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/ 18 October 2004
Fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik’s former assistant Bianca Singh told the Durban High Court on Monday she had to sign a confidentiality clause on leaving his employ because she knew too much about his relationship with Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
Shaik’s assistant spills the beans
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/ 18 October 2004
Schabir Shaik’s former personal assistant told the Durban High Court on Monday of a phone call in which Shaik asked Deputy President Jacob Zuma for help securing a slice of the arms deal. Bianca Singh said that at one point late in 1998 she was in Shaik’s office when his cellphone rang. She gathered that the caller was his brother Chippy, then head of acquisitions in the Department of Defence.
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/ 15 October 2004
The Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial was adjourned to Monday morning after the state’s first witness completed his testimony on Friday morning. State advocate Billy Downer, SC, said they had no further witnesses for Friday but were prepared with a full week of witnesses for the coming week.
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/ 14 October 2004
The first witness in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial, Independent Democrats deputy leader Themba Sono, was in the witness box in the Durban High Court on Thursday. Sono said he met Shaik in 1996 through a colleague.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123695">Tangled web of intrigue at Shaik trial</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123679">Zuma debt aired in Shaik trial</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123667">State shows link between Shaik, Zuma</a>
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/ 14 October 2004
Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s name came up repeatedly as the corruption and fraud trial of his financial adviser Schabir Shaik got under way in earnest in the Durban High Court on Wednesday. Prosecutor Billy Downer explained in how the state planned to explore the complex web of financial relationships between Zuma and Shaik.
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/ 13 October 2004
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) believes it has already obtained permission for former public accounts committee chairperson Gavin Woods to testify at Schabir Shaik’s fraud and corruption trial. This follows a warning by National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete that two MPs due to give evidence will need Parliament’s permission.
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/ 13 October 2004
Deputy President Jacob Zuma still owes more than R1-million for costs incurred in the construction of his Nkandla village in KwaZulu-Natal, the Durban High Court heard on Wednesday. Prosecutor Billy Downer said the state will prove that the source of the funding for Nkandla was a bribe from arms company Thomson CSF.
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/ 13 October 2004
State prosecutor Billy Downer made a slide presentation to the Durban High Court on Wednesday showing the link between Schabir Shaik and Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123676">NPA believes Woods may testify</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123640">MPs need OK for Shaik trial</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123605">’What was Mbeki’s role in arms deal?'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123595">TV station loses bid to film Shaik trial</a>
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/ 12 October 2004
The judge in the Schabir Shaik corruption trial on Tuesday turned down an application by e.tv to televise proceedings, but left the door open for broadcast of the closing stages of the case. E.tv said it will study the judgement and consider whether to launch a Constitutional Court challenge.
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/ 11 October 2004
Lawyers for the state and Schabir Shaik have been arguing against allowing e.tv to broadcast live his fraud and corruption trial which started in the Durban High Court on Monday. Guido Penzhorn argued for the state that ”if it turns out that the trial was unfair then that is irrevocable damage”.
Zuma’s popularity undented
‘We’ve got the balls of elephants’
The former senior public prosecutor of the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court was convicted of fraud and corruption and sentenced in the Durban Regional Court on Friday. Stanley Ngubane was paid R70 000 in order for a murder accused to be detained at local police cells, instead of in prison.
The British High Commissioner to South Africa, Ann Grant, will on Sunday take part in a symbolic ”releasing ceremony” of amaHlubi king Langalibalele who died in captivity in 1889. The king’s great-grandson Prince Bekithemba Langalibalele said the ceremony in Estcourt would be significant because the king died while under house arrest and was still regarded as a prisoner.
A second person has been gored by a black rhino in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve, KwaZulu-Natal nature conservation authorities said on Thursday.
Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife’s Jeff Gaisford said that in the latest incident Mandlenkosi Magubane (33), one of a group of contract workers clearing alien vegetation in the reserve on Monday, stumbled upon a black rhino which attacked him.
A suspect has been arrested in connection with the murder of former Umtshezi municipality speaker Stanley Chetty, police said on Wednesday. Chetty was gunned down on September 20 when he and board members of the Inkomfe Cluster Project were taking a break following a board meeting.
Three people were arrested in connection with child pornography in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday when provincial government offices and houses of suspected employees were raided, police said. Police spokesperson Superintendent Vishnu Naidoo confirmed that a man was arrested in Ladysmith on Friday afternoon while two other ”very senior” officials were arrested in Nqutu and Umdloti.
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/ 22 September 2004
Five convicts who escaped from Westville prison on Monday and were recaptured on Wednesday will face new charges and be moved to a place ”with higher security”. KwaZulu-Natal safety and security minister Bheki Cele said: ”it would be amazing if there was no collaboration” with prison officials in the escape.
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/ 21 September 2004
Mahatma Gandhi’s iron-fisted control over the life of his son is the focus of a newly released book in South Africa, written by his great-granddaughter. Controversially titled Gandhi’s Prisoner? The Life of Gandhi’s Son, Manilal, the 400-page book released last week is written by Uma Dhuphelia-Mesthrie and explores the Gandhi family’s early years in South Africa in the early 1900s.
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/ 20 September 2004
A massive search is under way for five armed convicts who escaped from the Westville Medium B prison outside Durban on Monday morning, police said. Police spokesperson Superintendent Vish Naidoo said the prisoners had broken out of their cells, overpowered three guards and held a fourth guard hostage while stripping them of their uniforms.
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/ 14 September 2004
Oil residue has been spotted on a section of beach between the Réunion Canal and Isipingo beach, south of Durban, the Sapref oil refinery said on Monday. This followed last week’s five tonne oil spill at its single buoy mooring about 2,5km from the shore.
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/ 14 September 2004
The African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal on Monday said 27 new councillors had joined its ranks since the start of the floor-crossing period on September 1. Most of the councillors were from the New National Party, Democratic Alliance and Inkatha Freedom Party.
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/ 14 September 2004
They originally came as indentured workers but almost 150 years later, South Africa’s million-plus people of Indian origin have carved out a special place in the country’s political and economic landscape. The community of about 1,2-million people is made up largely of descendants of labourers who worked in sugarcane plantations, most of whom were herded onto ships to South Africa by British colonial rulers.
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/ 9 September 2004
Cleaning up operations were under way off the Durban harbour on Thursday after an offshore oil spill dumped at least five tons of crude into the water and onto nearby beaches. Sapref, the Durban oil refinery, said the spill happened about two-and-a-half kilometres out to sea at a buoy mooring where tankers usually discharged crude oil into a pipeline transporting it to shore.
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/ 4 September 2004
A media briefing called by the Independent Democrats (ID) to welcome eight new councillors into its ranks turned into a public spat with members of the Democratic Alliance (DA). ID Leader Patricia de Lille lost her temper when DA members repeatedly questioned her about her party’s policies.
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/ 2 September 2004
A man shot dead his girlfriend, a 31-year-old schoolteacher, before committing suicide at the Newlands East Secondary School in Durban on Thursday. Police said the 35-year-old man went to the teacher’s classroom on Thursday morning, called her outside and shot her in the head before turning the gun on himself.
Sardine frenzy hit the KwaZulu-Natal south coast on Monday as the tiny silver fish headed back home towards the Eastern Cape. Mike Anderson-Reade from the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board said a huge crowd was gathered at Shelley Beach and that at least 150 baskets had been filled with fish.
Three people, including two children, burnt to death when their home was set alight by a mob in Esikhawini, north of Durban, over the weekend, KwaZulu-Natal police said. The mob poured petrol on two rondavels and a six-roomed house and set them on fire. The group then started shooting occupants of the houses through the windows.
The mother of former South African and now Australian rugby player Clyde Rathbone was recovering from injuries sustained during a burglary at her home on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast on Wednesday morning. This comes less than a week after a newspaper article quoted her son as saying that since he had moved to Australia, he had a ”total lack of stress” and never worried about the safety of his fiancée.
Delegates attending the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ministerial conference in Durban, South Africa, are expected to shortly approve sanction-type measures against Israel, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Dr Nasser Al Kidwa, said on Thursday.
Two South Africans held in Pakistan on suspicion of terror-related activities will get a fair trial, a Pakistani diplomat said on Thursday. ”[There are] clear-cut law processes that will take their course,” said Javed Jalil Khattak, first secretary of the Pakistan high commission in Pretoria. He said the legal procedure to be followed was a ”very fair process”.
The 115-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) still has a relevance and a role to play, South Africa’s permanent representative at the United Nations, Dumisani Kumalo, said on Monday. ”NAM still remains [as] relevant today as it was in 1961 when it was launched in Belgrade,” said Kumalo during a media briefing on the eve of a NAM Ministerial Conference in Durban.
South African mobile operator MTN and the South African National Taxi Council on Tuesday launched the Ring’uvaya (phone while you travel) initiative, which will equip South African taxis with pay phones, enabling commuters to make phone calls in the taxi. KwaZulu-Natal is the first province that will get Ring’uvaya phones.