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/ 19 September 2005
There’s good and bad news from the social delivery interface, but mostly it is good. Personnel costs are down, capital expenditure is up, the provinces are growing their implementation capacity, social development expenditure has more than doubled since 2001/02 and nearly 5,6-million children are getting child support grants, up from 970Â 000 in 2001/02.
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/ 13 September 2005
A core of 30 to 40 taxi warlords hold key positions at ranks, and have sufficient clout among ordinary members to give orders to assassinate rivals and collect money for war chests. The committee of inquiry into taxi violence in Cape Town, headed by advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, heard how this group has turned taxi violence in the region into a reign of terror.
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/ 13 September 2005
”I thought I’m going to Lüderitz. I got to Vioolsdrif,” laments skipper Arthur Vaughan, who, after being abandoned at the Namibian border post, hitchhiked almost 200km back to Port Nolloth on the West Coast. Vaughan was meant to go and work on South Atlantic Fisheries Company ships based in Lüderitz while the company tried to secure a licence for them to operate in South African waters.
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/ 6 September 2005
The usual Western Cape black economic empowerment (BEE) beneficiaries were left in the cold as the Cape Town council selected new blood in its second shot at its empowerment transaction of prime beachfront land at Big Bay, Bloubergstrand. In all, 17 parcels of land, mostly sized between 2 400m2 and 2 600m2 have been sold at prices ranging from R2,7-million to R3,4-million.
Racial and gender transformation topped the agenda of the University of Cape Town’s first lekgotla earlier this month and vice-chancellor Njabulo Ndebele has made it the priority of his final three-year term of office. Judging by the university’s employment equity and student profile, it remains an elusive goal.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) enthusiastic support for former deputy president Jacob Zuma went down like a lead blimp at this week’s Cape Town launch of the jobs coalition touted as a United Democratic Front-style grassroots movement.
Rallying behind former deputy president Jacob Zuma is a coalition of trade union, communist, youth and regional interests organised into the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust. Borrowing the idea from the anti-apartheid struggle, the trust will raise funds from sympathetic business people and members. It plans a million-signature campaign as well as rallies and protests during Zuma’s October trial.
The Democratic Alliance’s hopes of regaining control of the Western Cape legislature were dashed recently when three New National Party members pledged their seats to the African National Congress during the upcoming floor-crossing period. The move will give the ANC an overall majority of 22 of the 42 seats in the Western Cape legislature. They are already ANC members.
Urgent joint action by government authorities, ranging from law enforcement agencies to the tax man, is needed to break the stranglehold a small group has on the taxi sector, according to a recommendation by the commission of inquiry into the volatile Cape taxi industry.
The first study of the film sector in almost five years says it is "particularly important that the restrictive tax and labour legislation is addressed", if the industry is to maintain its stature and increase its competitiveness. According to the Microeconomic Development Strategy Report, which will be officially released later this month, the sector’s worth stands at a turnover of R1-billion per annum