Gauteng is to get about 10 new mixed housing developments in the current financial year, provincial housing minister Nomvula Mokonyane said on Friday. They will be in Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Mogale City and Johannesburg, she told the Gauteng legislature in her 2007/08 budget speech.
Police will not join the public-service strike until at least Wednesday, under an undertaking by the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union that was made an interim order of the Labour Court on Friday night. Meanwhile, public-service unions will consult their members on the government’s revised salary package.
Claims that African National Congress (ANC) Western Cape provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha used his influence to steer a land deal to party cronies were scurrilous and untrue, the party said on Friday. It was reacting to an article in Friday’s Mail and Guardian. Nic Dawes, associate deputy editor of the M&G, said that the newspaper stands by its article.
About 600 Mozambican nationals illegally living in South Africa are being deported back to their country every week, government officials said on Friday. According to a statement, ”most of the people normally coming to South Africa stay for more than a planned 30 days, breaking the visa agreements between the two countries signed in 2005”.
A Zimbabwe court on Friday postponed the start of former Test batsman Mark Vermeulen’s arson trial to allow time to study medical reports as to whether he is mentally fit to take the stand. Vermeulen (28) is charged with setting fire and causing extensive damage to Zimbabwe’s cricket academy, which was housed in a thatched building, and a sports club in Harare.
A security officer was stoned to death on Friday when residents of an informal settlement outside Pretoria resisted an attempt to evict them, Gauteng police said. The residents then set fire to a truck that was to be used to move their belongings, said police spokesperson Inspector Paul Ramaloko. Three Nissan 1400 bakkies were also set on fire, he said.
Bulgaria’s last three dancing bears are being sent to a mountain sanctuary after activists bought their freedom on Friday in an effort to stamp out the centuries-old tradition that has survived in the Balkans despite being outlawed. The trio will join another 20 brown bears in their new home.
Frozen North Korean assets that have held up a nuclear disarmament deal have not yet been fully transferred, a Russian diplomatic source was quoted as saying on Friday. Japan’s Kyodo News agency earlier quoted authorities in Macau as saying the funds from the Banco Delta Asia had arrived at the New York branch of the Federal Reserve.
Public-service unions will consult with their membership before deciding to accept or reject government’s revised salary package, which includes a 7,25% wage-increase offer. The unions also said they were concerned that the salaries of some public servants had been withheld on Friday.
Hamas may now rule Gaza, but for many ordinary Palestinians the bloody conclusion of this week’s factional fighting promises only more chaos. Emergency measures imposed by President Mahmoud Abbas in an 11th-hour bid to bolster his secular Fatah against Hamas Islamists provided little consolation to Palestinians.