South Africa’s Department of Agricultural and Land Affairs has no legislation or policy providing for the settlement of black farmers at the expense of others, Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulu Xingwana said on Tuesday. ”Where black farmers are settled on land previously owned by white … farmers, due processes within the constitutional framework … will continue to be followed.”
Former Cape Town City manager Wallace Mgoqi could face a bill of almost R9-million over alleged irregular spending he authorised on a jewellery city project. He could also face criminal charges, mayoral committee member for finance Ian Nielson told a media briefing on Tuesday.
Terrorist activities in Africa are increasing, a counterterrorism conference in Kyalami, north of Johannesburg, heard on Tuesday. The threat is mainly from global terrorist groups seeking refuge, recruits and funds, said David Radcliffe, regional director for Africa in the office of the United States Secretary of Defence.
One year after Hurricane Katrina battered the United States Gulf Coast and his political standing, President George Bush acknowledged on Monday that a complete recovery was still a long way off. ”There is hope down here, there is still a lot of work to be done,” Bush said.
Alabama native Sarah Jane Keith (30) stopped on a desolate street of the New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward where porches had teemed with neighbours a year ago, before Hurricane Katrina. ”I stood in the middle of the street and screamed. I cried. Nobody heard me,” she said.,
Tropical Storm Ernesto was moving towards south Florida on Tuesday — the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina — after soaking Cuba with heavy rain. Florida residents lined up for supplies with the approach of Ernesto, which could strengthen over the warm waters of the Florida Straits.
South Africans had nothing to do with the alleged coup plot in Burundi, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Tuesday. Speaking a day after the Burundian Supreme Court refused an application by the alleged plotters to be released, Pahad denied any South African involvement in the plot.
At least 29 people were killed when a blast ripped through scavengers siphoning petrol from pools around a breach in a disused pipeline in central Iraq late on Monday, health officials said. A reporter at the rural site near Diwaniya, 180km south of Baghdad, saw 15 charred bodies, including that of a boy. The explosion severely wounded 26 people.
The South African Hockey Association on Tuesday announced the Spar South African women’s hockey squad to participate in the 2006 Samsung Hockey World Cup, which takes place in Madrid, Spain, from September 27 to October 8. Marsha Marescia takes over the captain’s armband from recently retired Lindsey Carlisle.
One of South Africa’s most wanted gangsters was arrested on Monday after a botched cash-in-transit heist in the East Rand’s Tsakane township, police said. Christian ”Seuntjie” van Wyk was one of eight people caught at a house in Palm Ridge in connection with the robbery, a police spokesperson said on Tuesday.