Bryan Habana and Fourie de Preez scored two tries each as South Africa’s Bulls crushed the New South Wales Waratahs 32-19 in a Super 14 match at the Sydney Football Stadium on Saturday. Habana scored twice down the left wing after following up kicks while scrumhalf de Preez scored two solo tries.
South Africa still has a long way to go to throw off its ”ethnic blinkers”, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said, referring to his party’s leadership race. ”We are still held back by the prejudices and wrong-headed decisions of the past,” Leon told the party’s Gauteng congress at the Benoni High School on the East Rand.
An opening scoring blitz set up the Auckland Blues for a 41-14 drubbing of the Golden Lions to stay on top of the Super 14 rugby table in Auckland, New Zealand, on Saturday. The Blues took maximum points from the game with six tries, two of them to winger Doug Howlett, who finished the game level with former Brumbie Joe Roff’s Super rugby record of 57 tries.
Two security guards were seriously injured when a group of nine armed men assaulted them with hammers and took money from their cash van in Olifantsfontein, East Rand police said on Saturday. Spokesperson Captain Jethro Mtshali said the men allegedly approached the SBV van at a stop street at 8am on Saturday, held the guards at gun point and assaulted them with hammers.
An anti-crime petition demanding a crime-free and corruption-free South Africa with an estimated 70 000 signatures was handed to Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo’s office on Saturday. The grou Vicptims in the Republic of South Africa marched from the Johannesburg CBD to Masondo’s office where they handed a memorandum and petition to a mayoral official.
A militant Islamist group in Iraq has threatened in a videotape showing two purported German hostages to execute them if the Berlin government fails to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The Kataeb Siham al-Haq (Righteous Arrows Battalions) said in the videotape posted on Saturday on an Islamist website: "We give the German government 10 days from the date of this statement …"
Ethiopia said on Saturday it was in contact with an armed group that kidnapped five Europeans and eight locals in a remote northern region, but ruled out a military operation to rescue them. ”Those who are responsible are being reached through different channels, and we are hoping that these people would be freed unharmed and safe,” Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin said.
The Safety and Security Ministry has spent more than R100-million for private security to patrol premises of the South African Police Services in 2005 and 2006, the Saturday Star newspaper reported on Saturday. In a written response to Democratic Alliance MP Donald Lee, Minister Charles Nqakula said this was done so as to make it possible for police to fight and prevent crime.
Momentum was growing on Friday in Zimbabwe for the holding of a weekend prayer rally by a church-led coalition in the capital, Harare, despite a police ban on political meetings. Lucky Moyo, spokesperson for the Save Zimbabwe Campaign Taskforce, told the media that the group had informed the police of their intention to hold a peaceful prayer rally on Sunday in Highfield suburb.
Brad Delp, the lead singer of the 1970s and 1980s rock band Boston, was found dead at his home in southern New Hampshire on Friday March 9, local police said. Delp (55) was apparently home alone and there was no indication of foul play, Atkinson, New Hampshire, police said.