A hat-trick by Santos’ Jean MarcIthier helped to bury the second-division outfit Cemforce from Kimberley by 6-0 in an Absa Cup knockout match played at the Athlone Stadium on Saturday. However, credit must go to Cemforce, who never said die and chased every ball as if their lives depended on it.
The housing subsidy for the poorest of the poor — including the indigent, disabled and the elderly — has been raised from R28 279 to R31 900, starting in April this year. Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu made the announcement in Pretoria — beamed by satellite to Cape Town — on Monday morning.
The 35 000 riders who took on the Cape Argus Pick ‘n Pay cycle tour on Sunday were battered by near gale force winds and by early evening 158 riders had been injured in falls and one contestant had been flown to hospital after suffering a heart attack.
President Thabo Mbeki’s 12-car cavalcade has evoked the ire of official opposition leader Tony Leon. The Democratic Alliance leader said in his weekly internet column, South Africa Today, that the ”classic sign of an over-centralised government is the tendency of its leaders to spend lavishly on their own comfort”.
The African National Congress will review the progress the country has made ”in the pursuit of the goal of the emancipation of women” at its national general council meeting in June, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. An immediate issue is parity of representation of women in the upcoming local government elections.
For two days next week, the battle over drugs pricing will move to the Constitutional Court as Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang takes on pharmacy groups. The Health Department will ask the country’s highest court for permission to appeal in a bid to overturn a Supreme Court of Appeal judgement, which threw out ”transparent pricing” regulations last year.
Attorneys representing ousted Independent Democrats Western Cape leader Lennit Max have queried the independence of the Scorpions in the latest development surrounding his disciplinary hearing. ID leader Patricia de Lille has testified that she became aware from a source in the Scorpions that criminal charges were being investigated against her.
South Africans feel less likely to see corruption in government today than they were during the 1990s, says the Afrobarometer survey released on Thursday by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa). This response was noted ”despite recent controversies over the so-called Travelgate scandal”, said the survey report.
Listed plastic and packaging producer Transpaco has finalised negotiations to purchase printed cartons producer Britepak Trading for R18,5-million, payable out of Transpaco’s resources, the group announced on Thursday. The acquisition provides a vehicle for Transpaco to lessen its dependence on plastic-based materials.
The former acting vice-chancellor of Vista University, Professor Sipho Seepe, has accepted responsibility for ”sloppiness” in an essay he wrote after it was pointed out that certain passages are identical to those on a number of websites. The essay was published in the book Towards an African Identity in Higher Education.
SA Rugby has the full backing of the government for its 2011 Rugby World Cup bid, Francois Pienaar, bid committee chief executive, said on Wednesday. A sports ministry spokesperson recently said the government will withdraw its backing should SA Rugby fail to transform. However, Pienaar said the government’s backing is not in doubt.
Namibian-listed brewer Namibian Breweries, one of the country’s largest private-sector employers, has reported a fall in its headline earnings per share for the six months to the end of December 2004 to 18,4 cents, from 19,4 cents in the year-earlier period. The group declared an interim dividend of 5,5 cents per share.
Looking at the final results posted by Metropolitan Holdings on Wednesday, the group’s strong new life-business growth in most segments shows that it is continuing to gain market share from most of its competitors, particularly in the area of employee benefits, according to Metropolitan CEO Peter Doyle.
The South African government is to review finance allocations to public tertiary institutions across the country, with specific attention to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, according to the state news agency BuaNews. It said this is to provide opportunities for higher learning for poor young people.
President Thabo Mbeki and Anglo American’s top executives met behind close doors at Mbeki’s home in Cape Town on Tuesday. Anglo American chief executive Tony Trahar, accompanied by Anglo American South Africa’s newly appointed CE, Lazarus Zim, and chairperson Mark Moody-Stuart, requested the meeting to discuss the company’s financial results.
The Eastern Cape health department on Tuesday began immunising young people to combat a measles outbreak in villages in the Elliotdale area of Transkei. Departmental spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said 35 nurses and 6 000 doses of vaccine have been moved into the area, where about seven villages are seen as under threat.
Municipal pay talks began on Tuesday, described by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union as a ”showdown” between the government’s macro-economic policy and workers’ pockets. The union said the effects of fiscal austerity measures have been severely felt by municipal workers, with increases barely keeping up with inflation.
Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota and his counterparts from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region had an unscheduled meeting in Cape Town on Tuesday to discuss growing tensions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). ”It is a short agenda with momentous consequences,” Lekota said.
There was chaos at Port Elizabeth’s Livingstone Hospital on Monday as would-be research volunteers flocked to give blood and hair samples, a provincial official said. Eastern Cape health department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said a pharmaceutical research company had announced it would pay R300 for each sample.
South Africa achieved the expected crushing victory over Zimbabwe in the first Test at Newlands, wrapping up the tail 45 minutes before the scheduled close of play on Saturday. It was the 18th time in the history of the game that a Test was completed within two days.
The dissolution of the former ruling apartheid New National Party and its inclusion into the African National Congress will send ”a very powerful message about the extraordinary ability of our people to give real meaning to the goals of national reconciliation”, said President Thabo Mbeki on Friday in his regular internet column, ANC Today.
Sport in South Africa has fallen victim to African National Congress ”doublethink”, and the contradictions are crippling it, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon. ”Winning is losing, the ANC seems to believe. Or, as [the minister of sport] so bluntly put it … we should be willing to ‘sacrifice winning in the name of transformation’,” Leon says in his weekly newsletter.
The author Breyten Breytenbach said Senegalese police moved in on Friday morning to evict the Gorée Institute, of which he is director, from its offices on the former slave island of the same name. Though he said he does not know the reason for the eviction, it comes amid privatisation of state properties in Senegal.
The first morning of the first Castle Lager/MTN Test between South Africa and Zimbabwe at Sahara Park, Newlands, saw two South African players reach significant career milestones on Friday. Makhaya Ntini took his 200th Test wicket, and Mark Boucher reached 300 Test dismissals. Ntini is the 11th current Test player to take more than 200 wickets.
Telkom chief executive Sizwe Nxasana told MPs on Friday that his company "is constantly responding" to the demands for the lowering of the costs of doing business — and further announcements can be expected "in the future". Nxasana was briefing the National Assembly communications portfolio committee.
Talk is cheap, but carrying out the promises you make less so. That being the case, has all the talk about ensuring equality between men and women in South Africa resulted in action where it counts most: the allocation of funds along gender lines in the national budget? Nearly a decade ago, the Ministry of Finance promised to provide a breakdown of ways in which the budget promoted gender equality.
Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhenkesi Stofile on Wednesday said he wants to see racial transformation in sport completed by 2010. ”We would have been there if we did what we had to do since 1992,” Stofile told reporters in Cape Town, lamenting the slow pace of transformation since apartheid ended in the early 1990s.
Prosecutor-turned-businessman Bulelani Ngcuka is to chair the new-look board of Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront Holdings Company. Derick van der Merwe, MD of subsidary Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, said the holdings board has been reshaped to reflect changes to the Transnet board last year.
A new draft fishing policy has failed to consider the plight of thousands of subsistence fishermen, a Western Cape body working with the poor said on Wednesday. ”I think it is a pie in the sky … It’s a myth that small scale fishermen will be given greater access rights,” said Naseedh Jaffer, director of the Masifundise organisation.
Ajax Cape Town paid the penalty for resting some of their experienced players when they were beaten 3-1 by Supersport United in a Premiership Soccer League match played at Newlands on Tuesday. Ajax opened the score in the sixth minute when Dominique Isaacs made good ground down the right and centred for Thembinkosi Fantini.
The government is to review the visa regime inherited from ”the bad old days”, Director General of Home Affairs Barry Gilder said on Tuesday. He was speaking to journalists on the final day of a regional meeting of the United Nations-backed Global Commission on International Migration.
The federal executive of the New National Party, which ruled South Africa in the form of the apartheid National Party from 1948 to 1994, met in Johannesburg on Monday afternoon and took the unanimous decision to disband. The party opted to fall under the umbrella of the ruling African National Congress shortly after the national election in April last year.