A light aircraft nosedived into a Johannesburg house on Wednesday evening, seriously injuring its pilot and co-pilot, said rescue workers. The Piper Seneca took the roof off the patio of the house in Greenacres Street, Birdhaven, near the Wanderers, at 5.50pm, said Johannesburg Emergency Management Services spokesperson Malcolm Midgley.
President Thabo Mbeki’s decision to let Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge go was a ”dreadful error of judgement”, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said on Thursday. The TAC was reacting to Mbeki’s dismissal of Madlala-Routledge, which took immediate effect on Wednesday.
The government is dusting off a 2002 plan to deal with a feared mass influx of Zimbabweans into South Africa, amid a growing official recognition that economic migration is snowballing towards crisis. Last week Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told a media conference in Pretoria that the Zimbabwean influx was "a serious problem" and that it was "vital for South Africa to act".
Ranbir Rai Handa was just 14 years old when he was pitched into the madness of partition, forced to flee his hometown of Lahore on a train bound from newly independent Pakistan to India. What he saw when he arrived in Amritsar on August 14 1947 still keeps him awake at night.
The number of deaths triggered by monsoon flooding in India, Bangladesh and Nepal since June crossed 2 000 on Thursday as the torrents receded, officials said. India’s Home Ministry disaster-management division reported 1 521 deaths up to Wednesday afternoon alone.
More than 520 000 people need urgent food aid in Mozambique while 600 000 face famine between now and April next year, its disaster management agency said on Thursday. The government, in conjunction with its international partners, is currently studying the possibility of finding a national solution before making an appeal for assistance.
In the five months since the Southern African Development Community (SADC) asked President Thabo Mbeki to mediate in the Zimbabwe crisis, Robert Mugabe has pushed through legislation entrenching his rule, widened rifts with his opponents and made policy decisions that have deepened his country’s economic crisis.
Every August we are expected to be hyperalert to a range of activities occurring under the banner of Women’s Month. It is one of the benefits of democracy that we no longer have to celebrate freedom-struggle anniversaries under the hostile gaze of police and soldiers. Now we commemorate them with the state’s sanction and budget, as we should in a country where we elect representatives to government.
The South African Cabinet has rejected as ”baseless” suggestions the state is waging a witch-hunt against former members of the apartheid-era regime. Government spokesperson Themba Maseko on Wednesday said a Cabinet meeting had noted the process by the National Prosecuting Authority to prosecute members of the apartheid government.
Torture is common in Egyptian police stations and prisons and three victims have died so far this year, the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights said on Wednesday. A report released by the organisation documented hundreds of cases of torture and ill treatment by the authorities from 1993 to July 2007 through eyewitness accounts, complaints from family members and police records.