The first overland relief supplies for tens of thousands of victims of fatal flash floods reached devastated southern Ethiopia on Tuesday, amid fears of a sharp rise in the death toll. In addition to the 626 people known so far to have been killed across the country, thousands of heads of valuable livestock have drowned.
Smiles have been rare in the Bok camp recently, but Springbok coach Jake White managed to produce a few after his team’s practice session at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on Tuesday. There seems to be some enthusiasm back in the Bok camp with White at his tactical best — board and all — out on the training field.
Twenty-seven Iranian doctors have been offered jobs in South Africa as part of an agreement signed by the two countries on Tuesday. According to a joint communiqué signed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and her Iranian counterpart, the first group of Iranian doctors has already arrived in South Africa.
Shun Chetty, who was struck off the roll of attorneys in 1980 for his political affiliations, was posthumously reinstated following a ruling in the Johannesburg High Court on Tuesday. Chetty acted for members of the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement during the 1970s.
Zackie Achmat, one of South Africa’s top Aids activists, appeared in court on Tuesday on trespassing charges after leading a protest against government policies to fight the disease. A judge ruled that the trial will open formally on September 7. In the meantime, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) vowed to step up its protests.
Quinton Fortune, the not-so-young enfant terrible of South African soccer, is still in caretaker coach Pitso Mosimane’s plans for the key African Nations Cup qualifying game against the Democratic Republic of Congo at FNB Stadium next Saturday. ”I will select him for the Congo game if I feel he warrants a place in the squad,” said Mosimane.
Five labour leaders were found not guilty of public violence by the Pongola Regional Court on Tuesday after they were arrested at a demonstration at the Swaziland border in April, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said.
Somalia’s dominant Islamic movement on Tuesday launched intensive military training for hundreds of its gunmen under a plan to create instruments of statehood in areas where it holds sway. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a hard-line cleric who heads the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, said trained Islamic forces will disarm civilians and restore law and order.
A German woman who was held up and robbed in her Berlin apartment earlier this month was astonished to see the thief waiting to board her flight from Antalya in Turkey to the German capital, police said on Tuesday. The 37-year-old woman telephoned her husband who alerted the authorities, police spokesperson Joerg Kunzendorf said.
The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) denied reports on Tuesday that Major Mmathabo Zikalala, wife of the head of news at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Snuki Zikalala, was being investigated for refusing to do her duty.