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.
No image available
/ 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.
No image available
/ 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.
No image available
/ 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.
No image available
/ 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.
No image available
/ 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.
No image available
/ 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.
No image available
/ 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.
No image available
/ 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.
No image available
/ 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.
The Inkatha Freedom Party has suspended national organiser and MP Albert Mncwango after he received a prison sentence on Monday for raping his former girlfriend in 2001. The African National Congress welcomed the 10-year jail sentence imposed by the Eshowe Magistrate’s Court.
A second arms cache has been found in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature building at Ulundi, the province’s safety and liaison minister Bheki Cele said on Wednesday. An intensive search was under way at the legislature buildings on Wednesday morning, after police found a second arms cache there on Tuesday.
The Congress of SA Trade Unions said on Tuesday the discovery of bombs in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature in Ulundi last week justified its call for the arrest of Inkatha Freedom Party member Philip Powell. ”We have long been calling for explanation as to why Phillip Powell has been allowed to go overseas … [because] he had not disclosed … where other tons of arms and ammunition [were],” Cosatu regional secretary Zet Luzipo said in a statement.
Ten bombs were found in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature at Ulundi last week, the African National Congress in the province said on Monday. ANC spokesperson Mtholephi Mthimkhulu said the bombs were found hidden in one of the storerooms of the legislature on Thursday.
Counterfeit cds, dvds and computer games worth R30-million were destroyed in Durban at the weekend in an operation between the SA Revenue Services (Sars), the police and the SA Federation Against Copyrights Theft. Sars spokesperson Sechaba Nkosi said in a statement on Sunday that 14 people were arrested in raids conducted around Durban at the weekend.
South Africa’s eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, worst-hit by Aids in the country, faces a lack of burial space due the growing number of deaths from the disease, officials warned at a two-day conference that ended on Friday. The city of Durban is struggling to keep up: only two out of 22 cemeteries have vacant plots left.
South Africa’s top Catholic bishop said on Monday he cannot understand why the South African government is not considering sanctions against neighbouring Zimbabwe, given the success that sanctions brought for South Africa. ”What further suffering will sanctions bring to the people of Zimbabwe?” the bishop asked, pointing out that he is not calling directly for sanctions against Zimbabwe.
Aids activists in South Africa hope that the inclusion of sex workers in an HIV research project will draw attention to the need for outreach programmes targeting this often marginalised group. About 600 female sex workers in and around Durban in KwaZulu-Natal are expected to participate in the study.
The wife of Malan Moyo, one of the South Africans among the 70 suspected mercenaries being detained in Zimbabwe, died in Phalaborwa on Wednesday, a KwaZulu-Natal radio station reported on Friday. Moyo’s daughter said that they have been battling to get word of her mother’s death to her father.
The installation of ”intelligent road studs”, along a notorious stretch of road in KwaZulu-Natal, has seen accidents drop so dramatically that the province’s transport department has just had them installed on another stretch of highway. The studs have seen fatalities drop from 27 in the seven months prior to the start of installation in October 2002, to one.
Ben Shabalala, a member of South Africa’s most famous a cappella ensemble, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, was shot and killed in unknown circumstances, the group’s record company said. He was in his late 40s. Shabalala, whose brother Joseph founded and still leads the group, was killed on June 16 in a Durban suburb.
Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosutho Buthelezi maintained on Friday that irregularities in the last general election "may have robbed the IFP of victory in KwaZulu-Natal". The party withdrew its case in the Electoral Court because it would be difficult to prove, not because it retracted its claims of widespread irregularities, Buthelezi told a rally in Durban.
About 5 000 people have been left homeless after more than 200 shacks burned down at the Slovo informal settlement in KwaMbonambi on KwaZulu-Natal’s north coast, police said on Monday. Umfolozi police spokesperson Superintendent Jay Naicker said it was believed that a candle left unattended in one of the shacks caused the fire, which quickly spread through the settlement on Sunday night.