Very cold and wet conditions are due to hit parts of the country this weekend, but for many people a weekend of hot chocolate and romantic snuggling is a remote thought — finding ways of keeping warm safely is far more pressing. But makeshift measures such as illegal electricity connections can be deadly.
An historic property in Westcliff, Johannesburg, has been auctioned for a record price of R12,3-million, double initial estimates. The sale, to an overseas investor, followed the resolution of an international legal battle surrounding the property, which cleared the way for the mansion and its surrounding properties to be sold.
The Zimbabwean government is trying to quash the local trade union movement and send its own representatives to an International Labour Organisation conference, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) said on Thursday. ”This is a sinister move,” ZCTU secretary general Wellington Chibebe said.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will start strike action on June 27 in a programme of action that will run into February next year, against continuing job losses. At a press conference in Johannesburg on Thursday, Cosatu called on the business sector to make more serious efforts to avoid job losses.
The Cabinet has agreed to extend by two years, until March 2007, South Africa’s participation in a United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Cabinet also approved the extension of participation in the UN and African Union missions in Ethiopia and Eritrea for another two years.
Too much is being made of claims that there is resistance to transforming the judiciary, Justice Dikgang Moseneke told members of the Judicial Services Commission in Cape Town on Thursday. ”I don’t think so,” said Moseneke of the resistance claims, adding that most judges embraced the Constitution, its values and the ”constitutional injunctions”.
Crunch talks between the British Broadcasting Corporation and trade unions began on Thursday in a bid to divert another strike at the world’s largest public broadcaster next week over plans to axe almost 4 000 jobs. Thousands of journalists and technicians at the BBC will stage a 48-hour walkout from Tuesday if the meeting breaks down.
Nearly all Gaza Strip settlers have agreed to move to Israel as a group following this summer’s withdrawal, a spokesperson said on Thursday, signalling the collapse of what was once wall-to-wall resistance to the government’s plan to evacuate the coastal area.
A number of construction workers were still trapped on Thursday, two days after a building under construction caved in, killing at least 10 in Nigeria’s southern oil city of Port Harcourt, police said. The four-storey building on Sani Abacha Road in the city centre suddenly collapsed on Tuesday.
Close to 6 000 workers at arms manufacturer Denel will pocket R4-million in lost wages, according to the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. The trade union added that the company will pay out R2-million on June 30 this year and another R2-million in December.