Durban

Police arrested 22 people during a protest against increased taxi fares in Pietermaritzburg’s Copesville suburb on Monday. Initial reports said that tear gas was used to disperse protesters. However, there were also unconfirmed reports that stun grenades and rubber bullets were used by police to disperse the estimated 1 000-strong crowd.

Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and South African President Thabo Mbeki unveiled a plaque at Durban’s Resistance Park on Sunday. Well known anti-apartheid activist Fatima Meer also spoke in Resistance Park, so named because of a ”non-white” gathering held at the park in 1946 in protest against race laws.

Jacob Zuma’s weekend comments about gays earned him the wrath of gay and lesbian groups on Tuesday. Speaking at Heritage Day celebrations in KwaDukuza on Sunday, Zuma said: ”When I was growing up an ungqingili [a gay] would not have stood in front of me. I would knock him out.”

Rescue services on Monday freed a yacht that had become entangled in Durban’s shark nets. National Sea Rescue Institute’s Durban Station Commander Paul Bevis said the Cat Whisker had drifted into the nets after a diesel fuel line was ruptured. Two males aboard the yacht were never in any real danger.

Armed robbers in Durban shot two security guards before fleeing with empty money boxes in a botched cash-in-transit heist on Thursday. Inspector Gerhard van Rooyen of the serious and violent crimes unit said the armed men started firing shots in Durban’s Umlazi Shopping centre, wounding two security guard from KZN Security Services.

Jacob Zuma’s supporters will be hoping that the corruption trial against the former deputy president is thrown out of court when Judge Herbert Msimang hands down his decision on Wednesday on whether to grant the state’s application for a postponement.

Jacob Zuma supporters might hope that Judge Herbert Msimang will throw his case out of the Pietermaritzburg High Court Wednesday, but they are more likely to be disappointed. The truth is that Msimang’s ruling only determines whether the state gets a postponement and for how long. The case stays before the courts.

The Blue Bulls came to Durban to show their horns on Saturday — and they accomplished their mission with a 50-32 drubbing in a brutal Currie Cup match at the Absa Stadium. With ten tries — six to the Bulls including a penalty try, and four to the Sharks — both sides secured a bonus point.

Pit the Bulls against the Sharks anywhere, anytime and you can bet that you are in for a mind-boggling struggle of strident proportions. And that is exactly how it is going to be on Saturday evening when the Bulls venture into the Shark Tank to resume this year’s intriguing Currie Cup rugby battle.

A critically ill awaiting-trial prisoner at Durban’s Westville prison has been denied anti-retrovirals (ARVs) because he does not have an identity document, a prisoners’ rights group said on Tuesday. Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Manelisi Wolela denied the claims, however.

Three of the country’s top legal minds will face off in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Tuesday in the corruption trial of former deputy president Jacob Zuma. While Zuma believes his case should be thrown out of court, the state is arguing that he should stand trial to prevent ”clouds of suspicion” hanging over the man who could be elected president.

Jacob Zuma will have to provide hard evidence of a political conspiracy against him if he wants his corruption trial dismissed, the state said in heads of argument filed in the Pietermaritzburg High Court. The state argued that ”if the first accused [Zuma] wishes to establish that a political conspiracy exists, he is required to adduce evidence to this effect”.

Public interest ”demands” that former deputy president Jacob Zuma is not granted a permanent stay of prosecution, the state argued in heads of argument filed in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Thursday. The state said: ”We submit that there is a compelling public interest in ensuring that the guilt or innocence of the accused is judicially determined after a full and open hearing.”

An appeal against a Durban High Court order to expedite antiretroviral treatment at Westville prison does not amount to a ”constitutional crisis” but is an attempt to alert the court to an ”administrative burden”, the government said on Thursday. A statement from the Government Communications and Information Service read: ”There is no constitutional crisis in this country … ”

Two women died and one was seriously injured when a fire broke out in a building housing the offices of a security company in Durban on Thursday. ER24 spokesperson Neil Noble said three people were injured in the blaze that swept through the top floor of the one-storey building.

The Department of Correctional Services on Wednesday rejected a Durban High Court judge’s assertion that it is responsible for a potentially ”grave constitutional crisis”. ”The department does not agree that the decision to appeal against the orders of the Durban High Court was intended to create a constitutional crisis,” the department said in a statement.

Pierre Moynot, the executive of the French arms manufacturer charged alongside Jacob Zuma for corruption, may have incriminated himself when he testified in the Schabir Shaik trial. The defence team for French arms dealer Thint said that when Moynot testified in the Shaik trial ”he [was] not warned by the state that the questions he will be asked may incriminate him”.

Jacob Zuma would have been ”exonerated” had he been charged alongside his financial adviser Schabir Shaik, Zuma’s defence team claimed in its heads of argument filed in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Monday. Had they been able to do so, they would have cross-examined Shaik.

It could have been 1995 all over again … a flashback to the soaking France-South Africa World Cup semifinal as the rain pelted down in buckets ahead of the match between the Sharks and Western Province in Durban on Friday evening. By halftime 32 mm of rain had been measured at the ground.