Pretoria High Court Judge Nkola Motata will be ”severely prejudiced” should magistrate Desmond Nair fail to allow a trial within a trial to decide on the admissibility of evidence. Motata’s defence team continued its offensive on Tuesday afternoon in a bid to prevent five video recordings from being heard.
After nearly a month of official silence, Israel confirmed on Tuesday that its air force carried out a strike inside Syrian territory on September 6. Israel had until now refused to confirm or deny that any air strike had taken place, though the incident was publicly confirmed by Syrian and Western officials.
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South Africa faced a further worry over their slim prop resources on Tuesday after tighthead CJ van der Linde limped out of training ahead of Sunday’s World Cup quarterfinal against Fiji. Van der Linde injured his right knee in a mauling session and was unable to complete the session.
The Southern District municipality in the North West would be named after the former Zambian president Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the municipality said on Tuesday. The council passed a resolution on the new name at its meeting on Monday, mayor Boitumelo Moloi said.
The South African Secret Service’s deputy director general, Silumko Sokupa, would take over as the new coordinator for intelligence next month, the Intelligence Services said on Tuesday. Spokesperson Lorna Daniels said President Thabo Mbeki had appointed Sokupa following the early retirement of Barry Gilder.
An inquest into the death of Princess Diana finally opened on Tuesday, 10 years after she and Dodi al-Fayed were killed in a Paris car crash, with her lover’s father still convinced the two were victims of an establishment plot. Mohamed al-Fayed, owner of London’s luxury Harrods store, fought a long legal battle to have the inquest heard by a judge and jury.
The African National Congress (ANC) parliamentary caucus has dismissed the Democratic Alliance (DA) call for a special sitting of Parliament to discuss President Thabo Mbeki’s suspension of National Prosecuting Authority head Vusi Pikoli. ”We reject outright the statement by the DA,” a caucus statement said on Tuesday.
Judge Nkola Motata’s legal team is doing everything to prevent the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court from listening to five recordings entered as evidence by the state. Defence attorney Danie Dorfling argued that allowing the court to hear the recordings, which are video recordings with no visuals, would deprive the accused of his constitutional right to a fair trial.
Zimbabwe’s supermarkets have run out of bread after bakers were forced to suspend their operations due to a critical shortage of wheat, shop owners said on Tuesday. ”I don’t know when we will have bread although we have been expecting deliveries since last week,” said Kassim Ngorima, a manager in a supermarket in Harare’s Avenues area.
Zimbabwean teachers have gone on strike to press demands for huge wage increases as the Southern African country battles with the fastest rising consumer prices in the world. Critics say President Robert Mugabe has plunged the state deeper into economic crisis by ordering public institutions and private businesses to stop raising wages and prices without official authority.