An expert witness in the Richtersveld land claim on Thursday added more than R100-million to the estimated cost of rehabilitation of land ravaged by Alexkor’s diamond mining. An environmental consultant told the Land Claims Court in Cape Town there was an error in the figure he gave the court earlier.
Protests over municipal service delivery went on for a second day in Port Elizabeth, with dissatisfied residents setting tyres alight and blockading roads on Friday. The police’s deputy area commissioner for Port Elizabeth said about 300 to 400 residents were protesting against the slow pace of housing delivery.
An application by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) for an urgent interdict against vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath got under way in the Cape High Court on Friday morning. However, proceedings were disrupted minutes after they started by the noise of demonstrators outside the building.
In 1983 Oliver Tambo declared that ”there is no force more powerful than the spirit of a people who have decided to endure torture, imprisonment, assassinations, hangings and massacres as the price of freedom, of liberation.” This was very upsetting news for fans of Victor Hugo, who for years had lived by his observation that there is no force more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
The JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) was deluged with red in noon trade on Friday, following a sell-off on world markets. A weaker rand failed to stem the tide. By noon, the all-share index weakened 1,02%. Industrials lost 0,38% and financials fell 1,19%. Resources retreated 1,6% and the gold-mining index surrendered 1,08%.
Top seed Maria Sharapova beat France’s Mary Pierce in an absorbing third-round match to reach the quarterfinals of the Rome Masters on Thursday. The reigning Wimbledon champion won a thrilling contest 7-6 (7/4), 6-4 in exactly two hours to reach the last eight and keep alive her dream of becoming world number one for the very first time.
Angry fans of Manchester United were threatening massive protests on Friday after United States tycoon Malcolm Glazer neared success in his bid for the celebrated English football team, a takeover supporters say is unwanted and will saddle the club with massive debt.
Neal Collins writes why Crystal Palace, Norwich, Southampton and West Brom deserve to stay up, heading towards the final day of the season with no club officially relegated for the first time since the Premiership started in 1992. And there are plenty more reasons to be hopeful, he says.
”I hate the play-offs when my team finishes third,” said David Sheepshanks. The Ipswich Town chairperson and Football Association board member has always been one of the most progressive of football’s power brokers but, if he was being entirely selfish, he might advocate a return to the pre-war days of election to the top division.
The tail is wagging a howling dog. All the enraged energy in the Premiership’s closing weeks comes from the swishing and flailing of the clubs in the relegation zone. Norwich, Southampton, Crystal Palace and West Brom all went unbeaten at the weekend and no one was dumbfounded.