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/ 19 September 2006
By the end of the second day of the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) congress in Midrand, there was still no clarity on whether there was any official opposition to the present leadership. The nominations for new national office bearers for Cosatu closed on Tuesday but no details on any possible new candidates were being released.
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/ 19 September 2006
Six miners from the Free State goldfields have been diagnosed with extreme drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), the provincial department of health said on Tuesday. Spokesperson Gela Naude said the six confirmed XDR-TB patients were all from Gold Fields and Harmony mines at Welkom.
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/ 19 September 2006
The Mangaung Local Municipality, comprising Bloemfontein, Thaba Nchu and Botshabelo, on Tuesday took a step closer towards becoming a metropolitan area. ”We totally and completely support the idea of a metro,” said speaker in the council Mahlomola Ralebesi.
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/ 19 September 2006
Western Cape provincial minister of local government Richard Dyantyi has taken the first step in his bid to strip Cape Town mayor Helen Zille of her executive powers. He sent a letter to Zille on Tuesday giving her notice of a ”proposed amendment” to the form of government the city has.
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/ 19 September 2006
A former Kurdish guerrilla fighter removed his shirt in a marbled Baghdad courtroom on Tuesday to show what he said were scars caused by a chemical attack ordered by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. Iskandar Mahmoud Abdul-Rahman told how he and other comrades from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan were gassed after fleeing to a village in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region.
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/ 19 September 2006
The Israeli army said on Tuesday it could complete a pull-out from southern Lebanon within a few days as the United Nations said the number of peacekeepers in the devastated country had reached 5Â 000. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said such a level of peacekeepers on the ground in southern Lebanon should enable Israel to finish its withdrawal.
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/ 19 September 2006
The Zimbabwean government has renewed seizing white-owned farms, despite official statements that the process had ended, ZimOnline reported on Tuesday. ”Your farm has been acquired by the government and we therefore request you to wind up your business before the start of the rainy season,” Masvingo provincial governor Willard Chiwewe wrote to local farmer John Sparrow.
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/ 19 September 2006
Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela will be awarded Amnesty International’s ”Ambassador of Conscience” award.
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/ 19 September 2006
A global press freedom watchdog on Tuesday expressed outrage over a Burundi court’s sentence of five months in prison to a journalist for criticising the government and national police. Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) voiced ”deep concern about the future of democracy in Burundi” after Aloys Kabura was convicted and sentenced on Monday.
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/ 19 September 2006
South Africa’s yawning current-account deficit will remain the bugbear of the country’s economy, with figures on Thursday due to show the gap hovering near record levels in the second quarter of 2006. The Reserve Bank’s quarterly bulletin on Thursday will reveal whether there was any narrowing of the shortfall on the country’s broadest measure of trade.