Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has apparently thrown her weight behind leading businessman Tokyo Sexwale for the African National Congress presidency. Meanwhile, audited ANC membership figures have confirmed the Eastern Cape as the party’s strongest province, media reports said on Tuesday.
A review of the free-trade treaty between the European Union and South Africa is to top the agenda of a South Africa-EU troika ministerial meeting in Pretoria on Wednesday. South Africa’s ambassador to the EU, Anil Sooklal, said it is hoped the mid-term review of the trade treaty could be finalised during the troika meeting.
Police have rejected as a hoax an email detailing how women are raped in mall toilets, Superintendent Eugene Opperman said on Tuesday. He said the email claims that women are being raped and robbed of their valuables and clothing while in mall restrooms in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
A 31-year-old Eastern Cape man should be jailed for life for raping an elderly woman and trying to kill her husband, the Grahamstown High Court heard on Tuesday. Beneza Allah, of Phumlani, Jansenville, who was 29 at the time of the crimes, appeared before Judge Zamani Nhlangulela.
An HIV/Aids treatment programme is on track in Lusikisiki, contrary to media reports that it was bungled, the Eastern Cape health department said on Tuesday. The department took over the programme initiated by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the NGO Médecins sans Frontiêres in October last year.
Most of the land claims in the Free State and Northern Cape are on schedule to make the cut-off date in March next year, newly appointed regional commissioner Sidney Hlongwane said on Tuesday. He said at least 90% of claims lodged at the two provincial offices have been settled.
A number of electricity substations were to be switched off in Pretoria on Tuesday to assist in load shedding to alleviate a power shortage experienced during the rainy weather, the City of Tshwane said. The substations in the city were be disconnected from 3pm to 5pm, and from 5pm to 7pm.
Consumer confidence declined further during the third quarter of 2007, according to First National Bank and Stellenbosch University’s Bureau of Economic Research’s consumer confidence index (CCI) released on Tuesday. The CCI declined by three index points — from 21 during the second quarter of 2007 to 18 during the third quarter of this year.
A British jury on Tuesday visited the Ritz hotel in Paris where Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, spent their last hours together before their deaths in a fatal road crash 10 years ago. On the second and last day of a familiarisation trip to the French capital, the 11 jurors in the inquest into their deaths walked through the corridors of the luxury hotel.
Pakistani jets pounded militant hideouts near a troubled tribal town for the third day on Tuesday as officials said about 250 people had died in some of the heaviest clashes since 2001. The fighting has forced thousands to flee from Mir Ali, a town that President Pervez Musharraf has previously pinpointed as a den of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.