Keeping the environment clean and green is everyone’s responsibility, but for the residents of Alexandra extension 7, north of Johannesburg, it comes with a reward: a government initiative is not only bringing trees and flowers to the dusty streets, but also offering monthly prizes for residents who try out their gardening skills.
A director of French arms company Thint always cooperated with investigators probing alleged corruption and fraud in South Africa’s multibillion-rand arms deal, the Supreme Court of Appeal heard on Wednesday. ”Mr [Pierre] Moynot has at all times offered the investigating team his kind and affable cooperation,” said Thint lawyer Peter Hodes.
The United States Africa Command (Africom) should stay out of the African continent, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said on Wednesday. Africom was not really a new development, as the US has always had some kind of focus on the African continent, he told a media briefing in Cape Town.
The worldwide illegal drugs trade has stopped growing for the first time since the mid-Nineteenth Century, although use and production of some drugs is rising fast in pockets, a senior United Nations official said on Wednesday. Methamphetamine abuse in East Asia and production of opium in Afghanistan are both growing at an alarming rate said Akira Fujino.
Embattled Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was accused by Aids activists on Wednesday of fuelling the country’s HIV crisis by obstructing efforts to combat the disease. A raft of NGOs, including the leading Aids lobby, said the recent sacking of the deputy health minister had raised fears that a widely praised Aids programme was being undermined.
The South African Council of Churches (SACC) expressed its ”grave concern” on Wednesday at the tendency of politicians to shame and humiliate colleagues with whom they disagree. ”An increasing number of our political leaders and political parties appear to be going about their business by publicly disgracing one another,” it said.
The Johannesburg High Court granted an interdict to the Gauteng education department on Wednesday forbidding the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) from intimidating pupils, the department confirmed. Spokesperson Kate Bapela said that under the interdict the organisation may not threaten, disrupt or frustrate teaching or learning.
A frail Nelson Mandela on Wednesday attended the unveiling of his statue opposite Britain’s Parliament in a ceremony recognising him as one of the greatest leaders of his age. Mandela made his way gingerly to the platform for the ceremony, leaning on the arm of his wife, Graca Machel, and waved to an applauding crowd.
South Africa is at the forefront of research into so-called clean-coal technology, aimed at reducing the huge volumes of greenhouse gases emitted by its power stations, MPs heard on Wednesday. The country’s high-quality coal was mined out, leaving more environmentally harmful, lower-grade coal for use in the country’s power plants, MPs were told.
Share traditionally brewed beer with a stranger while getting to know special African brewing processes. Experience 3D thrills inside an "ancient" Egyptian temple. Travel back in time to visit a Soweto shebeen during the harsh political days of the 1960s. These are some of the attractions at the refurbished World of Beer in Johannesburg.