For growing numbers of South African women, pregnancy is not something to celebrate — it is a desperate descent into depression and anxiety. ”In the South African setting, we have a recipe for an epidemic of perinatal mental health problems,” said Dr Simone Honikman, director of the Perinatal Mental Health Project at Liesbeeck midwife obstetric unit.
The disciplinary hearing of disgraced Beaufort West politician Truman Prince will resume on Sunday morning when the African National Congress will call its last two witnesses to testify. The hearing arises from a documentary on SABC3 on child prostitution that showed Prince flirting with under-age girls.
Too much is being made of claims that there is resistance to transforming the judiciary, Justice Dikgang Moseneke told members of the Judicial Services Commission in Cape Town on Thursday. ”I don’t think so,” said Moseneke of the resistance claims, adding that most judges embraced the Constitution, its values and the ”constitutional injunctions”.
In the high-stakes nuclear game, will a radioactive waste-management policy be foisted on an unsuspecting public or will ”transparency, consultation and stakeholder participation” be a reality? A draft policy containing those words remains ungazetted while the government looks at prototype pebble-bed nuclear reactors for commercial use.
An apartheid-era law is causing headaches for a committee set up to investigate the underlying reasons for instability and conflict in the Western Cape minibus taxi industry. The ”problematic area” relates to Ordinance 13 of 1978, which stipulates that the proceedings of such committees should not be open to the public.
Differing concerns by organised labour and business over a new draft law aimed at controlling the development of cooperatives in South Africa has once again highlighted the opposed economic philosophies of the two groupings. Business sees the future of such enterprises as being characterised by the dictates of a free market.
The South African Navy submarine SAS Assegaai, decommissioned almost two years ago, will continue serving her country as the main attraction at a planned museum of submarine technology. ”We want to preserve the proud submarine heritage of South Africa,” said Rear-Admiral Arne Söderlund.
Feuding taxi organisations in the Western Cape have pledged peace as provincial transport minister Mcebisi Skwatsha announced the reopening of violence-racked taxi ranks closed a week ago. Skwatsha also said he has not been facilitating negotiations with a gun against his head.
International adoptions of South African children are in a state of legal limbo, with legislation to give effect to an international convention signed in 2003 not yet enacted. ”In effect, we have a legal anomaly. We have acceded to a legal convention, but everything that we are doing is ultra vires because it’s not part of our law … We are operating extra-judicially, can you imagine the implications?” asked a family-law specialist.
The Western Cape transport department is open to resolving the taxi conflict in the region amicably, provincial transport minister Mcebisi Skwatsha said on Tuesday. He was responding to a memorandum handed over after a march earlier in the day by disgruntled taxi operators and drivers.