Cape Town

The South African Cabinet warned on Wednesday against defying the Constitutional Court ruling on same-sex marriages. The Cabinet had noted, during its fortnightly meeting at Tuynhuys, the public discourse on the draft Civil Unions Bill, government communications head Themba Maseko told a media briefing afterwards.

Veteran African National Congress (ANC) MP Ben Turok cut a lonely figure outside Parliament on Tuesday as opposition MPs seized on an invitation by HIV/Aids activists to participate in a ”people’s parliament” convened by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). ”I am here because I want to listen to the TAC. They are an international, well-known organisation,” said Turok.

Aids activists will on Tuesday set up hundreds of chairs outside Parliament, hoping to lure MPs to engage with civil society on challenges the country faces in fighting the pandemic. ”In front of Parliament we will have 450 chairs, one for each member of Parliament, to come meet with the public on the issue of HIV. We hope MPs will take up our offer,” the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said in a statement.

President Thabo Mbeki is to address the 61st Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. Mbeki is leading the South African delegation to New York, which includes Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, her deputy director general George Nene and South Africa’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Dumisani Kumalo.

The defence in the fraud trial of former national cricketer Garth le Roux and his accountant won an important victory on Monday with a court ruling that will limit the type of evidence the state’s main witness can give. Wynberg Regional Court magistrate Jackie Redelinghuys ruled that the state could not lead opinion evidence on matters of interpretation of law.

Home Affairs Department portfolio committee chairperson Patrick Chauke says he will not allow his religious beliefs to interfere with the way he and his committee deal with draft legislation on gay marriages. He was speaking outside Parliament on Saturday, after receiving a memorandum from several thousand Christians to protest against the Civil Unions Bill.

South Africa is owed billions of rands in industrial participation agreements signed with international arms suppliers, and the government should explain why this investment has not happened, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon said on Friday. The agreements, termed ”offsets”, were mooted as a primary motive for the arms deal, he said.

Former president FW de Klerk’s spokesperson Dave Steward believes he and his wife were ”very lucky” to have emerged relatively unscathed from an armed robbery at their Claremont, Cape Town, home. Steward said on Friday that he and his wife Lanice were attacked as they prepared to reverse out of their garage to visit her elderly parents at 6.15pm on Sunday.

Homosexuals are God’s children, Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane said on Thursday, ahead of a conference in Rwanda with the contentious issue of gays in the church on its agenda. ”We should try to find solutions of living with difference and otherness. Diversity is the creation by the Almighty,” Ndungane told reporters.

Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) president Lovemore Matombo, his first vice-president Lucia Matibenga and secretary general Wellington Chibebe were ”heavily assaulted” by police on Wednesday at Matapi police station in Mbare, the ZCTU said in a statement on Thursday.

Smokers who pop outside for a cigarette could still find themselves running foul of the law under new legislation being planned by the South African government, officials said on Wednesday. A Bill drafted by the ministry of health is looking to introduce a new offence of smoking outdoors within a prescribed distance from a window, ventilation outlet, doorway or entrance to a public place.

South Africa, signatory to a treaty to protect the imperilled albatross, has ironically not yet adopted a plan of action to stop endangered seabirds being killed by fishing vessels. ”The national plan of action seems to have fallen by the wayside … ” said Samantha Petersen, manager of the Birdlife and World Wildlife Fund Responsible Fisheries Programme.

Stumps were drawn early on Tuesday afternoon in the fraud trial of former national cricketer Garth le Roux and his accountant following legal argument over the testimony of the state’s first witness. The dispute arose as the prosecution was handing in a series of documents from South African Revenue Service files.

The fraud trial of former national fast bowler Garth le Roux and his accountant began in Cape Town’s Wynberg Regional Court on Monday with a claim that he was being prosecuted maliciously. In a plea explanation read into the record by his advocate, Wim Trengove, Le Roux said he had already settled most of the tax issues in the case with the South African Revenue Service.

The potential impacts of climate change may be far greater than previously believed, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk warned on Monday. Speaking at a meeting of working group two of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Somerset West, he said climate change in Southern Africa would place ”millions of lives at risk”.

Tony Yengeni is not receiving preferential treatment at Malmesbury prison, the acting head of the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons said on Friday. ”Our conclusion is that he was treated no different to any other offender in that [hospital] section,” said Cape High Court Judge Nathan Erasmus.

At least 95% of police stations around the country refuse to release crime statistics to the public, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Friday. A DA survey conducted in six major centres around the country on Thursday found that 39 out of 41 stations visited (95%) refused to release crime statistics, citing the moratorium imposed on the release of such information.

The South African government has spent R3,5-million on security measures in President Thabo Mbeki’s retirement home, under construction in the up-market Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, the government said on Friday. Public Works Minister Thoko Didiza confirmed the amount spent in response to calls by the Democratic Alliance to say how much taxpayers’ money was being used for the R22-million residence.

The general secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), Eddie Makue, has called for a single law governing all forms of marriage, including same-sex unions, rather than the dual legislation proposed by the government. He made the call in an open letter to Parliament’s home affairs and justice portfolio committees.