Solidarity and the Communication Workers Union’s (CWU) leadership have declared their national stayaway and march on Monday to deliver a memorandum of grievances to Telkom a success. An estimated 2 000 protesters marched to Telkom’s head office in Pretoria. About 13 000 Telkom employees stayed away from work.
President Thabo Mbeki has warned against attempts to exploit Inspector General of Intelligence Zolile Ngcakani’s report on the hoax African National Congress e-mails. The Presidency had noted Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon’s public call for Mbeki to establish a judicial commission of enquiry ”to investigate the mandate and activities of the national intelligence structure”.
People tend to look at me askance nowadays and wonder what I am doing in Johannesburg. ”You’re always travelling,” they say. ”We thought we’d be hearing from you from somewhere else.” I am half-tempted to defensively pull out my dompas and say back to them: ”Hey, check, I was born here, I live here.”
Egypt said on Monday a teenager hospitalised in the Nile delta governorate of Kafr al-Sheikh with bird-flu symptoms could be the fifth person in the country infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus. The 18-year-old girl was in a stable condition, Nasser Kamel, spokesperson for the government’s anti-bird-flu committee, told Agence France-Presse. He added that further tests were still being carried out.
Australia set South Africa the mammoth target of 410 to win the second Castle Lager Test at Kingsmead on Monday. Australia declared their second innings closed on 307-4, after a flurry of runs from Adam Gilchrist ended with his dismissal. Gilchrist made 24 off nine balls — 22 of these runs coming off an Andre Nel over.
The Democratic Alliance has demanded the return of all information gathered by the National Intelligence Agency during illegal spying on its offices. DA intelligence spokesperson Paul Swart has written to Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils in this regard, party chief whip Douglas Gibson said on Monday.
A suicide bomber on Monday killed 40 people waiting outside an Iraqi army recruitment centre as United States forces defended themselves against charges of attacking a Shi’ite mosque in Baghdad. The attack was the deadliest single attack in Iraq since a suicide attack in January on police recruits in Ramadi.
A bomb exploded on a packed minibus heading into Ethiopia’s capital on Monday, killing at least one person and wounding several others, police and witnesses said. the vehicle, which was carrying about 10 people into downtown Addis Ababa, was ripped apart in the blast, witnesses said. Ethiopia’s top police official, Demsash Hailu, confirmed the explosion was caused by a bomb.
About 1 700 workers at tyre firm Goodyear in Port Elizabeth were expected to embark on an indefinite strike this week after management had reportedly refused to permanently employ 300 temporary workers for the past five years, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) said in a statement on Monday.
Weeks after police in Zimbabwe announced they had discovered an arms cache in eastern Zimbabwe, the authorities in Harare say they are introducing new laws to combat terrorism. Under the proposed new laws, the Zimbabwe government will be able to designate any organisation it believes is a ”foreign or international terrorist organisation” and declare it unlawful.