The Democratic Alliance (DA) has tabled a private member’s Bill seeking to expunge from the record crimes committed during the apartheid era that would not be crimes today. The inspiration for the measure came to him from two constituents, DA correctional services spokesperson James Selfe said in a statement on Thursday.
A Border schoolboy rugby player has allegedly tested positive for a banned substance, Dispatch Online reported on Thursday. The 17-year-old Stirling High matric pupil allegedly failed the test that was taken at the Under-18 Craven Week in Stellenbosch in July.
Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand mine near Carletonville has been shut down for up to six weeks after the mine’s main exit was blocked, trapping 3 200 miners underground, the Minerals and Energy Department said on Thursday. About 800 miners remained trapped more than 2,2km underground by 4pm on Thursday.
A man accused of holding several staff members of the Pretoria News hostage was on Thursday declared fit to stand trial. A report by the Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital was handed up at the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court, stating 33-year-old Lionel George from Danville would understand the court proceedings and was able to contribute meaningfully to his defence.
Police were not patrolling the Wits campus on Thursday, a student said after his lectures were disrupted by protesters. Suyash Maharaj was forced out of his class when hundreds of protesting students barged into his Actuarial Science lecture. ”We looked for police protection, because these protesters looked like they could have easily hurt us,” Maharaj said.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) says it stands by its statement on South African Broadcasting Corporation board deputy chairperson Christine Qunta and on Thursday laid complaints against her and the company Comforters Healing Gift. On Wednesday, Qunta’s legal representatives demanded the TAC stop publishing defamatory material about her.
The use of lethal injections in the United States has led to at least nine bungled executions, including one in which the prisoner took 69 minutes to die and another in which the condemned man complained five times: ”It don’t work,” a report by Amnesty International said on Thursday.
Ethiopia on Thursday pledged 5 000 troops to a United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region. The 26 000-strong joint mission is to replace a hard-pressed AU force that lacks experience, equipment and cash and has been unable to stop the conflict.
A Soviet-era Antonov 26 cargo plane crashed in Kinshasa on Thursday, smashing through a dozen houses and killing 25 people on board as well as a number of people on the ground, officials and the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo said. Witnesses said it exploded in a fireball on impact.
About 1Â 250 miners remained trapped more than 2,2km underground in Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand mine near Carletonville on Thursday after an all-night rescue mission. The mine’s general manager, Stan Bierschenk, said the morale of workers still stuck below ground was ”fairly brittle”.