress and issue-driven groups critical of the government’s performance on service delivery were starkly drawn this week, with the laden symbolism of the country’s first decade of freedom looming in April next year.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=19094">ANC ups ‘ultra-left’ rhetoric</a>
Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana has cleared Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota of a charge that his undeclared business interests exposed him to a conflict of interests, leading President Thabo Mbeki to close the book on the matter.
The series of imbizos across the Western Cape last week was billed as government interaction with communities, but the 2004 election could not have been far from everyone’s minds. There is still a stalemate in this crucial province’s politics.