The Tafelsig anti-eviction movement on Wednesday called on residents in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain, to boycott a by-election being held in the area. ”We don’t want to vote for anybody, because everybody sold us out,” claimed Ashraf Cassiem, chairperson of the anti-eviction movement in Tafelsig, part of Cape Town.
President Thabo Mbeki has reached new heights of public popularity, with current job-approval ratings matching the best ratings given to Nelson Mandela, the Afrobarometer survey said on Wednesday. According to the survey, conducted in January and February, nearly eight in 10 South Africans approved of the job Mbeki was doing as president. When asked about the way Mbeki had performed his job over the past year, 77% said they approved, with 28% strongly approving.
Dissident factions of two Darfur rebel groups that have rejected a peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region are to sign onto the pact this week, African Union officials said on Wednesday. Splinter wings of the Sudan Liberation Movement and Justice and Equality Movement are to sign a specially prepared annex to the peace deal.
Islamists holding much of lawless Somali capital Mogadishu declared war on ”infidels” on Wednesday, as a battered United States-backed warlord alliance they have been fighting girded for new clashes. With the two sides locked in a tense stand-off outside the alliance’s last remaining stronghold north of the city, elders frantically appealed for peace.
Talks aimed at resolving the ongoing security guard strike were ”progressing well” at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) said on Wednesday. Satawu and the Transport and Allied Workers’ Union of South Africa have been on strike since March 23.
Zimbabwean rights groups are preparing to fight a new Bill that would allow state agents to eavesdrop on private conversations and monitor faxes and e-mails. The Interception of Communications Bill is the latest in a series of laws critics say are meant to crush government opponents and emasculate the country’s once-vibrant independent press.
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Three English football hooligans have been refused entry to Germany as they attempted to cross into the country through the Czech Republic ahead of the World Cup, German police said on Wednesday. They had chosen an indirect route into Germany in order to escape detection, said a spokesperson for the German border police in Sankt Augustin near Bonn.
A 33-year-old man was seriously injured when chemicals at a packaging factory near Durban ignited on Wednesday. Netcare spokesperson Chris Botha said the man had burns to 60% of his body and was airlifted to St Augustine’s hospital. The blast occurred at a division of the packaging conglomerate Nampak.
Representatives of security companies and two unions representing striking security guards resumed talks on Wednesday to resolve the 10-week-old strike. The meeting began at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) offices in Johannesburg at 9am, CCMA spokesperson Lusanda Myoli said.
A tiny minority of individuals has inflicted pain on millions of people in the violence associated with the security sector strike, attacks on local government councillors and those using murder to advance their social and political goals, President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday. He described the violence as ”an anti-democratic plague”.