Cape Town

Opposition political parties have questioned President Thabo Mbeki’s fleeting reference to HIV/Aids in his State of the Nation address on Friday. In mentioning HIV and Aids only once, the president had failed to deal with the pandemic as a national priority, said African Christian Democratic Party leader Kenneth Meshoe.

Independent Newspapers has offered to publish an apology for any offence a weekend article caused to Muslims, already in uproar over a series of cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad. ”[The] decision to apologise by the Cape Argus was an acknowledgement of an error in judgement,” said Chris Whitfield, editor of the Cape Times.

A government study of the health department has found that public hospitals are ”highly stressed institutions” owing to staff shortages, unmanageable workloads and management failures, says South African Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

South Africa’s long-term initiatives to protect children and promote their well-being are rooted in a human rights approach to development, Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya said on Monday at the launch of the United Nations Children’s Fund State of the World’s Children Report for 2006 in Cape Town.

The ruling party would not use its majority to alter the two-term limitation on serving presidents, or make any other fundamental constitutional changes, President Thabo Mbeki said on Sunday. In an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, he denied having aspirations of standing for a third term as the country’s leader.

A fitness training programme from Mauritius is the reason former president Nelson Mandela did not attend his successor’s State of the Nation address at Parliament on Friday. The Nelson Mandela Foundation said in a statement the former president had called President Thabo Mbeki to wish him well, and apologised for not being able to attend the address.

The single wound which killed baby Jordan-Leigh Norton was applied with such force that it severed the trachea and left incisions on the vertebrae, the Cape High Court heard on Thursday. ”The cause of death was a penetrating, incisive wound to the neck and the consequences thereof,” testified Yolande van der Heyde, a forensic pathologist.

The grandfather of murdered baby Jordan-Leigh Norton collapsed in a doctor’s surgery upon learning she could not be resuscitated, the Cape High Court heard on Wednesday. ”I think I just collapsed in a bundle on the chair and sobbed,” testified Vernon Norton at the trial of five people accused of killing the six-month-old child.

A massive marquee being erected to house VIPs including President Thabo Mbeki at a lunch after Friday’s opening of Parliament collapsed on Tuesday evening. No one was injured. The marquee was set up on a lawn near the South African National Gallery, alongside Mbeki’s Tuynhuys office building.

Parliament’s axed chief financial officer, Harry Charlton, is to approach the Council for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration for his reinstatement. The man who helped expose Parliament’s Travelgate scam is also planning to sue for defamation, saying ”that his good name, standing and reputation have been called into question”.

Opposition parties have urged Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana to reopen his investigation into aspects of the Oilgate scandal. The Democratic Alliance wants Mushwana to reinvestigate the loan made by oil company Imvume Management’s Sandi Majali to the wife of Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya.

South African support for Iran — and Iran’s opposition to a plan to have it referred to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear programme — is a decision that will not come ”without a significant cost”, says opposition Democratic Alliance chief whip Douglas Gibson.

Two opposition parties reacted angrily on Monday to reported remarks by a military judge that he finds official correspondence in Afrikaans ”disgusting”. The offending statement was made by military Judge Lieutenant Colonel Mbulelo Mandela on January 18 last year during a trial in Cape Town.

The trial of alleged baby killer Dina Rodrigues and her four accomplices is set to start in the Cape High Court on Monday. Rodrigues, Sipho Mfazwe, Bongezi Bobotyane, Zanethemba Gwada and a 16-year-old youth are accused of slitting the throat of six-month-old Jordan-Leigh Norton.

Local government elections in Cape Town may be delayed if the dispute over the African Christian Democratic Party’s (ACDP) registration in the metropole is not resolved amicably, the party warned on Monday. The ACDP is talking to the Independent Electoral Commission about its payment to contest all Cape Town districts and municipalities, and whether the metro was included in this payment.

The fire that ravaged the lower slopes of Table Mountain’s Camps Bay side since Thursday afternoon was mostly contained by Friday morning, but the wind was key to winning the final battle, officials said. The fire, which broke out at about 4pm on Thursday, has so far destroyed 700ha of vegetation