South Africa’s transport sector is in crisis, African National Congress MP and chairperson of Parliament’s transport portfolio committee Jeremy Cronin said on Tuesday. ”We’ve got a very, very substantial crisis around transport mobility and accessibility,” he told journalists at a Cape Town Press Club meeting.
More than 30 media commentators on Tuesday handed a petition to the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) protesting their alleged ”blacklisting” at the public broadcaster, the South African Litigation Centre said. The petition called for a ”clear refutation of any erosion of free speech at the public broadcaster”.
Hurricane Katrina fraudsters who billed the United States government for fictitious services and filed claims for phantom hotel guests, and even Dom Perignon champagne, have managed to cost taxpayers up to -billion, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Eleven of 16 people arrested for Sunday’s Jeppestown siege were remanded until July 27 by the Roodepoort Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday. Sunday’s shootout in Johannesburg left 12 people dead, four of them police officers. On Tuesday at least 10 police officers with rifles and handguns blocked the doors to the court as the first nine men laboured up the steps from the holding cells.
A split in the alliance between the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions will ”seriously” damage South Africa at this point, the SACP’s deputy general secretary warned on Tuesday. ”I think fragmentation of the alliance … wouldn’t be good for South Africa,” Jeremy Cronin said.
The United Nations Environmental Programme warned on Tuesday that Africa will slip further into poverty if its governments fail to adopt eco-friendly policies to sustain and exploit its natural wealth. It said the continent’s fast-degrading environment faces fresh strains from genetically modified organisms, invasive species and a switch in chemical manufacturing.
About 450 detainees were released from Iraqi and United States-run prisons on Tuesday under a reconciliation plan aimed at bringing insurgents into the political process and ending the deadly tide of bloodshed in Iraq. But at least 21 people were killed a day after dozens died in a wave of violence, including 22 people blown up by a motorbike bomb.
South African Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni said on Tuesday that despite the recent turbulence in international markets, the central bank was of the view that growth prospects remain sound both in South Africa and in the rest of the world. He said the inflation threats were likely to subside given the resolute determination of central banks around the world to tighten policy.
The government will look at buying up commercially available agricultural land in an attempt to speed up land reform, Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulu Xingwana said on Tuesday. She was speaking after a presidential working group meeting on agriculture in Pretoria.
Veteran anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman is still recovering in hospital after a fall 10 days ago, said an official at Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital on Tuesday. ”She is still in the general ward and making slow progress, as one does at her age,” said Milpark spokesperson Amelda Swartz. ”Yesterday [Monday] she was up and moving with her walker.”