Nato ordered its planners to begin urgently drawing up proposals to help out in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than a million displaced. Nato has approved a request for help from the African Union, the pan-continental organisation, which has 2 600 troops on the ground.
A strike at Volkwagen SA is to continue after the company and a metal workers union failed to reach an agreement on the livelihood of 19 employees. Members of the National Union of Metalworkers went on strike two weeks ago, demanding an end to the outsourcing of VWSA’s packing department to a labour broker.
Truman Prince, the embattled central Karoo district municipal manager, has pleaded not guilty to charges of bringing the African National Congress into disrepute, SABC radio news reported on Wednesday. Prince’s disciplinary hearing began in Cape Town on Wednesday night, chaired by attorney Peter Williams.
The new local government system introduced four years ago will have benefited more than three million households by the end of the 2004/05 financial year, says Provincial and Local Government minister, Sydney Mufamadi. He says more than R10,3-billion has been spent on basic municipal infrastructure since 2000.
South Africa’s search for direct foreign investment and trade will see representatives of the country’s leading business head to Britain and Germany on a mission to promote the country. The 21-man delegation includes Danny Jordaan and Monhla Hlahla, head of the Airports Company South Africa.
More than 5 000 supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide marched in Haiti’s capital on Wednesday to demand his return from exile, less than two weeks before a UN mandate upholding security in the strife-torn nation is set to expire. Aristide is currently based here in South Africa as a guest of the government.
President George Bush is expected to give the United States Air Force a green light for the development of space weapons, potentially triggering a new global arms race. The new weapons being studied range from hunter-killer satellites to orbiting weapons using lasers, radio waves or even dense metal tubes dropped from space.
Those opposing Pretoria’s name change are forgetting the name changes imposed by colonialists centuries ago, says Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan. Jordan says that people caught up in the ”hysteria about the name for Pretoria” must remember that many of the places involved had indigenous African names before the 19th century.
Makhaya Ntini was named South Africa’s Cricketer of the Year at the Annual Mutual and Federal Awards dinner on Wednesday. The Protea paceman’s persistence, stamina and success made him a strong candidate. Ntini took 58 wickets in 14 Tests, in the process becoming the third South African to reach 200 Test wickets.
The Democratic Alliance has called for an inquiry into how an official working in the Office of the Presidency was suspended, dismissed, re-appointed, and once again suspended. DA MP and social development spokesperson Mike Waters said on Wednesday this was revealed in a written reply to a parliamentary question.