Cape Town

Poor pay is a key factor in the decision of many South African teachers to seek work in the United Kingdom, according to a new study. The as-yet-unpublished study, by researchers under the leadership of Oxford research fellow Dr Kimberly Ochs, surveyed 192 teachers recruited from other Commonwealth countries to jobs in the UK.

Robben Island’s rocky, windswept shores and the Atlantic’s expanses were intimidating for a penguin after weeks of pens and pools. So, when dozens of the birds abandoned as chicks by their parents and raised by humans were released back into the wild on Wednesday, most at first huddled nervously together in the frigid waters.

A new species of orchid with beetroot-red leaves and a white flower has been discovered growing just below the summit of the highest peak in the Cederberg Mountains. A member of the genus Disa, the orchid was first spotted and photographed in 2004 by a Cape Nature field ranger, Jonah Zimri, and two of his colleagues.

One thousand balloons were released on Tuesday by the Solidarity Youth Movement on top of a hill in the administrative capital of Pretoria ”to symbolise the plea of head boys and girls from schools across the country to be exempted from affirmative action”. The movement announced that it was planning a campaign in 2007 that will include music concerts and petitions to Parliament.

The African National Congress (ANC) government is undermining Parliament through its inability to respond to 177 written questions posed by the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) during 2006, DA chief whip Douglas Gibson said on Tuesday. Gibson said four departments were responsible for 97 of the outstanding replies.

The City of Cape Town is to bestow one of its highest civic honours on slain composer and entertainer Taliep Petersen. The city said on Monday that it would honour Petersen with a ”memorial tribute” after a 100-day mourning period. Details of the tribute would be announced closer to the time of the event.

Though sightings are down from last year, Great White Sharks are still being spotted regularly off Cape Peninsula beaches, the City of Cape Town said on Monday. Water users should remain cautious and practise ”responsible and educated water use” by swimming, surfing or kayaking in areas where shark spotters or lifesavers were on duty.

The Home Affairs Department is considering a forensic audit to find out how many fraudulent identity documents are in circulation, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said on Monday. In a written reply to a question by Sandy Kalyan of the Democratic Alliance in the National Assembly, she said her department will consider such an audit in the 2007/08 financial year.

A gutless performance by the Cape Cobras saw them crushed by the Lions just after tea on the third day of the Supersport Series match at Newlands on Saturday. Claude Henderson made a triumphant return to his previous home ground to claim the first 10-wicket haul of his first-class career.

The crew of sinking yacht Felicia have been rescued in high seas 700km off the Namibian coast by a merchant ship. Cape Town’s Maritime Rescue Coordinating Centre confirmed shortly after 5pm on Friday that the four crew members of the Felicia had been taken safely aboard the car carrier Don Pasquale.

President Thabo Mbeki should indeed go for a public HIV test, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) leader Zackie Achmat said on Friday. ”Every business leader, every political leader, every trade union leader, should test publicly,” Achmat said. ”Every church leader should. And our president. Including our president.”

It is time the United Nations stepped in to take charge of the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, President Thabo Mbeki suggested on Friday. A concerted, global effort is required to defuse the ”extremely dangerous situation” currently prevailing in the Middle East and West Asia, he said in his weekly newsletter, published on his party’s ANC Today website.

South Africa is aiming to host as green a 2010 Soccer World Cup as possible, the government said on Thursday. ”We are committed to ensuring that South Africa learns from the Green Goal experience, which vastly reduced the environmental impact of [this year’s] World Cup that was held in Germany,” Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said.

The government will ban canned hunting, despite media reports to the contrary, the Department of Environmental Affairs confirmed on Wednesday. The ban will come into effect in March next year, with the promulgation of regulations in terms of the Biodiversity Act, it said in a statement. The new regulations were unveiled to the media in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

In its relationship with China, Africa must guard against merely becoming a supplier of raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday. Speaking in Cape Town at the 14th national congress of the South African Students Congress, he said there is danger of entrenching such an unequal relationship.

An unidentified man died in a fall from the top of Table Mountain on Tuesday, Wilderness Search and Rescue said. Spokesperson Dion Tromp said it appeared the man was sitting on a rock near the upper cable station when he had some sort of a seizure.

Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge says she has not called on President Thabo Mbeki to set a leadership example and take an Aids test. ”Although I encourage people to test so that they know their HIV status, I did not, as a matter of fact, call upon the president to conduct a public test as claimed by the reports,” she said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has written to Presidency Director General Frank Chikane, asking him what progress has been made in updating the draft presidential handbook following Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s recent multimillion-rand flight to the United Kingdom in a hired Swiss jet.

Links between education and the rest of the economy are seldom explicitly addressed in education planning and finance, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Monday at the opening of the the 16th Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers in Cape Town.

Zimbabwe’s political and economic crises show no sign of abating, Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon said in Cape Town on Monday. ”We would all like to think there could be productive change in Zimbabwe to see all these economic indicators move the other way, but there is no sign of that happening at all,” he told reporters.

Up-market coastal resorts and developments may soon be compelled to provide public access to the coastline they encompass should draft legislation become law. One of the main aims of the new Integrated Coastal Management Bill is to make South Africa’s seashores public property, Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said in a statement on Friday.