Four schoolboys appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Friday for allegedly stabbing a 17-year-old Greenside High School pupil, police said on Thursday. The four youths were caught by six Greenside High matric boys outside the school on Wednesday afternoon.
The Swaziland Solidarity Network on Thursday condemned King Mswati III’s planned spending of R15-million on his birthday bash. The network said it is concerned about the king’s spending while 42% of the country’s population is HIV-positive, more than 46% unemployed and there is a need for extensive food aid.
A Port Alfred National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) station commander rescued her own Hobie Cat, which had been stolen, the institute said on Thursday. Keryn van der Walt said the NSRI responded to reports of a capsized yacht off-shore off Bhirah in the Eastern Cape at about 11am on Wednesday.
Miloon Kothari, United Nations special rapporteur for adequate housing, was appalled at the living conditions of Johannesburg’s poor. "These are emergency conditions … it’s worse than I expected," he said on Tuesday, walking through San Jose, a dilapidated, 16-storey building in Berea.
It is too early to make pronouncements on the debate over the future of South Africa’s provinces, the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) said on Thursday. ”For us in the NCOP, it would be premature to pronounce ourselves on the possible outcome,” NCOP House chairperson Tsietsi Setona told the Johannesburg Press Club.
Correctly applied, affirmative action is not about discriminating against white people, said public service commissioner JD Squire Mahlangu on Thursday. He was speaking at a Cape Town conference on human-resource management in the public sector. The conference, the first of its kind, has drawn about 250 delegates from all over the world.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) added child soldiers to its army as it embraced the forces of former warlords, an international human rights group said on Thursday. The Central African country has been working to combine forces from a number of rebel groups into the regular army as the newly elected government struggles to gain control.
France’s presidential election on Sunday looks set to be a traditional contest between the main right and left parties as a bid by a centrist candidate to mount a challenge loses steam, a poll on Thursday showed. With three days to go before the first round of the election, the race appears to be between former interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Ségolène Royal.
Several hundred South Africans picketed at the Zimbabwe border to show solidarity for Zimbabwe’s struggle for democracy and human rights, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Thursday. Cosatu’s Limpopo provincial secretary Jan Tsiane said the protesters gathered at the Beitbridge border post between South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Mvelaphanda Group chairperson Tokyo Sexwale has joined the prestigious Brookings Institution’s International Advisory Council. Founded 90 years ago in Washington DC, the Brookings Institution is known for independent research and influential advice to policymakers in the United States and around the world, his office said in a statement on Thursday.