Police used stun grenades and rubber bullets to control about 1 000 residents at Diviwe township in Komga who tried to prevent the arrest of a man for assault on Sunday. The Komga police had to call for back-up as the mob stoned and attacked them in order to prevent them from leaving with the suspect.
Ten miners have abandoned their illegal underground strike at a mine in KwaZulu-Natal since Thursday to seek medical help, it emerged on Monday. Some had been feeling unwell — one of them had flu — and some were feeling claustrophobic, said Michael Campbell, spokesperson for Zululand Anthracite Colliery, outside Ulundi.
Britain has imposed a year-long ban on delivering first-time visas to Nigerians aged 18 to 30, citing a backlog of applications, most of which are rejected. From Monday, Nigerians seeking to travel to Britain for the first time will be asked to ”postpone their plans until 2006”, the British Foreign Office said.
A discharge of water from a dam swept away scores of Hindu pilgrims while they were praying on the banks of the Narmada River in central India, leaving at least 53 dead, senior officials said. About 25 000 people had gathered on the banks of the Narmada at Dharaji to offer prayers during a two-day festival that started on Thursday.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) accused Uganda of massacring tens of thousands of civilians and plundering its rich natural resources at the start of two weeks of legal arguments at the United Nations’s highest legal body on Monday. The DRC is asking the UN court to order the withdrawal of Ugandan troops from its land.
The Eastern Cape social development department is investigating 2Â 000 public servants thought to be cheating the state out of R24-million in welfare grants. Those under suspicion include teachers and employees of the Eastern Cape agriculture department. Eight civil servants were arrested at Mthatha on Monday morning for grant fraud.
The Department of Education on Monday denied reports that schoolboys will be allowed to grow beards under the national guidelines on school uniforms. ”Nothing can be further from the truth,” the department said in a statement. It blamed the ”misconception” on ”second-hand reporting”.
Jazz saxophonist Robbie Jansen is still in a critical condition in a Cape Town hospital following his collapse last week, Mountain Records MD Patrick Lee-Thorp said on Monday. ”He is slipping in and out of consciousness. But some eye movement last night was a big breakthrough. It put our hopes up,” Lee-Thorp said.
The Department of Public Enterprises and state arms company Denel on Monday dismissed as speculation media reports about a board reshuffle. According to Business Report, rumours are rife that Denel chief executive Victor Moche and human resource director Eugene Martin have been suspended or dismissed or have resigned.
The Pan African Parliament (PAP) recommended on Monday the creation of a bank for storing samples of the continent’s plant resources. This should be done ”with a view to preserving plant species and reconstituting the vegetation cover in the event of major ecological disasters”, says a PAP recommendation.