Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo, warned residents on Wednesday to guard against outbreaks of disease as it was forced to cut their water supply. Authorities said they had decommissioned one of Bulawayo’s three remaining dams because water levels were too low.
A meeting to avert a possible strike in the industrial-chemical sector was unsuccessful on Wednesday, trade union Solidarity said. Spokesperson Marius Croucamp said a meeting between employees and the union failed to yield results. Employers in this sector were offering a 7,5% wage increase and unions were demanding 10%.
The decision to prosecute apartheid-era minister law and order Adriaan Vlok is not a departure from reconciliation, the South African Council of Churches said on Wednesday. ”[The decision] seeks to strengthen it [reconciliation] by bringing out the truth,” said the SACC’s newly elected president, Professor Tinyiko Maluleke.
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor has been assigned a new team of lawyers to defend him against war-crimes charges at a United Nations-backed court in The Hague, a court document revealed on Wednesday. Taylor (59), the first African head of state to stand trial before an international court for war crimes, had boycotted the opening of his trial and sacked his lawyer.
Thirty-seven people died in a 16-hour thunder storm in south-west China that caused heavy flooding and brought air, road and rail traffic to a halt, the government and state media said on Wednesday. Chongqing municipality received 266,6mm of rain between Monday night and Tuesday afternoon, the largest volume since records began in 1892, Xinhua news agency said.
Tour golfers are taking performance-enhancing drugs and escaping sanction because the sport does not have dope testing, Gary Player said on the eve of the 136th Open Championship. ”I know there are golfers doing it [taking drugs], whether it’s HGH [human growth hormone], whether it’s creatine or whether it’s steroids,” Player said.
The 26 finalists for the 2007 CNN MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year award were announced this week, with nine of them from South Africa, representing the print media, television and radio broadcasting spectrum. The South African finalists include five producers working with M-Net’s news and actuality show Carte Blanche.
A 39-year-old prisoner at the Ncome prison near Vryheid claims to be the hit man in the murder of Free State official Noby Ngombane, media reports said on Wednesday. Ngombane was shot dead at his home in Bloemfontein on March 22 2005. He was a senior official in Free State Premier Beatrice Marshoff’s office.
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Nelson Mandela, the icon of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid, marked his 89th birthday on Wednesday by launching his fellow elder statesmen on a new venture to reduce conflict and despair. The former South African president was the host and star turn at a ceremony to announce the formation of a brains trust of world leaders.
An interim interdict to prevent striking workers from entering, interfering with or obstructing access to Vodacom premises was extended on Wednesday. The Labour Court extended the interdict to Friday, when it will deliver a final decision on whether the interim interdict will be made permanent, said a Vodacom spokesperson.