The mass evictions from a building in Bree Street in central Johannesburg are ”utterly barbaric” and unconstitutional, a legal expert said at the site on Thursday afternoon. Stuart Woolfson, of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, said to evict people without giving them interim shelter is cruel and an abuse of human rights.
A male Zimbabwean athlete who won several awards in women’s competitions in Southern Africa was on Thursday sentenced to four years in jail for offensive behaviour, the prosecutor said. Samukeliso Sithole (18) was arrested in February after a female friend lodged a complaint to police.
The Competition Commission on Thursday recommended the approval, under certain conditions, of a merger between Media24 and the owners of the Natal Witness newspaper. The condition is that the shares held by the Natal Witness in Lincroft Books be transferred to Lexshell 496 Investments.
Mlindazwe Nkula, a founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress, has died at the age of 76, the PAC announced on Thursday. Nkula, who died on July 8, was also a founder member of the PAC’s armed wing, Poqo, in 1959. After the 1994 elections, he worked at the pension division of the Department of Finance in Pretoria.
The Vredefort Dome, spanning the Free State and the North West provinces, has been declared a World Heritage Site, the Department of Arts and Culture said on Thursday, making it the country’s seventh such site. This decision was made earlier in the day at the 29th World Heritage Committee meeting being held in Durban.
The <i>Mail & Guardian</i> reports in its latest edition, available on Friday, that the African National Congress has misled the nation on the Oilgate scandal. Documents in the possession of the <i>M&G</i> make it clear that Imvume Management — the company that channelled R11-million in state oil money to the ANC before the 2004 election — was effectively a front for the ruling party.
Thousands of villagers in northern Kenya fled their homes in fear on Thursday as new interclan violence wracked parts of the remote region after a brutal massacre and a reprisal attack killed at least 76 people this week, officials and residents of the area said.
Twenty-one years after losing their sons to the anti-apartheid struggle, 10 families could finally be able to bury their remains, which are being recovered from unmarked graves north of Pretoria. National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi said the remains will be subjected to DNA and forensic testing.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma on Thursday defended South Africa’s policy of quiet diplomacy on Zimbabwe, saying louder lobbying of President Robert Mugabe has not yielded results. Dlamini-Zuma was speaking following talks in London with Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
Leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) nations slammed the door in Africa’s face in Gleneagles last week, just as the continent thought it was on the verge of a breakthrough in new aid and fair trade, ActionAid said on Thursday.