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/ 17 October 2003
Both the Guinness Book of Records and Interpol say South Africa is the country with the highest rate of rapes, many of them against children, a conference in Cape Town heard on Friday, the final day of the 25th anniversary conference of the Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Southern Africa.
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/ 17 October 2003
The ANC will not abandon national reconciliation, and ”politically motivated lies” will not divide the organisation, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. Writing in the African National Congress’ online publication, ANC Today, he questioned the motivation behind The Citizen newspaper’s recent scathing attack on former Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadre Robert McBride.
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/ 17 October 2003
Many fishermen angling from the shore along the Transkei coast are paying lip service to regulations governing the number and size of the fish they may catch, and most are ignorant about closed seasons for certain species.Richard Davies
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/ 17 October 2003
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals has denied it has abused a dominant position in the market to the detriment of consumers, and charged excessive prices for its products. On Thursday, the Competition Commission found that Ingelheim and GlaxoSmithKline abused their dominant positions in their respective anti-retroviral drugs markets.
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/ 16 October 2003
Western Cape premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk must go, the Democratic Alliance said on Thursday after hearing that developer Count Riccardo Agusta pleaded guilty to donating R400 000 to the New National Party to pave the way for planning approval of the Roodefontein golf estate development near Plettenberg Bay.
Marais maintains innocence
Case against Marais strengthened
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/ 16 October 2003
The Department of Health has released details of a Bill that seeks to increase dramatically fines under the anti-smoking legislation. The fine for any person who fails to control smoking on his or her premises is to go up from R200 to R20 000 for a first offence and R100 000 for a second.
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/ 16 October 2003
South Africans who hold undeclared off-shore assets can now opt to make a declaration instead of applying for amnesty and paying a levy. Government’s special Amnesty Unit chairman Advocate Mbuyiseli Madlanga said in a statement on Thursday that the Exchange Control Circular No D 405, issued on September 30, provided a loophole for residents under certain circumstances.
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/ 16 October 2003
The state’s case against the Western Cape’s former premier Peter Marais and former environment and development MEC David Malatsi, both facing corruption charges, appears to have strengthened with developer Riccardo Agusta’s plea bargain.
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/ 16 October 2003
The absence of detailed statistics relating to crime on tourism hampers efforts to get a true picture of the situation, says Deputy Minister of Environment and Tourism Rejoice Mabudafhasi. The police’s administration system ”does not provide for a distinction between crime against tourists and crime against the general public”, she said.
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/ 15 October 2003
The Deputy Director General of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, Mike Tshishonga, has been suspended from his position. Tshishonga has alleged that Minister of Justice Penuell Maduna abused his powers to land a friend lucrative liquidation appointments.
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/ 15 October 2003
Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana has come under fire for targeting small businesses under the Employment Equity Act. Democratic Alliance MP Charles Redcliffe on Wednesday said most companies affected by the Act could not afford the R500 000 fine for non-compliance.
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/ 15 October 2003
The South African Department of Home Affairs has been hit by the theft of computer equipment from its offices around the country to the tune of about R1-million in the past year, Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi has divulged.
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/ 15 October 2003
Untangling the financial web woven by arch-fraudster Jurgen Harksen has taken the best part of a decade, but the trustees of his insolvent estate feel the end is in sight. One of them, Michael Lane, said in Cape Town this week that there was still ”quite a lot” of litigation in process, with eight cases pending.
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/ 14 October 2003
South Africans are renowned carnivores, but is the meat they are eating safe? This is the conundrum consumers face, with the National Federation of Meat Traders saying that the inability of the government to promulgate regulations relating to meat safety is a serious concern to the meat industry.
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/ 13 October 2003
The Hefer Commission of Inquiry’s investigation would be incomplete without hearing evidence from Deputy President Jacob Zuma, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday. ”The deputy president is inextricably linked to the investigation,” DA justice spokesperson Sheila Camerer said.
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/ 13 October 2003
The world premiere of the only one-act play written by South African author Herman Charles Bosman is to take place at this weekend’s Bosman festival in the Groot Marico bushveld, organisers said on Monday.
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/ 13 October 2003
The African National Congress says it is surprised by Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna’s announcement that he will not be available for Cabinet nomination next year.
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/ 13 October 2003
Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi has rejected a report that there is a rift between him and KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali. The controversy follows a speech in which Buthelezi reportedly described Mtshali as a man who "seems not to have had the wisdom or prudence to follow the leadership which I gave him".
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/ 13 October 2003
A nine-month-old baby girl is being treated in hospital after she was raped in a house in Kalkfontein near Kuils River in the Western Cape on Sunday. The child was found crawling around the kitchen and crying uncontrollably. Her clothes were bloodstained.
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/ 13 October 2003
South Africa needs to urgently address issues such as black economic empowerment and land reform as well as invest in education to avoid going the way of Zimbabwe, said Mail & Guardian CEO Trevor Ncube on Friday.
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/ 11 October 2003
The Dutch Reformed Church tower in Cape Town that makes a dominee’s wife think of a giant phallus is set to stay, but the debate on the issue is not yet over. The controversy arose when the wife claimed the tower was an occult image of a penis ”continually having sex with the goddess of the sky”.
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/ 11 October 2003
South Africa needs to urgently address issues such as black economic empowerment and land reform as well as invest in education to avoid going the way of Zimbabwe, said Mail & Guardian CEO Trevor Ncube on Friday.
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/ 10 October 2003
Conservationists are hopping with joy at the discovery of a population of the Cape’s critically endangered riverine rabbit well outside its previously known range. There have been several sightings of the mammal on the privately-owned Bijstein nature reserve in the Touwsrivier district about 150 km north-east of Cape Town.
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/ 10 October 2003
South Africa’s gold mining companies have to explain more clearly and convincingly why the stronger rand obliges them to retrench workers, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
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/ 10 October 2003
Big business has both a moral and legal duty to pay reparations for apartheid, advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza said on Friday. Ntsebeza was speaking at the Black Management Forum’s annual conference in Cape Town, while in the United States a Washington court prepares to hear argument next month against calls to dismiss
a South African apartheid litigation case.
South Africa effectively has two economies and interventions made in the last nine years of democracy have addressed only one of these, said South African President Thabo Mbeki on Thursday. Speaking at a Black Management Forum conference, Mbeki used a double-storey house as a metaphor for the South African economy.
South Africa’s ”democracy deficit” is increasing as the African National Congress focuses on grabbing more and more power for itself, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon. Writing in his newsletter, Leon said while the ANC had committed itself to transparent government in 1994, it has become accountable to no one but itself.
Opposition parties want the minister of transport to send the government’s taxi recapitalisation programme back to the drawing board, saying the ”wheels have come off” the programme. This follows a court interdict granted on Wednesday to stop the signing of a memorandum between the government and the South African National Taxi Council.
Forty-six percent of South Africans who participated in a poll conducted by Research Surveys in August this year believed that President Thabo Mbeki was doing a good job as president of South Africa. Research Surveys said the results of the poll stemmed from interviews with 3 500 respondents over the age of 18.
The emergence of the Group of 20+ developing countries at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Cancun was an "important moral and political victory" that strengthened the bargaining power of developing countries, according to South African Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel.
The South African Department of Public Works is to spend millions of rands this year to upgrade various museums around the country, including the renovation of the Kruger House museum in central Pretoria. More than R20-million is also to be spent on the harbour at the Robben Island museum complex.
The National Council Against Smoking has called for legislation to make cigarettes ”fire-safe”, in a bid to reduce the number of blazes sparked by stompies every year.