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/ 9 November 2007
The global burden of tobacco is going to get much worse before it gets better, an expert from the World Lung Foundation said in Cape Town on Friday. Developing countries will bear the brunt of this burden and its ”huge” economic implications, said Dr Judith Mackay, coordinator of tobacco control at the foundation.
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/ 9 November 2007
A botched charge sheet on Friday led to the acquittal of a journalist who in May allegedly threatened to blow up the Cape Town premises of Radio Heart if his grievances were not aired. David Robert Lewis (39) appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court before magistrate Phindi Norman.
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/ 9 November 2007
A journalist, furious because his stories had been rejected, stormed into a radio station’s premises and threatened to ”blow this place up” unless his grievances were aired. Radio Heart’s news anchor Zulpha Khan on Friday told the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court she bore the brunt of the incident in May.
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/ 9 November 2007
Cape Town mayor Helen Zille has named a replacement advocate to conduct an official probe into the city’s spy affair. The first person she chose for the job, advocate Geoff Budlender, withdrew over a possible conflict of interest. Zille has now asked advocate Josie Jordaan of the Cape Bar to lead the inquiry.
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/ 9 November 2007
Politicians are likely to get an inflation-related increase this year as an interim measure, it emerged on Friday. President Thabo Mbeki is still considering the recommendations made by Judge Dikgang Moseneke, who heads the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office-Bearers, the Presidency said in a statement.
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/ 8 November 2007
South Africa’s tuberculosis (TB) cure rate will reach 85% over the next five years, the Department of Health vowed on Thursday. Releasing the final version of its latest TB strategic plan, Director General of Health Thami Mseleku said the plan’s goals were guided by international targets.
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/ 8 November 2007
Transformation in sport has to happen in the shortest period of time, but not at the expense of any South African athletes, President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday. With true transformation, as a country, South Africa could become an even greater force in world sport, he said.
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/ 8 November 2007
The engine that dropped off Nationwide flight CE723 had sucked in ”an object” as the plane was taking off, the airline said on Thursday. It was commenting on the drama on Wednesday in which a Johannesburg-bound Boeing 737 lost one of its two engines during take-off from Cape Town airport, yet managed to land safely half-an-hour later.
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/ 8 November 2007
While replying to questions in the National Assembly, President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday again dismissed suggestions that the government participate in a class action in the United States against 23 multinational corporations that did not disinvest during apartheid.
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/ 8 November 2007
The Cabinet has approved 85% of government spending on a number of products and services procured from small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs). This measure is intended to grow SMMEs and increase demand for goods and services from the sector, government communications head Themba Maseko said on Thursday.
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/ 8 November 2007
Santos put on their best home performance and were held to a 1-1draw by defending champions Mamelodi Sundowns in an Absa Premier League soccer match at the Athlone Stadium on Wednesday night. The home side should have held at least a 3-0 lead at the interval. Instead, they went into the break with a 1-0 lead, thanks to a penalty by Erwin Isaacs.
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/ 8 November 2007
A majority of the countries who undertook to assist Sudan financially in implementing the African country’s peace agreement have not fulfilled their pledges, President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday. He said his government would do everything in its power to ensure that countries fulfilled their pledges.
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/ 7 November 2007
The war to halt perlemoen (abalone) poaching has pitched R180-a-kilogram divers on the one side against R4 000-a-month marine inspectors on the other, MPs heard on Wednesday during a briefing to members of Parliament’s environmental affairs portfolio committee.
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/ 7 November 2007
A Nationwide Boeing 737 had to make an emergency landing at Cape Town International Airport on Wednesday afternoon when an engine fell off during take-off. The plane, which had been bound for Johannesburg, landed safely after airport fire and rescue services hurriedly cleared the debris from the runway. There were 106 passengers on board.
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/ 7 November 2007
A forensic audit report into the financial management of the Land Bank is to be referred to the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions for ”further investigation”, the Land Affairs Ministry said on Wednesday. This was among recommendations made by the Cabinet after consideration of the report, it said in a statement.
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/ 7 November 2007
Suleiman Petersen, teenage stepson of slain musician Taliep Petersen, had to take over responsibility for the Petersen household after police arrested his mother, Najwa, for Taliep’s murder. This was disclosed in a letter handed to the Wynberg Regional Court on Wednesday during Najwa Petersen’s second bail application.
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/ 7 November 2007
Members of Parliament on Wednesday heard a plea from the troubled state airline, South African Airways (SAA), for an injection of R744,4-million to pay for one-off labour restructuring costs. The cash, they were told, is needed before the last day of November.
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/ 7 November 2007
Sports and Recreation Minister Makhenkesi Stofile ruled out racial quotas for national teams on Tuesday after the mainly white Springboks’ recent victory in the Rugby World Cup reignited the debate over transformation. ”Quotas are out,” Stofile told a parliamentary sports committee. ”Let us put our resources into the development of talent.”
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/ 7 November 2007
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Tuesday he was committed to the north-south peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war and there would be no return to hostilities after a crisis threatened the pact. ”I would like to assure you there will be no return to war whatsoever,” he said at a state banquet with South African President Thabo Mbeki.
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/ 6 November 2007
Sudan has asked South Africa to mediate on Darfur, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Tuesday as attempts to end a conflict that has killed more than 200 000 and forced 2,5-million from their homes appeared to founder. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir met President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday.
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/ 6 November 2007
Premier Soccer League (PSL) board members deserve to be rewarded with millions of rands for their role in securing the controversial Absa soccer sponsorship deal, MPs heard on Tuesday. ”They have done the best for football … and have acted in the best interest of the PSL,” league chairperson Irvin Khoza said.
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/ 6 November 2007
African National Congress (ANC) chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota has rejected allegations by Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille that the ANC and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund benefited inappropriately from the arms deal. De Lille on Tuesday said such allegations had been speculation up until now.
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/ 6 November 2007
South African medical authorities need to start thinking about tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/Aids as a single epidemic, rather than treating them separately, a TB expert said on Tuesday at a media briefing ahead of a major international conference on lung health, which begins in Cape Town on Thursday.
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/ 6 November 2007
Very few prisons test newly admitted prisoners for contagious and communicable diseases such as tuberculosis or Aids, according to the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons’s 2006/7 annual report. The document also strongly criticises strip searches carried out on newly admitted prisoners.
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/ 6 November 2007
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and President Thabo Mbeki were meeting on Tuesday for talks expected to focus on tensions in southern Sudan and the deteriorating situation in Darfur. South Africa played a key role in forging the 2005 peace deal that ended 21 years of civil war in Sudan.
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/ 6 November 2007
The looming threat of an untreatable strain of tuberculosis emerging as the disease becomes ever more drug resistant will occupy the minds of about 3Â 000 experts at a conference in Cape Town this week. Though curable, more than 1,5-million people die of tuberculosis every year and growing numbers of patients do not react to standard drugs.
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/ 5 November 2007
Advocate Geoff Budlender will not be conducting the investigation into the City of Cape Town’s ”spy” affair, mayor Helen Zille announced on Monday. ”It has come to my attention that advocate Geoffrey Budlender previously provided advice to the legal adviser of the speaker regarding a potential interdict of councillor [Badih] Chaaban,” she said.
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/ 5 November 2007
The government is busy changing environmental legislation to ”streamline” further the way environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are carried out, Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk announced on Monday. ”Using EIAs as the only means of dealing with environmental impacts is severely limiting,” he said.
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/ 5 November 2007
African nations are failing to control tuberculosis and could be overwhelmed by drug resistant strains of the infectious lung disease, with dire implications for the war on HIV/Aids, a leading Aids activist said on Monday. ”The explosion of tuberculosis on the continent is combined with the explosion and advance of the HIV epidemic,” said Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign.
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/ 4 November 2007
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After eight years at the helm of Africa’s economic powerhouse, Thabo Mbeki cuts an increasingly lonely figure as the battle for the reins of the African National Congress (ANC) approaches its finale. As well as taking fresh blows from his political foes, the president has also become the target of senior ANC party members.
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/ 2 November 2007
Flights in and out of Cape Town International Airport were delayed on Friday after a plane became ”stuck” on a runway, the Airports Company South Africa said. Spokesperson Deidre Hendricks said in a statement that the plane ”got stuck on the main runway” just before 3pm.
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/ 2 November 2007
Those involved in the recent fierce debate over abalone needed to bear in mind the species was on the brink of extinction, major environmental organisations warned on Friday. The warning follows the delay of a ban on commercial trade and harvesting of the valuable shellfish in the face of strong opposition from those with permits to do so.