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Former South African president FW de Klerk on Thursday denied that he had ever condoned apartheid-era murders or other gross violations of human rights. ”I have not only a clear conscience, I am not guilty of any crime whatsoever,” he said. He was responding to newspaper reports that former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok, who faces prosecution, intends to spill the beans on him.
A parked car bomb killed 25 people and wounded 115 when it exploded near an intersection in central Baghdad on Thursday and police said the toll was likely to rise as many bodies were still buried under rubble. Bodies lay strewn around the street after the blast, which smashed three buildings into piles of masonry and concrete.
After being pulled off shelves early on Friday last week following a temporary court interdict, the Mail & Guardian is still unable to report on an explosive final draft of an internal audit report of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). On Thursday, Judge Justice Poswa granted the applicant, a senior SABC executive, a further postponement of the matter.
Lawyers for the alleged British mastermind of a foiled coup in Equatorial Guinea launched an appeal on Thursday against his extradition from Zimbabwe, arguing the move would amount to a death sentence. ”He is so ill he should not be extradited. He will not be able to withstand trial,” Mann’s chief attorney, Jonathan Samkange, told the hearing.
Zimbabwean police concocted accusations of terrorism against an opposition MP and 12 followers based on testimony from non-existent witnesses at a fictional South African farm, a judge has said. Prosecutors had failed to produce the witnesses when ordered to do so and were unable to pinpoint the farm on a map, Justice Lawrence Kamocha said.
The Health Department has rejected claims by the Democratic Alliance (DA) that it was not doing anything to stop the influx of unregulated alternative medicines into the country. Department spokesperson Sibani Mngadi on Thursday said a lot was being done to prevent the distribution of bogus medicines in the country.
The embattled chief of the Ekurhuleni metro police should be suspended, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Thursday. The DA’s Eddie Taylor said Ekurhuleni mayor Duma Nkosi should have suspended McBride, instead of giving him a ”paid holiday”.
Over half the dams owned and managed by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry do not comply with modern safety standards, but are not necessarily unsafe, said Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks. ”At present, 160 of the 294 dams owned by my department do not comply with current-day dam safety standards,” she said on Thursday.