An ammonia leak at a Vito ice-cream factory in Crawford resulted in more than 210 factory workers and schoolchildren being rushed to hospitals in Cape Town on Wednesday morning. Children from two primary schools in the area suffered discomfort to the eyes and experienced difficulty breathing, said principal Abubakr Jardine, from the Belthorn Primary School.
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The Congress of South African Trade Unions has welcomed Jacob Zuma’s apology for having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman. It said it agreed with Judge Willem van der Merwe that ”it is totally unacceptable that a man should have unprotected sex with a person other than his regular partner and definitely not with a person who, to his knowledge, is HIV-positive”.
City Press political editor Jimmy Seepe has died, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported on Tuesday. Seepe died in the Tshepo-Themba Clinic in Dobsonville, Soweto, where he had been in a coma since collapsing at his home in Pimville last month.
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The National Prosecuting Authority has expressed disappointment at Jacob Zuma’s acquittal on a charge of rape, while the Democratic Alliance said Zuma has emerged with his credibility as a leader severely damaged. Other parties have also called for a reform of rape laws.
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Former deputy president Jacob Zuma was found not guilty in the Johannesburg High Court on Monday of raping a 31-year-old HIV-positive woman at his Johannesburg home in November last year. Judge Willem van der Merwe found that Zuma and his accuser had consensual sex in Zuma’s main bedroom.
Minister of Public Works Stella Sigcau has died at Durban’s St Augustine hospital, ministerial spokesperson Lucky Mochalibane said on Monday. He said Sigcau (69), who was appointed minister of public enterprises in the first post-apartheid government in 1994, died of a recurring heart problem on Sunday.
A sidewalk observer who rescued a baby dramatically in Johannesburg’s CBD on Wednesday deserves every bit of praise and an award, Democratic Alliance inner-city councillor Ann Barnes said on Thursday. The passer-by caught the baby after it was thrust from the fifth floor of a burning block of flats.
Tsunami warnings for New Zealand, Fiji and the rest of the Pacific have been cancelled following a massive 8,0 quake in Tonga, United States tsunami monitors said on Wednesday. There were few early reports of injury or damage in Tonga, although a hotel guest hurt his leg when he jumped from a third-floor window.
A huge earthquake with a magnitude of 8,0 on the Richter scale hit Pacific islands in the Tonga region early on Thursday, the United States Geological Survey reported. US authorities issued a tsunami warning for New Zealand and Fiji, officials said, and a tsunami watch for the rest of the Pacific.
The first three men arrested in connection with the murder of actor Brett Goldin and his friend Richard Bloom, a fashion-production manager, appeared in the Cape Town magistrate’s court on Friday. It was their second court appearance. The men are charged with possession of stolen property — a credit card and items of clothing belonging to the two victims.