Opposition political parties on Wednesday expressed shocked at the reaction of local African National Congress (ANC) leaders on the ruling of the Pretoria High Court preventing the name Pretoria being replaced with Tshwane on road signs. On Tuesday the court granted an urgent interim interdict to the Freedom Front Plus and AfriForum.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Transport Ministry has grounded two private airlines after a weekend plane crash killed 13 people in the second disaster since June, officials said on Wednesday. The licence of the Great Lakes Business Company, owner of the cargo plane that crashed on Sunday at Kongolo in Katanga Province, was suspended.
Verification of the large ”diamond” claimed to have been found in the North West this week could take few weeks, a shareholder of the company laying claim to it was reported as saying on Wednesday. Brett Jolly told the Associated Press: ”It’s totally unbelievable. You just don’t expect this kind of thing to happen.”
Want to know when you can play the Lotto again? Don’t ask Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa — apparently you are not allowed to. A senior government communications official on Wednesday told reporters they could not ask any questions about the suspended National Lottery when Mpahlwa appeared at a briefing.
Piracy and lack of airtime for his records on radio and television are some of the reasons the ‘people’s poet’, Mzwakhe Mbuli, has decided to stop recording in South Africa. On Wednesday he announced his ”retirement” from the local industry, saying he was forced to look for other avenues for his talent.
Mankind is to blame for climate change but governments still have time to slow accelerating damage at moderate cost if they act quickly, a draft United Nations report shows. Underlining the need for speed, it says a European Union goal of holding temperature rises to a maximum two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times is almost out of reach.
President Robert Mugabe, accusing the West of trying to push Zimbabwe into collapse, declared it would survive thanks to its people’s resilience and support from Africa, state radio reported on Wednesday. Mugabe said Britain, the former colonial ruler, and his opponents sought his ouster.
Controversial Cape Town councillor Badih Chaaban offered the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) Western Cape leader Theuns Botha R200 000 in cash and a woman in a floor-crossing bribe, Botha said on Wednesday. However, Chaaban has denied the claim, saying it was in fact Botha who proposed the payment.
Some of Johannesburg’s metro police ”don’t know how to do the job properly” and need the training they are getting from United States experts, says the city’s police chief. Some officers in the Johannesburg Metro Police Department were lazy and corrupt, Chief Superintendent Chris Ngcobo said on Wednesday.
Iraq’s radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Wednesday ordered his Mehdi Army militia to suspend its activities for six months in a bid to reorganise the militant group. ”I direct the Mehdi Army to suspend all its activities for six months until it is restructured in a way that helps honour the principles for which it is formed,” Sadr said in a statement.