More South Africans are working for themselves with one in six now self-employed, economist Mike Schussler said on Wednesday while presenting his fifth South African Unemployment Report. In 2002, one in seven was an entrepreneur. ”More and more people realise that they are not going to get rich working for someone else,” he said.
The South African Revenue Service (Sars) on Wednesday added more than 1 000 new applications to the small-business tax-amnesty process through an extensive registration campaign across the country. Several thousand Sars and police officials visited 4 160 small businesses in 30 towns and cities.
A man who took at least nine people hostage at a Pretoria newspaper and wounded a police officer on Wednesday afternoon told them he was ”sick of crime”, said witnesses. By 5.30pm, the man was still in the building with at least one hostage. Police said the hostage-taker had fired a shot, wounding a police officer.
The runner-up in Nigeria’s presidential elections convened a meeting with other opposition politicians on Wednesday, seeking a unified response to the weekend vote deemed not credible by international observers. The opposition has already rejected the outcome as rigged in favour of the ruling People’s Democratic Party.
The youth of Ireland are becoming increasingly poor spellers and writers, and their love of SMSing on cell phones is a major reason why, according to the Education Department, which says cutting-edge communications technology has encouraged poor literacy and a blunt, choppy style at odds with academic rigour.
Judge Edwin Cameron should not stand for re-election as chairperson of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) council, three student organisations said on Wednesday. In a joint statement, the organisations said transformation at the university has occurred at a slow pace over the past 10 years.
A slippery 11-year-old boy is terrorising a luxury Durban suburb, entering homes through burglar bars too narrow for adults, the Daily News reported on Wednesday. Once inside, his light footfall is barely heard as he robs his unsuspecting victims, leaving via the same route.
A German man called on his bank for an unusual service when he was too tired and drunk to go home — he bedded down there for the night with his horse. The man, identified as ”Wolfgang H” by German media, went to sleep next to cash machines in the local branch of the Mittelbrandenburgische Sparkasse in Wiesenburg, south-west of Berlin.
The United Nations accused Iraq on Wednesday of withholding sensitive civilian casualty figures because it fears they would be used to paint a ”very grim” picture of a worsening humanitarian crisis. Violence continued as a suicide attacker walked into a police station in volatile Diyala province and detonated a bomb, killing nine, police said.
The late judge Wally van Deventer — who said life was too short for ”bad books and bad wine” — was remembered by his colleagues at the Cape High Court on Wednesday. Judge Deon van Zyl told the packed courtroom how Van Deventer’s interest had switched from law to business and then back to law.