Protests over municipal service delivery and lack of housing in the Eastern Cape has entered its second week, with dissatisfied residents on Monday blockading roads and burning tyres near Port Elizabeth. There were unconfirmed reports of motorists being stoned along the M14 and Uitenhage roads, police said.
Listed shipping and transport group Grindrod has acquired a 50% stake in Sheltam Locomotive and Rail Services for an undisclosed amount, the company announced on Monday. Indications by Grindrod management are that it is the largest acquisition in Grindrod’s land-freight expansion programme to date.
A pipe bomb damaged a house in Manenberg on the Cape Flats on Saturday night, police said on Sunday. A policeman said the motive for the attack, reminiscent of the vigilante violence of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad), was not immediately known.
The court case against vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath is a distraction from the real work of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), its national chairperson Zackie Achmat, said on Friday. Earlier, Rath’s lawyer argued Rath should have a chance to reply to ”vilifying statements” Achmat and the TAC made against him in their papers.
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress on Friday called on South Africans to support the people of Haiti in campaigning for the return of stability, the rule of law and democracy to the Caribbean state. It has also called for the charging or release of a former Haitian prime minister from prison.
Billionaire businessman Mark Shuttleworth has offered to pay for the costs of satirical T-shirt-maker Laugh It Off’s Constitutional Court action, founder Justin Nurse told the Cape Town Press Club on Thursday. Nurse told his audience that he is ”flat broke” after several projects of his company were derailed.
An expert witness in the Richtersveld land claim on Thursday added more than R100-million to the estimated cost of rehabilitation of land ravaged by Alexkor’s diamond mining. An environmental consultant told the Land Claims Court in Cape Town there was an error in the figure he gave the court earlier.
Protests over municipal service delivery went on for a second day in Port Elizabeth, with dissatisfied residents setting tyres alight and blockading roads on Friday. The police’s deputy area commissioner for Port Elizabeth said about 300 to 400 residents were protesting against the slow pace of housing delivery.
An application by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) for an urgent interdict against vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath got under way in the Cape High Court on Friday morning. However, proceedings were disrupted minutes after they started by the noise of demonstrators outside the building.
Old Mutual, South Africa’s largest financial services group, is in preliminary talks to acquire Skandia Insurance Company of Sweden, Old Mutual confirmed on Friday. In a statement, Old Mutual said discussions are at an early stage and may or may not lead to it making an offer for Skandia.
The government denies it has ”ring-fenced” Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in an effort to limit her controversial pronouncements on HIV and Aids, and on treatment for victims of the disease. According to a Business Day report on Thursday, the government has ”thrown a ring” around Tshabalala-Msimang.
The Eastern Cape health department vowed on Thursday to prosecute officials responsible for letting clinics in the East London area run out of chronic medicines. ”We view this as gross negligence,” a departmental spokesperson said. ”We are going to charge people. There are people that are going to face the music.”
The Cabinet has welcomed the progress made in finalising the deal between Britain’s Barclays and South Africa’s Absa. However, activist group Jubilee South Africa on Thursday urged the government to withdraw its approval of Barclays’ bid to buy a 60% stake in Absa, as the British bank supported the apartheid government.
The Inkatha Freedom Party says it is ”shocked” by the government’s call on universities to reduce student numbers, and refuse readmission to those who fail their first year. Earlier this week, the government identified the high drop-out rate among first-year students as a big financial drain on universities and other higher-learning institutions.
South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance is alarmed at reports of a proposal being discussed in the South African Cabinet for a "super-ministry" to oversee the economy, calling it an "outdated idea that will result in the overcentralisation of power and more bureaucratic red tape".
Even developed countries are not prepared for the possibility that the virulent avian flu could develop into a full-scale pandemic, the director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Professor Barry Schoub, said on Tuesday. He said the question is not if, but when, the next flu pandemic will hit the world.
The Medicines Control Council and the Department of Health confirmed on Wednesday that they are investigating the South African activities of the Dr Rath Health Foundation. Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has been criticised for not condemning vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath’s activities.
Two Harvard researchers have accused vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath of deliberately misinterpreting their findings to bolster his campaign against anti-retrovirals. In his publicity material, Rath has repeatedly quoted a study carried out in Tanzania by these researchers.
Eskom has lit up the night, albeit with only a ”dim flicker”, at a farm dam in the Western Cape’s Overberg in a bid to stop blue cranes flying into nearby power lines. The power lines, on the farm Hillside near Caledon, have been responsible for the deaths of at least 30 of the elegant birds in the past eight years.
The Department of Correctional Services says it is sure an amicable solution will be found to the issue of a Muslim staffer suspended for wearing a headscarf. A spokesperson said on Tuesday that the department’s Western Cape office has been instructed to meet with the suspended staffer and Worcester prison management.
The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) will not appeal against the Cape High Court’s dismissal last month of Idasa’s application for political parties to disclose their funding sources. At a press conference on Monday, Idasa’s Richard Calland said his organisation will not be ”pursuing the legal route any further at this point”.
Global mining giant Anglo American will show a very small decline of nine United States cents in its basic headline earnings per share for the year to the end of December 2004, to $1,79 from $1,88, as it converts to the use of the new European Union standard International Financial Reporting Standards, the company said on Monday.
Santos made certain of remaining in the Premier Soccer League when they drew their match with Silver Stars 1-1 in a game played at the Athlone Stadium on Sunday night. Santos took the lead in the 39th minute when a Marawaan Bantam free kick from 30m out hit the underside of the crossbar and went in.
State diamond-mining company Alexkor was only partly responsible for the degradation of the wetland at the mouth of the Orange River, the Land Claims Court heard on Friday. The court is hearing a claim by the Richtersveld community for up to R2,5-billion in compensation, and the return of more than 84 000ha of land.
The government’s proposed laws restricting the speech of civil servants, NGOs and journalists may be the thin edge of the wedge that threatens freedom in general, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon, adding it is ”well past time” the African National Congress and President Thabo Mbeki learn to deal with vociferous criticism.
Listed cement producer Pretoria Portland Cement Company (PPC) has reported a 4% increase in its fully diluted headline earnings per share (Heps) for the six months to the end of March 2005, from 585 cents in the year-earlier period. The company declared an interim dividend of 260 cents per share.
State-owned diamond company Alexkor as recently as four years ago wanted to mine the Ramsar wetlands site at the mouth of the Orange River, it emerged on Thursday. The revelation is contained in a confidential memorandum produced at the Richtersveld land-claim hearing in Cape Town, now in its second week.
South Africa will pay dearly for global industrialisation and other activities that generate greenhouse gases, a new study revealed on Thursday. A report by the South African National Biodiversity Institute, released in Cape Town, warns that rising temperatures will change the face of the country by 2050.
A transformation plan for the judiciary — to make it more representative of women and black people — is scheduled to be put to the Cabinet by August this year, Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula and Deputy Minister of Correctional Services Cheryl Gillwald said on Thursday.
The South African government has reported that 90 000 people confessed to welfare grant fraud under an amnesty offer that ended in March. This figure emerges from a report delivered by Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang — chairperson of the social cluster of ministers — on Thursday.
Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Thursday she does not remember endorsing Aids dissident Matthias Rath’s Dr Rath Health Foundation — but said that the foundation’s focus on nutrition in fighting the disease complements the government’s programme to fight Aids.
The decision to press a land claim was taken by the whole Richtersveld community and not just a section of it, an anthropologist told the Land Claims Court on Wednesday. She was testifying in support of the Richtersvelders’ demand for the return of 85 000ha of diamond-rich land and compensation that could total R2,5-billion.