The new Advance Tax Ruling System — intended to promote clarity, consistency and certainty in the interpretation and application of the tax laws — came into effect on Monday. The system allows the commissioner to issue two new types of rulings — binding private rulings and binding general rulings — the South African Revenue Service said in a statement.
One of South Africa’s worst military disasters is to be taught in British schools to highlight the role of African soldiers in World War I, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission announced on Monday. A total of 616 South Africans, virtually all of them African, died when the steamship Mendi sank in the Channel on the way to France on February 21 1917.
A delegation of about 50 Russian business leaders was in Zimbabwe on Monday for talks with senior officials about investment opportunities in the Southern African country. Officials from both countries said that the discussions would include talks about possible mining investments in Zimbabwe, which is rich in minerals such as platinum and uranium.
Up to 40 people were killed in clashes between rebel groups in south Darfur, forcing foreign aid workers to abandon the Greida displaced persons’ camp, the Guardian newspaper reported on its website on Monday. An African Union spokesperson in Khartoum confirmed a flare-up in fighting in Greida, but put the death toll at 11 people, mostly civilians.
Georgia on Monday handed over to international mediators four Russian army officers whose arrest on spying charges triggered the worst crisis in years between the ex-Soviet neighbours. As the handover was going ahead, Moscow ignored international appeals for a similar goodwill gesture and announced it would cut air, sea and land links between the two countries.
South Africa and India will share intelligence to help prevent international terrorism, President Thabo Mbeki said on Monday. He met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Union Buildings in Pretoria where they signed a declaration "reaffirming the strategic partnership" between the two countries.
Zambian opposition challenger Michael Sata conceded defeat on Monday as official results in the country’s tightly fought presidential election gave incumbent Levy Mwanawasa an unassailable lead. But he said Mwanawasa had ”stolen victory” and urged his supporters who staged violent protests on Sunday to remain calm. Sata said he expected his tally to be at most 900Â 000 votes.
The Director General in President Thabo Mbeki’s office, Reverend Frank Chikane, says he now knows the identity of police officers who poisoned him in the late 1980s. In a statement from the Presidency on Monday, it noted that Chikane, a former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, had revealed on Sunday ”that he now has information about his poisoning”.
The high rate of credit extension in South Africa had become a major concern for the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), the bank’s Governor Tito Mboweni said on Monday while addressing trainee chartered accountants in the Western Cape. "Consumer spending through credit-card lending has recorded year-on-year growth of 38,6% to a level of R36,9-billion at the end of July 2006.
An intruder armed with a knife was arrested after scaling a wall and getting into a secure area of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s official London residence, police said on Monday. The man was apprehended after he scaled a fence from a road at the back of 10 Downing Street into what officials describe as the building’s outer secure area.