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At least 42 miners were stuck 2,4km underground at Hartbeesfontein gold mine late on Wednesday after an earthquake shook the Klerksdorp mining area in the North West province. ”Rescue teams are working to open entry tunnels that were closed by rock falls,” said Ilja Graulich, spokesperson for DRDGold, which operates the mine.
The plight of the San indigenous community in South Africa was placed in the spotlight last week with the launch of a report by the South African Human Rights Commission. According to the Working Group for Indigenous Minorities of Southern Africa, there are currently about 100 000 San — the majority of whom live in Botswana.
As the citizens of the Central African Republic go to the polls to choose a new president and parliament this weekend, experts differ on whether it is a step toward true democracy. The landlocked nation has had a violent and troubled past. Since independence from colonial master France in 1960, it has been continuously rocked by political instability.
A Danish commercial radio station is under fire for organising a prank encouraging listeners to squelch cream cakes on staff at a bakery, reports said on Wednesday. The Voice offered listeners 10 000 kroner (about R10 000) if they went to a bakery, bought a cream cake and dumped it on the head of the salesperson.
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Prosecutor Billy Downer completed his cross-examination of fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik in the Durban High Court shortly before lunch on Wednesday. Shaik, who has been charged with one count of fraud and two of corruption, has been under cross-examination since Monday last week.
Talks on Israel ceding control of West Bank towns to the Palestinian Authority stalled over technicalities on Wednesday, while Israel voiced caution after a top Palestinian official said militant groups were set to observe a truce. ”We did not reach a final agreement yet,” Haj Ismail Jabr, the top Palestinian security official in the West Bank, told reporters.
The Zimbabwean ambassador to South Africa was scathing about a protest by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) outside his embassy in Pretoria on Wednesday, saying he pities the protesters. ”I hesitate to give an iota of dignity to these misguided malcontents,” Simon Khaya Moyo said.
The Constitutional Court will consider on Thursday how a death sentence should be replaced by a more appropriate one since the death penalty was abolished. The Constitutional Court in 1995 declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Since then, it has been unclear how to deal with the sentences of those prisoners given the death penalty prior to the 1995 decision.
There is no single Aids epidemic in Africa, says Hein Marais, until recently the chief writer for the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/Aids. There are many. And reasons for these different patterns may range far from medical territory into the realms of economics and history.