There can be no solution to the Middle East conflict without the involvement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday. Mbeki was speaking at the United Nations African Meeting in Support of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
‘Peace and prosperity for both’
About 200 people took part in a demonstration outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre where a United Nations meeting on the Palestinian crisis was being held on Tuesday. The peaceful demonstration was held on a traffic island in Adderley Street adjoining the convention centre amid tight security.
President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday called on a conference in Cape Town on the Palestinian issue to produce results that could be discussed at the African Union summit in Ethiopia next week. Mbeki said the Palestinian problem should be included among the challenges facing Africa.
Scores protest at Palestinian meeting
A Cape Town man who shot dead his nine-year-old daughter and wounded his wife before shooting himself, died at the Groote Schuur hospital on Monday night. Hospital spokesperson Leigh Pollio said on Tuesday that Peter Prinsloo (59) died at 7.40pm.
The African Court for Human and Peoples’ Rights, one of the main organs designed to deal with human rights abuses on the African continent, is struggling to see the light of day. Commentators are suggesting it could only be formed next year, more than 12 months after its intended establishment.
South Africa’s First Lady Zanele Mbeki was the guest of honour at a quayside ceremony in the Cape Town harbour on Tuesday to name a new R250-million purpose-built coastal tanker, the Southern Unity. Just under 176m long, the tanker’s freshly painted red hull, blue deck and white superstructure loomed over the guests and dignatories.
A secret French-South African anti-poaching operation in the Southern Ocean has led to the arrest of an fishing vessel — but only after shots were fired at the suspected poacher when it refused to stop. The arrest took place about 5 000km south-east of Cape Town, within the economic exclusion zone around the French Antarctic island of Kerguelen.
The trial over the controversial Roodefontein development was postponed for a second time on Monday, pending a decision by Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla on whether to provide legal aid for the accused. Former Western Cape premier Peter Marais and his then environment MEC David Malatsi are appearing in the Bellville regional court.
The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) said that it may pursue industrial action should its dispute with the South African Local Government Association (Salga) not be resolved.
South Africa’s oldest lesbian and gay service organisation, the Triangle Project, on Friday reacted with outrage at a website that called for the ”reclaiming of Cape Town from the homosexual plague”.
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon has rejected what he called President Thabo Mbeki’s attempt to label the DA as a party from the ”right”. Leon said in the president’s ”idealised world” every intervention by the state is necessary and beneficial, but the ”cold reality” of South Africa’s experience indicates otherwise.
The National Assembly has given the nod to an ac hoc parliamentary committee report expressing its disapproval of the actions of National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka which had prejudiced the dignity of Deputy President Jacob Zuma. This boils down to a mild rebuke of the actions of Ngcuka.
South African Aids activists sang and danced through the streets of Cape Town on Thursday as part of a worldwide campaign to get the United States government to reduce military spending. Some 500 marchers made their way to the US consulate in central Cape Town to deliver a letter addressed to President George Bush calling for less spending on the military and more on fighting diseases such as HIV/Aids.
Any campaign to lower the cost of books should look at their whole pricing structure and not just VAT, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Thursday. Asked whether she supported calls for VAT on books to be scrapped, Pandor said she liked to start ”where things begin”, which was the cost of books and the markups added by those who were selling them.
”I am young — but up here is old,” says an 11-year-old girl working as a prostitute in Cape Town, pointing to her head — one of many images in hard-hitting footage on the sex industry, screened at the opening of a conference on human trafficking in South Africa on Tuesday.
The Western Cape auditor general undertook on Tuesday to investigate a R220 000 overpayment to premier Ebrahim Rasool, and the circumstances surrounding it. The undertaking by auditor general Willie Brits was given at a provincial Standing Committee on Public Accounts meeting called by the Democratic Alliance to investigate the overpayment to Rasool while he was the finance MEC.
Mineral and Energy Affairs Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told members of Parliament on Tuesday that a new power station will bring about R10-billion into the South African economy. The minister said South Africa would be able to achieve universal access to electricity within an eight-year timeframe, as announced by President Thabo Mbeki.
South Africa’s new Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk on Monday stood by his department’s anti-mining stance towards proposed dune mining in the Pondoland region of the Eastern Cape — but he is set to see the king of the Pondos to discuss the matter.
The fate of one of southern Africa’s oldest nomadic tribes, the San, could be sealed when the Botswana High Court hears argument on the issue of ancestral land rights. The court case, which commences on July 5 with an in loco inspection, could decide the future of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen communities.
A South African fishing company is to farm perlemoen (abalone) in the fjords of southern Chile in a joint venture with a technology-based company from the South American country. I&J announced on Sunday that the species to be farmed — red abalone — was different to that of the South African variety, with a different colour and a different taste.
South Africa needs to improve communications to dispel misconceptions among potential foreign investors about government’s black economic empowerment (BEE) programme, President Thabo Mbeki said on Sunday. Briefing the media after the seventh presidential International Investment Council meeting in Cape Town, he said there was an imbalance between the perceptions and the reality of South Africa among some abroad.
President Thabo Mbeki will spend his 62nd birthday on ”work, work, work”, his spokesperson Bheki Khumalo said on Friday. ”The president doesn’t believe in festivities and big bashes. It embarrasses him,” said Khumalo. However, his colleagues in the National Assembly decided that his big day could not go unmarked and in a motion the political parties wished him a happy birthday.
South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has announced that she is to introduce community service for professional nurses in January 2005. Speaking in her vote in an extended public committee on Thursday, Tshabalala-Msimang noted that this applied to nurses with four years of training.
South Africa’s Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is standing firm on her government’s interventions aimed to bring down the price of medications — in spite of legal action being taken against her department. Speaking during her vote in Parliament on Thursday she said: ”Our research indicates that large profits are being made on the sale of medicines.”
Nurses to start community service
‘Dispensing not picked up on the job’
Cheap, low-quality wine sold in foil bags and inferior plastic containers will be phased out over the next year, the South African Wine and Brandy Company (SAWB) said on Tuesday. The company’s chief executive, Johan van Rooyen, said in a statement that this step was necessary to curb alcohol abuse in South Africa.
Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane has called for ”creative solutions” in his church’s bid to deal with the potentially schismatic issues of gay clergy and marriage. He made the call in a submission to a special church commission set up to look at the issue, which is meeting in North Carolina in the United States this week.
In an effort to develop a classification of marine habitats for South Africa, the marine science community is working virtually round the clock to meet a July deadline for identifying marine priority areas for the country’s first National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan.
Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will co-operate with the Commission for Gender Equality on queries about controversial ambassador Norman Mashabane, foreign affairs said on Tuesday. ”The minister of Foreign Affairs has been in contact with the Gender Commission, and will continue to co-operate with it to find an amicable resolution of the matter,” departmental spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) will not accept any unconstitutional change of government in the region, and reserves the right to intervene in such an event, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad said on Monday. The announcement comes after renewed concerns over the developments in Bukava in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Black economic empowerment in South Africa is set to ”significantly progress” following the signing into law earlier this year of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act, says government. In this regard, trade and industry’s first task would be to appoint members to a BEE advisory council.
Activists on Sunday called for a comprehensive audit of Africa’s crippling debt burden, currently estimated at more than $300-billion. The call was made by representatives of social movements from ten African countries, as well as Brazil, Argentina and the Philippines, at the end of a three-day workshop held in Cape Town
Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister, could be called to testify for the state in the Roodefontein corruption trial which resumes next Monday. Former Western Cape premier Peter Marais and former development planning MEC David Malatsi are accused of taking hundreds of thousands of rands in bribes to smooth the way for provincial approval of a gold estate at Plettenberg Bay.