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/ 10 December 2004
City of Cape Town nature conservation officials have at last captured the elusive young male hippo that escaped from the Rondevlei Nature Reserve in February this year. It took six darts and a three-and-a-half hour chase in the dark through reed beds and deep water in the small hours of Thursday morning to get the 800kg animal under control.
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/ 10 December 2004
The authorisation and record of decision giving the go-ahead for the construction of the N2 Wild Coast toll road, issued by by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism in December last year, has been set aside. However, appeals against the reconstruction and upgrading of the N2 between Tsitsikamma and Witelsbos were rejected.
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/ 10 December 2004
South Africa ranks low in the bribery stakes, according to an international survey published by Transparency International — but it joins the majority of surveyed countries in the consensus that political parties are most affected by corruption. The survey was conducted among 50 000 respondents from 62 countries.
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/ 9 December 2004
The South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African Security Association both came out in defence on Thursday of the SAPS’s decision to employ private security companies for guard duties at police premises. ”It is much cheaper and cost-effective to utilise private security services,” said SAPS communications head Joseph Ngobeni.
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/ 9 December 2004
Abdullah Brenner, a hitman in the plot to assassinate Cape Town regional magistrate Wilma van der Merwe, was jailed on Thursday for 10 years. His co-accused Ashraf Lee, who unwittingly became involved in the conspiracy, was given a two-year sentence suspended conditionally for four years on a firearm charge.
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/ 9 December 2004
If the power station at Koeberg in the Western Cape were coal-fired and not nuclear, it would have needed to burn more than 105-million tonnes of the black stuff over the past two decades to equal the power it has produced from just 621 tonnes of uranium, says Minister of Minerals and Energy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
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/ 9 December 2004
The Cape Bar Council has entered the fray over the medicine-pricing case with a firm rebuke to Cape Judge President John Hlophe. Hlophe in a judgement last week rebuked a senior member of the Cape Bar, senior counsel Jeremy Gauntlett, for allegedly going over his head in approaching the Supreme Court of Appeal on the matter.
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/ 8 December 2004
Disciplinary action will be taken against school principals who withhold end-of-year reports, the Western Cape education minister vowed on Wednesday. He said his office has been receiving calls from anxious parents saying some principals are refusing to hand out reports because the parents have not paid some or all of their school fees.
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/ 8 December 2004
Crime will continue to be a lucrative business in South Africa until the massive shortages of personnel and resources in the South African Police Service’s detective service are addressed, the Democratic Alliance said on Wednesday. The average case load per detective in South Africa is about 100 dockets.
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/ 8 December 2004
State-owned South African transport group Transnet has reported an interim pre-tax profit for the six months to the end of September of R774-million, resulting from a 5,3% rise in turnover to R22,4-billion, after posting a loss of R1,06-billion in the year-earlier period.
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/ 8 December 2004
British Nuclear Fuels Limited is a ”partner from hell” and should not be involved in the proposed pebble-bed modular reactor, says environmental lobby group Earthlife Africa. ”This bankrupt British company, wasting billions of British taxpayers’ pounds, is not welcome in South Africa,” said spokesperson Mashile Phalane on Wednesday.
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/ 8 December 2004
A draft black economic empowerment (BEE) scorecard for South Africa’s tourism industry was launched in Cape Town on Wednesday. The draft BEE scorecard commits the tourism sector to attaining an overall level of ownership by blacks of tourism enterprises to the tune of 21% by the end of December 2009.
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/ 8 December 2004
The wine industry in the Western Cape has been stunned by the illegal-flavourant scandal at KWV, the province’s agriculture minister, Cobus Dowry, said on Tuesday. "A scandal such as this has the potential to fundamentally damage this industry and if not addressed properly, take years to mend."
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=176153">Silver lining to SA’s wine scandal
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<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=176088">KWV names, shames winemakers</a>
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/ 7 December 2004
Seventy-two percent of black economic empowerment (BEE) transactions in 2003 by value involved at least one of the top six BEE consortiums, according to Minister of Trade and Industry Mandisi Mpahlwa. He said the consortiums were ARM, Mvelaphanda, Shanduka (MCI), Safika, Kagiso and Tiso.
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/ 7 December 2004
South Africans think President Thabo Mbeki spends too much time out of the country, a survey on foreign affairs has found. Asked if Mbeki devotes too much time to Africa and too little to South Africa, 62% agreed. On the Zimbabwe question, only 11% of those interviewed felt President Robert Mugabe is doing a good job.
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/ 7 December 2004
Shareholders in Cashbuild have approved proposals that will pave the way for the building material retailer to sell a 10% stake in the company to its employee base of approximately 2 000 people across South Africa, of whom more than 90% qualify as historically disadvantaged South Africans.
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/ 7 December 2004
The Cape High Court on Monday viewed gruesome video footage of the badly decomposed body of Dutch exchange student Marleen Konings. The footage was too traumatic for Konings’s family, who left the courtroom during the viewing and returned later.
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/ 6 December 2004
South Africa’s investigation into the arms deal and its putting into place of mechanisms to deal with unbecoming behaviour by both politicians and government officials are illustrations of the government "setting a good example", says Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
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/ 6 December 2004
The Scorpions are under ”immense pressure” in the parliamentary travel scam case, a prosecutor with the unit, Jannie van Vuuren, said on Monday. He was speaking in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court, where the cases of six travel agency accused were postponed to February 18 for further investigation, and a seventh, Soraya Beukes, to Friday for a fresh bail application.
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/ 6 December 2004
Parliament is hoping to complete its plan to relocate the parliamentary media to new offices in Cape Town’s old South African Revenue Service building at 90 Plein Street before the start of next year’s session, Secretary to Parliament Zingile Dingani said on Monday.
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/ 6 December 2004
The National Treasury discussion paper on retirement-fund reform fails to deal with the "most pressing problem" facing retirement funds in South Africa, namely excessively high taxation, says the official opposition deputy finance spokesperson, Pierre Rabie.
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/ 6 December 2004
The South African consortium formed by the Airports Company South Africa, Old Mutual plc, the BidVest Group and Indian partner GVK Industries Limited has received official notification from the government of India that it has been pre-qualified in the bid to participate in the privatisation of India’s Mumbai and Delhi airports.
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/ 3 December 2004
The Cape High Court’s rejection of the medicines appeal bid would not affect the Supreme Court of Appeal hearing, the Pharmaceutical Society of SA said on Friday. ”We note the judgement, also again that it’s a split decision,” said PSSA executive director Ivan Kotze.
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/ 3 December 2004
Regulations controlling the use of 4x4s on South Africa’s beaches have been changed, allowing people who are physically disabled to apply for a permit to take their off-road vehicles on to the sand. The new regulations, published on Friday, will also allow people taking part in organised fishing competitions, as well as film crews, to obtain permits to drive on to beaches around the country.
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/ 2 December 2004
A movie is to be made about the life of deceased former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje. Frans Cronje, the older brother of Hansie Cronje who died in a plane crash in George, 500km east of Cape Town two years ago, announced on Wednesday that the Cronje family had authorised a full-length feature film on the life of the late cricketer.
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/ 1 December 2004
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HIV/Aids in prisons can be better managed once its prevalence has been ascertained by a national survey, the Department of Correctional Services said on Wednesday. ”We have started and are in the preparation phases, with a task team and steering committee established,” said Gustav Wilson, director of HIV/Aids at Correctional Services.
Some fear HIV/Aids, others cancer
UN report on HIV/Aids
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/ 30 November 2004
Most adult South Africans frown on using derogatory terms and racist or inflammatory language, a survey released on Tuesday found. Probing the attitudes of South Africans towards hate speech, respondents were initially asked whether ”kill the farmer” or ”kill the boer” constituted hate speech.
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/ 29 November 2004
Journalist Tony Weaver has been suspended from his post as acting news editor of the Cape Times after criticising ”plagiarism” by sister newspaper the Cape Argus. Weaver did this in the Krisjan Lemmer column of the Mail & Guardian. ”I have no regrets,” he told Mail & Guardian Online.
Krisjan Lemmer: Behind the scenes
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/ 29 November 2004
Objectors to the building of a mini-nuclear reactor outside Cape Town did not get a fair chance to put forward their views, a full bench of the Cape High Court heard on Monday. Environmental lobby group Earthlife Africa is asking the court to overturn Environment Affairs Director-General Chippy Olver’s approval in June last year of an environmental impact assessment for the reactor.
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/ 29 November 2004
The African National Congress took a conciliatory stance on Monday in its spat with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, saying the archbishop remained highly respected as a South African leader. Earlier on Monday, Tutu used irony to rebuke President Thabo Mbeki for his scathing attack last week on the archbishop, in a newsletter on the African National Congress website ANC Today.
Tutu reads SA the riot act
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/ 26 November 2004
President Thabo Mbeki took issue with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Friday over statements he made earlier this week. ”Rational discussion about how the ANC decides its policies requires some familiarity with the internal procedures of the ANC, rather than gratuitous insults about our members,” Mbeki said.
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/ 26 November 2004
Mark Thatcher’s court appearance to answer questions from Equatorial Guinea prosecutors was postponed on Friday to February 18. His advocate Peter Hodes told a Wynberg magistrate that Thatcher had decided to seek leave to appeal this week’s high court ruling. A full bench of the Cape High Court on Wednesday rejected Thatcher’s bid to overturn the subpoena ordering him to appear for questioning.