The lack of progress in the Doha trade talks is a serious indictment of attempts by the developed world to increase market access for poor nations, South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Friday. The World Trade Organisation negotiations stumbled in 2006 on demands for rich nations to cut farm subsidies.
President Thabo Mbeki’s ”dithering, inaction and often tacit support” are largely to blame for the current bloody shambles in Zimbabwe, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon. ”Let me put this bluntly: much of the blame for the present lamentable condition of Zimbabwe must be laid at President Mbeki’s door,” he said in his weekly newsletter on Friday.
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism has warned the public not to eat any shellfish or lobster liver found on the West Coast, following reports of three people becoming ill after eating shellfish collected in Lamberts Bay. The problem may be a result of a toxic red tide, said the department in a statement on Friday.
Disintegrating boxes of medical waste left out in the rain and rotting waste from abattoirs dumped in ditches in the veld were among the environmental hazards discovered by the ”Green Scorpions” during a nation-wide blitz this week. Inspectors from the environmental police force this week carried out a series of countrywide enforcement inspections.
Africa was catching up with the rest of the world — although it was still regarded as the poorest region — but it needed two to three decades of rapid growth to make a substantial dent in the level of poverty, South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said at Parliament on Friday.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) on Friday reaffirmed its call for an independent judicial inquiry into the escape last year of Annanias Mathe from Pretoria’s C-Max prison. This follows the African National Congress parliamentary caucus decision on Thursday to express its full confidence in the Department of Correctional Services and agencies that probed Mathe’s escape.
Increased trade is beneficial to Africa in that it supports poverty alleviation and is able to create new employment opportunities on the continent, said Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. It promotes regional integration and helps to expand intra-regional trade "while infusing new capital and technology into the continent", he told the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown last year offered to quit his position in a bid to stave off curatorship, according to a document handed in at his bail hearing on Thursday. The document, a letter from Fidentia’s lawyers to the Financial Services Board, was attached to an affidavit by Brown setting out the reasons he thought he should be granted bail.
The African National Congress (ANC) parliamentary caucus has rejected the portfolio committee on correctional services’ call for a fresh investigation into Annanias Mathe’s escape from C-Max high-security prison, saying it has confidence in the agencies that probed the prisoner’s escape.
Cape Town mayor Helen Zille says she will stand for the post of Democratic Alliance leader at the party’s federal congress in May this year. She made the announcement at a Cape Town Press Club dinner on Thursday evening, a year to the day after being elected mayor of Cape Town.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown says he has already been convicted in a trial by media. He made the statement in an affidavit handed in at his bail hearing in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Thursday. ”I have been held out to be the villain in the tale, and have already been convicted by it [the media],” he said.
The government will never overlook qualified South Africans in preference to foreign skills in its ongoing drive for economic transformation, said Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on Thursday. The minister said that ”while the government is trying to address disparities of the past and transform our economy, all South African citizens … are its first priority”.
South Africa’s environmental police force, the ”Green Scorpions,” will be out in strength around the country on Thursday in a massive crackdown on polluters and poachers. The Department of Environmental Affairs is to crack down on illegal fishing, the disposal of hazardous waste and the activities of at least one chemical plant.
South African consumers are still bearing the brunt of the legacy of apartheid, Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille told a consumer conference on Thursday. She was speaking at the National Consumer Forum at the Oppenheimer Conference Centre at Gold Reef City in Johannesburg.
Bernard van Zyl, accused of the axe murder of his former gay partner, was found walking naked along a road at Plettenberg Bay, on his way to the police, the Cape High Court heard on Wednesday. Van Zyl has pleaded not guilty to charges of the murder of estate agent Andre Weitz and aggravated armed robbery.
The government is looking at underground storage of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations as a way of reducing the millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases the plants belch into the country’s atmosphere each year, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Wednesday.
A 30-member environmental management inspection team, the so-called ”Green Scorpions”, is set to descend on the Foskor Plant in Richards Bay on Thursday to effect a compliance inspection, according to the KwaZulu-Natal department of agriculture and environmental affairs.
Three media institutions expressed concern on Wednesday that Parliament’s home affairs committee chairperson Patrick Chauke might fast-track the draft Films and Publications Amendment Bill. The South African National Editors’ Forum, the South African chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa and the Freedom of Expression Institute issued a joint statement in this regard.
Though manufacturers are still looking on the bright side, overall business confidence in South Africa is at its lowest in two years, according to the latest Rand Merchant Bank/Bureau for Economic Research index. The index, released on Wednesday, showed a decline from 83 points late last year to 81 in the first quarter of 2007.
As the African National Congress (ANC) and General Council of the Bar in South Africa expressed concern at the situation in Zimbabwe on Wednesday, the Democratic Alliance said the government’s response to the situation is shameful. ”The ANC is concerned about the current situation in Zimbabwe,” party spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said.
South Africa has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a police officer, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) said on Wednesday. Party spokesperson Velaphi Ndlovu said the emotional damage the job causes was shown in the increased number of police-officer suicides in the second half of last year, he said in a statement.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP expressed concern on Wednesday about reports that international terrorists might be in South Africa. ”The IFP is alarmed at reports that suggest we might be harbouring international terror suspects, with links to Afghanistan, Iraq and al-Qaeda, without our knowledge,” the IFP’s John Bhengu said.
South Africa’s relatively small space programme can still play a significant role in skills development, Professor Sias Mostert of SunSpace and Information Systems in Stellenbosch said on Wednesday. It was a myth that satellite programmes belonged only to larger nations, he said.
A R2,1-billion contract for the construction of Cape Town’s 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium was on Tuesday awarded to a joint venture between Murray & Roberts and WBHO. The award, made by the city council’s bid adjudication committee, clears the way for the contractors to move on site.
Negotiations between the Richtersveld community and the government on an out-of-court land-claim settlement are back on track, according to community leader Willem Diergaardt. He was speaking after a 45-minute meeting on Tuesday morning with Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin, in the minister’s Cape Town office.
A police sergeant inexperienced in murder scenes told the Cape High Court on Tuesday of his shock at finding the corpse of estate agent Andre Weitz bludgeoned to death in a duplex in Cape Town. Bernard van Zyl (28), Weitz’s former romantic partner, is alleged to have attacked Weitz with an axe in June 2004.
The Labour Ministry on Tuesday accused the Democratic Alliance (DA) of purposely misrepresenting the facts about Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana’s availability to answer questions in Parliament. A DA statement on Monday listed Mdladlana as being among ministers who evaded parliamentary questions.
Eight Cape Town traffic officials face criminal charges over what the city said on Tuesday are 229 ”potentially fraudulent” learner’s licences and roadworthy certificates. The irregularities, all committed during the last three months of 2006, were uncovered by the city’s internal investigators and the police.
Cape Town’s mayor says vigilance will be needed to sustain democracy in South Africa after bruising battles with the African National Congress in her first year leading the sole bastion of opposition to the ruling party. "So far, we have passed the test," Helen Zille said in an interview with the media ahead of the March 15 anniversary of her installation as mayor.
Fidentia’s interim curators failed to arrive at a meeting with about 50 former Fidentia employees at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA) on Monday. In a statement on behalf of the employees, Fidentia’s former spokesperson, Ross Edwards, said the curators — Dines Gihwala and George Papadakis — were informed of the meeting, but failed to appear.
A Cape High Court judge on Monday criticised the police for their lack of professionalism at the scene of the murder of Stellenbosch student Inge Lotz. ”In my 22 years on the Bench, I have never seen anything so bad,” Judge Deon van Zyl remarked as it emerged that a key piece of evidence had been moved.
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon on Monday called on President Thabo Mbeki to urgently review the government’s approach to Zimbabwe after Sunday’s arrest of opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The South Africa government should condemn this latest crackdown on a legitimate democratic protest, he said.