Plans to introduce teachers’ licensing by the Department of Education are doomed to failure, judging by the reaction of teachers’ unions. Minister of Education Naledi Pandor floated the idea during a meeting in Cape Town as “part of steps by the Department of Education to improve the quality of education in South Africa”.
Armed robbers made off with R700 000 after holding up a cash-in-transit van north of Durban on Wednesday morning, police said. Captain Shane Smith of the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit said they robbed the Coin Security van on the M4, between Umdloti and Sibaya Casino.
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French arms group Thales, whose South African subsidiary Thint is accused of corruption alongside Jacob Zuma, has a new headache, media reports said on Tuesday. A dossier that Thales thought French investigators had closed has been opened again, with a South African connection.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila on Tuesday ordered all troops to return to barracks in a bid to restore calm to the country’s capital, Kinshasa, after three days of fighting between his forces and armed supporters of his main presidential rival.
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.