Western Cape provincial minister of education Cameron Dugmore was discussing projects when he visited the school where former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni is doing his community service, his office said on Thursday. Yengeni is working at the Siyazama school for mentally challenged children in Guguletu.
British actor John Inman, famous for his role as an eccentric shop assistant in the BBC comedy Are You Being Served?, died on March 8 at the age of 71, his manager said. Inman died in the early hours at Saint Mary’s Hospital in west London after a long battle with hepatitis A.
Zimbabwe’s accelerating economic collapse is putting pressure on its neighbours to end their long resistance to doing something about the crisis. Analysts say Zimbabwe, once one of the strongest countries in Africa, is now a real threat to regional economic stability and has raised the spectre of frightening bloodshed.
The head of the Tintin studio announced on Thursday that Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks company has committed to produce at least one movie on the famed Belgian cartoon character. Hergé Studios head Nick Rodwell said the Hollywood company will go into pre-production of a Tintin movie.
Pope Benedict was opposed to Bob Dylan appearing at a youth event with the late pope John Paul in 1997 because he considered the pop star the wrong kind of ”prophet”, Benedict writes in a new book issued on Thursday. Benedict makes the disclosure in a new book of memoirs about his predecessor, who died in 2005.
The Bloemfontein High Court on Thursday postponed an urgent court interdict sought by four African National Congress (ANC) members to suspend the election of new office bearers at a northern Free State ANC regional conference. The matter was suspended to March 29 for consideration by the court.
An elderly man who shot dead his teenage lover after receiving a suspended sentence for assaulting her was on Thursday jailed for an effective 15 years. Moegamat Saiat Patrick (66) was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment on charges of murder, statutory rape and the illegal possession of a gun and ammunition.
The decision to recall Roberton’s Peri-Peri Spice from supermarket shelves has been withdrawn, the Department of Health said on Thursday. This was after the department’s forensic chemical laboratories in Cape Town and Pretoria determined that samples of the spice contained no traces of Sudan Red dye, department spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has testified he launched last year’s war against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon in line with a contingency plan he approved four months before, the Haaretz daily said on Thursday. Olmert told a judicial inquiry last month that Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 triggered the plans for a large-scale attack, the Israeli newspaper said.
Miners at the Sonop diamond mine in the Northern Cape will picket outside company headquarters in Wolmaransstad, North West, on Friday, the National Union of Mineworkers said. The union claims some workers have not been paid since January 24, and that retrenched workers have not been fully paid.