The battle for the control of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) at its national congress in Pretoria has been firmly won by its left wing. At the congress in Pretoria this week, incumbent president Vusi Nhlapo lost the vote to former vice-president Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, 136 votes to 243.
Three previously disadvantaged tertiary institutions in the Eastern Cape this week amicably signed their ”antenuptial contract”, paving the way for a smooth transition to their merger in January. The contract binds the University of Transkei (Unitra), Border Technikon and Eastern Cape Technikon on key issues such as staffing and salaries.
”He is one of the most famous musicians to have emerged from South Africa in the bloody years of apartheid, selling four million singles when he knocked the Rolling Stones’s Jumping Jack Flash off the top of the charts with Grazing in the Grass in 1968.” John Fordham shoots the breeze with Hugh Masekela.
A black empowerment contractor was financially ruined after he won the contract to refurbish Mahlamba Ndlopfu, the presidential residence in Pretoria, in 1999. He says the government never paid him in full for work he had done on the residence.
Joseph Manonga lost his business after the supposedly sweet deal turned sour for him.
The price of fuel will drop by 17 cents a litre next Wednesday, the Minerals and Energy Department announced on Friday. This will apply to 93 octane — leaded and unleaded. There will be a 16 cents per litre decrease in the retail price of 95 unleaded, 97 leaded and a 10 cent decrease for 97 unleaded.
The Nigerian state of Kano, the centre of a polio outbreak in Africa, has pledged to resume vaccinations against the disease after accepting that immunisation was not a western plot to harm Muslims. The authorities told the World Health Organisation that an immunisation campaign would begin this month in the wake of the spread of the virus across the continent.
A doctor shortage has led to the Red Cross Children’s hospital closing its doors to patients requiring medical emergency assistance on a number of evenings. To address the situation in the long term, the hospital called for the quicker processing of work permits for foreign doctors at the home affairs department and registration through the Health Professions Council.
Mehdi, still hobbling after nine months, likened the torture to having his ”brain pulled out by a magnet”. Strapped to an electric chair inside the bowels of the Azerbaijani police’s organised crime unit, metal panels were put under his feet, he said. A plastic bib was tied to his front, and headphones with earpieces like the metal tip of a doctor’s otoscope were put inside his ears.
South African President Thabo Mbeki is concerned about the slow pace of informal talks aimed at resolving the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe, his office said on Thursday. ”The president is very worried that the talks are moving too slowly,” his spokesperson Bheki Khumalo said.
Peter Brown is likely to be remembered in South Africa as the national chairperson of the Liberal Party. He was one of its founders in 1953 and was its chairperson when it disbanded in 1968, owing to the prohibition of racially mixed political organisations. Michael Gardiner pays tribute to the deceased.