The South African government repeated denials on Wednesday that the deportation of Pakistani illegal immigrant Khalid Mahmood Rashid amounted to unlawful rendition. Rashid’s lawyer Zehir Omar seems bent on portraying the government as breaking its own laws and constitutional provisions, government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe said in Cape Town.
Deadly factional violence and the storming of Parliament by protesters on Wednesday threatened to overshadow a new round of cross-party Palestinian talks seeking to cap tensions between Fatah and Hamas. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, leader of the Hamas-led government, in Gaza City.
MPs roasted the Department of Housing on Wednesday for lacking control over its subsidy system, resulting in irregular awards exceeding R300-million to government employees. Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts expressed dismay at the vagueness of answers from director general Itumeleng Kotsoane regarding systemic loopholes.
Former businessman and politician Themba James Maseko is the new head of government communications, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad announced on Wednesday afternoon. Maseko, a former African National Congress MP, becomes CEO of the Government Communication and Information Systems, which makes him spokesperson for the government.
The death toll in Angola’s cholera epidemic has surged risen to more than 1 700 and the number of cases is over 45 000, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday. Over the past four months ”Angola has reported a total of 45 133 cumulative cases and 1 727 deaths in 14 out of the 18 provinces”, a WHO statement said.
The anti-Aids ABC message — abstain, be faithful and use condoms — has left many of the continent’s youth confused, an Aids conference in Durban heard on Wednesday. In a survey of 1Â 766 pupils conducted in the Valley of a Thousand Hills near Durban, only one schoolgirl said abstinence is ”not having sex until one is married”.
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Perennial under-achievers Spain kick-started their bid to top Group H with a blast on Wednesday with a resounding 4-0 win over World Cup debutants Ukraine. With Spanish icon Raul starting on the bench, Valencia marksman David Villa took centre stage for Luis Aragones’s side with a goal in each half.
The Scorpions welcomed an appeal against a precedent-setting Cape High Court judgement on Wednesday, in which illicit diamond trader Tony Dos Santos was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. The appeal ”will allow the jurisprudence relating to racketeering to be developed so that it finds national application”, the Scorpions said.
About 100 people are believed to have died in a suspected outbreak of pneumonic plague in the strife-torn north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in Geneva on Wednesday. The WHO said that suspected bases of bubonic plague have also been reported.
The Power Alert system, launched on May 22, has taken only three weeks to prove its value, Eskom said on Thursday. The power utility said it expected a turbulent weekend in the Cape after the shutdown of the Koeberg nuclear power station’s unit one on Friday afternoon.