Almost half of the waste landfill sites around the country are unauthorised, and many need to be closed, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Thursday. Opening debate on his department’s budget vote in the National Council of Provinces, he told MPs millions of South Africans did not have access to domestic waste-collection services.
African presidents and editors are to debate the thorny issue of media freedom on the continent at next month’s African Union summit in Accra, Ghana. This was announced on Thursday by chairperson of The African Editors’ Forum Mathatha Tsedu.
All levels of government have to work towards more balanced economic growth in South Africa, Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi said on Thursday. Mufamadi was speaking at a conference for local government representatives to meet provincial and national government figures.
Construction of Cape Town’s R2,9-billion Green Point Stadium, being built to host a 2010 Soccer World Cup semifinal, is five weeks ahead of schedule. The city’s 2010 spokesperson, Pieter Cronje, told a media briefing in Cape Town on Thursday that contractors had completed phase one, which was excavation and laying foundations.
About 220 000 businesses have already registered for the government’s small-business tax amnesty, more than twice as many as expected, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Wednesday. The amnesty, for businesses with a turnover of less than R10-million, was launched in August last year and was to have closed on May 31.
Political infighting should not be allowed to affect municipal service delivery, Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi said on Wednesday. ”Political parties and other organisations who took part in the 2006 local government elections must also take stock of their contribution since the elections,” he told MPs in the National Assembly.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently entered a thriving virtual world called <i>Second Life</i> to be interviewed by Reuters bureau chief Adam Pasick. Somehow this doesn’t seem as strange as it would have a few years ago. Pasick explained that <i>Second Life</i> has a real economy and real culture, and therefore real news.
South African miners and municipal workers on Tuesday threatened to join an escalating strike by civil servants that has disrupted services at hospitals and schools, state media reported. The National Union of Mineworkers said it was consulting its 280Â 000 members on possible strike action, a move that could hurt one of the biggest sectors of the economy.
While well-resourced newspapers in the developed world are embarking on projects to merge their print and online operations into a single, sleek news machine, their colleagues in African and other developing countries are nowhere near such convergence, battling a lack of resources and tough media laws.
The government stuck to its guns on Tuesday in the current pay dispute with public servants, saying the current salary demands of the public servants were not realistic. Public-service unions rejected a revised offer of a 6,5% pay rise by the government on Monday and are demanding a 12% rise.
Plans for South Africa’s first public naked bicycle ride, to protest against global warming, have fallen foul of the public-service strike. So, it appears, has a jobs-for-youth march that the African National Congress Youth League hoped to hold in central Cape Town on Wednesday.
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African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma on Tuesday declared his support for a call for press freedom in Zimbabwe. ”I support what the head of this organisation has said in terms of press freedom in Zimbabwe,” he told media representatives from around the world at a World Editors’ Forum lunch in Cape Town.
Newspapers hoping to retain their readers and survive in the technological age must venture into the online and mobile phone spheres, a World Association of Newspapers meeting heard in Cape Town on Tuesday. Speakers at a workshop said the newspaper was a dying breed but could avoid extinction by modernising its approach and extending its digital reach.
South Africa is on a strong financial footing, despite ”huge economic and social challenges”, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told an International Monetary Conference meeting in Cape Town on Tuesday. ”The economy is performing well, but we still have millions living in poverty and many more unable to get jobs,” Manuel said.
African song and dance welcomed delegates on Monday to the 60th World Newspaper Congress and 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town – the first time the events have graced Africa, as keynote speaker President Thabo Mbeki pointed out to journalists, editors and media practitioners gathered from 109 countries.
South African President Thabo on Monday noted a worrying trend of jailing journalists in Africa as leaders try to balance sometimes competing interests of press and governments, especially in young democracies. While acknowledging difficulties journalists working in Africa face, Mbeki also urged them to report accurately on the region.
Newspapers around the world saw a 2,3% rise in circulation in 2006 and a growth in advertising revenue despite the rise of digital media, a report by a global industry body said Monday. Sales have increased 9,5% in the last five years, the World Association of Newspapers (Wan) said in a report, while advertising revenues in paid dailies rose 3,8% last year and 15,8% since 2002.
The use of a teenager in the murder of baby Jordan-Leigh Norton was ”exploitation, and the worst form of child labour”, it was contended in papers before the Cape High Court on Monday. The papers were filed by Susannah Cowen, on behalf of the Community Law Centre of the University of Cape Town, which took up the plight of Bonginkosi Sigenu.
They may be united in their demand for better pay, but when it comes to the national anthem, public-service unions are not necessarily all singing from the same song sheet. This emerged on Monday at a mass report-back meeting in Cape Town called by unions participating in the public-sector strike.
Sentencing procedures in the Baby Jordan murder trial were postponed in the Cape High Court on Monday as reports needed by the defence had not been finalised. Dina Rodrigues is in the dock with four men whom she hired to murder baby Jordan-Leigh Norton, who had been fathered by Rodrigues’s then-boyfriend, Neil Wilson.
The Jali Commission into prison corruption has left prison staff demoralised, the Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative (CSPRI) said on Monday. ”… the public [and honest, hard-working officials] had to endure revelation after revelation of dishonest, criminal and corrupt acts by officials of the [Department of Correctional Services],” the CSPRI said in a statement.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has renewed a call for victims of violent crime to have more say in the justice process and be compensated for crime’s economic and social impact on their lives. ”The justice system needs to change its focus to include providing victims of crime with their rights as a major priority,” the DA said in a discussion document released in Parliament on Monday.
The mother of jailed Chinese journalist Shi Tao wept and punched the air on Monday as she accepted a press-freedom award on her son’s behalf from world media bosses in Cape Town. "He has only done what any courageous journalist should do," Gao Qinsheng told an annual gathering of the World Association of Newspapers.
President Thabo Mbeki on Monday called on the media to provide what he described as accurate and properly contextualised information. ”We in Africa can and do benefit from criticism, but we do ask that it should be based on accurate information …,” he told the 60th World Association of Newspapers congress and 14th World Editors’ Forum in Cape Town.
President Thabo Mbeki on Sunday called for enhanced legitimacy through representation and accountability as well as recapitalisation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He said low-income countries would continue to draw heavily on a wide range of macro- and micro-economic policy advice linked to financing needs.
As many consumers of traditional news media, especially in the developed world, have moved to the internet to keep up to date, so another exodus has started: from the web to other digital media, especially cellphones. This was the message at a precursor on Sunday to the World Editors Forum and World Newspaper Congress running until June 6.
International Cricket Council president Percy Sonn, who died last weekend following complications after undergoing minor colon surgery, was laid to rest in Cape Town on Saturday. Hundreds of people gathered at St George’s cathedral in the city centre for a funeral service.
Nearly 60 journalists have been murdered in recent months, and prosecutions of journalists for ”treason” and ”extremism” are on the rise, according to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The annual review of press freedom by the Paris-based WAN painted a grim picture of attacks, imprisonment and murder.
Union leaders sought to draw other sectors into their wage dispute with the government on Friday as thousands of public servants countrywide downed tools. The first day of what the unions said would be an indefinite strike passed without major incident and had a patchy effect on service delivery.
Media freedom in Africa will come under the microscope as global newspaper publishers and editors converge in Cape Town from Sunday to analyse challenges and opportunities facing the fourth estate. About 1 600 participants from 105 countries are set to attend the gathering, which kicks off with a discussion on Sunday on press freedom in Africa.
A Cape High Court judge on Friday reserved his ruling on an application by the state, which, if successful, could see two LeisureNet bosses face a retrial on some charges. Former joint chief executives Peter Gardener and Rod Mitchell were sentenced in April to an effective eight and seven years in jail respectively on R12-million fraud charges.
South Africa should be compensating public servants for the quality of the work they do rather than granting an across-the-board increase — as demanded by striking trade unionists — official opposition Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille argued on Friday.