World markets continued to weigh on the JSE on Thursday — pushing the bourse down 0,93% by midday. At noon, the JSE’s bank index fell 1,87%, financials gave up 1,61% and industrials were 1,4% lower. The platinum mining index declined 1,41%, resources shed 0,38% but the gold mining index advanced 1,69%.
The African National Congress would campaign against the death penalty if a referendum was held on the issue, the party’s secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Wednesday. Mantashe’s remarks follow last week’s statement by party president Jacob Zuma that a referendum should be held if enough South Africans wanted it.
A third person has been arrested in connection with the murders of 18 people in the Mzamba area in the Eastern Cape, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Wednesday. A special police task team set up to investigate the murders arrested the man in Port Elizabeth on Wednesday.
New Zealand Rugby Union boss Steve Tew was forced into the role of moderator on Thursday as Australian counterpart John O’Neill espoused a radical plan to revamp Super 14 rugby. O’Neill said ”high level discussion” had begun on a plan to expand the tournament to six-and-a-half months from February to August.
Five men robbed a family at Hennopsriver in the Erasmia area, burning the mother and father with an iron. Constable Patricia Simelane said the men demanded money — saying that they had been told there was money in the house — and ”they burnt the mother and father with an iron three of four times on the upper body”.
The case of two stranded whales saved by a dolphin off the coast of New Zealand could be the first such case in the world, a conservation worker said on Thursday. Moko the dolphin, a regular visitor to the coast of Mahia, became an instant hero after leading two pygmy whales into deep water on Monday.
Being a studio mogul, Dreamworks chief Jeffrey Katzenberg does not do understatement. ”It is nothing less than the greatest innovation that has happened for all of us in the movie business since the advent of colour 70 years ago,” the man who brought the world the Shrek movies told his audience this week.
A Parliamentary delegation will depart from Pretoria on Friday in a convoy to Cuito Cuanavale to commemorate the battle that took place there during the Angolan war. The delegation includes military veterans from both sides, representatives from government, scholars and civil society, Parliament said in a statement.
More than two months after his historic appointment, new South Africa rugby coach Peter de Villiers didn’t sign off on his contract this week because he wouldn’t have final say on team selection. De Villiers, in contract negotiations since his appointment on January 9, backed off from agreeing to the two-year contract on Monday and Tuesday.
A substantial jump in the number of Pentecostal Christians could have a positive impact on South Africa’s social and economic development, the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) said on Wednesday. ”If this rate of growth is maintained, South African Pentecostals will number almost 10-million by 2011, or one-fifth of the population,” the CDE said.