A fire that destroyed hundreds of hectares of forest in and around the Tsitsikamma National Park in the Eastern Cape has finally been brought under control, South African National Parks (SANParks) said on Tuesday. A SANParks spokesperson said he was not sure about the extent of the damage caused by the raging fire.
Severe cold is to hit large parts of the country later on Tuesday and Wednesday, the South African Weather Service has warned. It said temperatures would drop as low as minus nine degrees Celsius in places such as Sutherland in the Northern Cape. The town was blanketed in snow on Monday.
A national warning was issued by the South African Weather Service on Monday morning with regards to a strong cold front affecting the country this week. Already prevalent in the south-western Cape, the cold, windy conditions are expected to sweep across the central interior of the country on Tuesday.
The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality has decided to downgrade the city’s Soccer World Cup stadium because the Eastern Cape government has not paid the R212-million it previously committed to the project, a media report said on Monday. However, the provincial government said it remains committed to the development.
An initiation-school surgeon was arrested following the death of two initiates in Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape, the health department said on Sunday. Meanwhile, in Gauteng, a 15-year-old boy was found dead by fellow circumcision initiates at a mountain between De Deur and Orange Farm on Sunday morning.
Gauteng residents should brace themselves for a strong cold front and isolated showers accompanied by wind in the coming week, the National Forecast Centre said on Sunday. Forecasters said the chilly weather should be expected in the middle of the week, with chances of light isolated showers on Tuesday.
Three under-aged boys have died after their penises were severely mutilated during separate initiation ceremonies in Port St Johns and Potchefstroom on Saturday, the Health Department said. In the Port St Johns incident, the illegal initiation school was run by a 17-year-old boy.
Two boys have been rescued from a Transkei initiation school after a so-called traditional surgeon cut off the ends of their penises, the Eastern Cape health department said on Friday. Spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said the boys, plus a third youth, were found at the village of Swazini near Port St Johns.
Desertification is the ”terrible twin evil” of climate change, Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Rejoice Mabudafhasi said in the Eastern Cape on Wednesday. ”Desertification is a significant problem for South Africa, threatening not only our ecological integrity, but the well-being of our people,” she said.
Black economic embarrasment After 10 years of democracy and equality in my African South Africa, it’s almost tragic to note that I have far more opportunities than my white South African counterparts. Affirmative action and black economic empowerment (BEE) are just flashy labels for flat-out discrimination. Since some of us are clearly more equal than […]
Raenette Taljaard, Tshilidzi Marwala, Stuart Wilson, Zandile Mciza, Karin Jacobs, Mamokgethi Setati and Carol Simon.
South Africa’s civil-service strike broadened on Wednesday as other union workers walked out, piling more pressure on the government in a dispute stoking political tensions in Africa’s largest economy. Union leaders have vowed to shut the country down in sympathy with civil servants, whose two-week-old strike has already caused chaos in hospitals, schools and public offices.
If you weren’t one of the lucky visitors to experience throngs of product owners and travel journalists, fantastic tourism exhibitions (and some mediocre ones), aching feet, too many cocktail parties and wall-to-wall networking sessions, then you missed out on this year’s Travel Indaba at the ICC in Durban.
South African higher education could face a leadership crisis with the opening of four vice-chancellor positions from the end of the year and a struggle to fill them with high-quality appointments. This comes at a time when institutions are battling to find suitable leaders and managers.
With only two weeks to go before the ruling party’s crunch national policy conference, most of the party’s provincial structures have not taken an official position regarding President Thabo Mbeki standing as African National Congress president for a third term.
Radical changes are set to sweep through South African rugby following the World Cup in France later this year. According to media reports the first Springbok team of 2008 will consist of at least 10 black and coloured players. National coach Jake White will also be replaced by the country’s first black Springbok coach — Peter de Villiers.
Environmental rights are critical for South Africa to develop sustainably in the 21st century. But how well are we doing in terms of implementation? Increasingly we see that this appears to be just so much public relations. Last month the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkyk, issued the authorisation for a new 4 800MW coal-fired power station in Limpopo.
Three of South Africa’s trade-union giants, with a combined membership of about 600Â 000, are considering sympathy action with striking public servants. The country’s largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers will meet attorneys on Thursday to see if full-blown industrial action can be taken in a shorter period than the required seven days’ notice.
The government stuck to its guns on Tuesday in the current pay dispute with public servants, saying the current salary demands of the public servants were not realistic. Public-service unions rejected a revised offer of a 6,5% pay rise by the government on Monday and are demanding a 12% rise.
Residents of Gauteng earn more, are better educated and are likely to live longer than people in other provinces, a South African Institute of Race Relations study has found. In a report released on Tuesday, it identified ”glaring inequalities” in service delivery and living conditions across the provinces.
As the Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) began three days of public hearings on health services, based on a nine-province review, one of its most shocking findings is that poor patients are effectively being excluded from healthcare if they can’t afford to pay for transport.
A Butterworth man remained ”fast asleep” while three men took turns raping his girlfriend in his bedroom early on Saturday morning, Eastern Cape police said. The 22-year-old woman allegedly woke up and saw three men in the room where she was sleeping with her boyfriend who was allegedly ”very drunk” at around 3am.
The national public-service strike was largely peaceful on Friday, but got off to a violent start in Cape Town, police said. Police used stun grenades to disperse protesters outside Tygerberg Hospital after about 500 people had blocked both the entrance and the road outside the facility, said Inspector Bernadine Steyn.
United Kingdom power provider Ipsa is making good progress in expanding its portfolio of power generation projects in the Eastern Cape. Two important additions to capacity are now planned at the Elitheni Clean Coal Project and at the combined heat and power project for Da Gama Textiles.
South Africa could have at least ten more nuclear power stations within two decades if Eskom has its way, according to the utility’s chief executive, Jacob Maroga. He told journalists at a briefing in Cape Town on Thursday that in the face of global warming, nuclear power was the ”next big viable alternative” to coal.
The National Treasury has gazetted the details of municipalities whose 2006/07 municipal infrastructure grant allocations have been stopped — because of non-compliance with the 2006 Division of Revenue Act. It amounts to R503-million. The main reason for the funds being stopped is "significant under-expenditure".
A lack of capacity to spend their allocations from the integrated housing and human-settlement development grant has resulted in the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga being stripped of R145-million by the national Housing Department, the Cape Town-based South African Local Government Research Centre has reported.
The naked, decomposed body of a 22-year-old woman was found in Mdantsane near East London, Eastern Cape police said on Saturday. Earlier in the day, a naked, battered and badly bruised woman was found dumped in a field in Umlazi, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal police said. She died soon after being found.
At least 14 people, nine of them schoolchildren, have been killed in a five-vehicle accident on the N2 highway near East London, Eastern Cape police said on Thursday. Captain Stephen Marais said a group of schoolchildren returning to Elliotdale in two minibus taxis were involved in the accident shortly after 7pm.
Much of South Africa can expect another freezing night on Wednesday, the South African Weather Service said as the costs of this week’s cold spell mounted. At least 22 people have died of cold in different parts of the country this week, 15 of them in the Eastern Cape.
In Braamfontein, Johannesburg, under the M1 North highway, a group of street children huddles together for warmth. Metres away, seemingly oblivious to the morning traffic, a middle-aged homeless man lays down on the ground, adjusting the heap of white dustbin bags blanketed around him.
A merger of the Eastern and Western Cape could be good news for both provinces, Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool said on Tuesday. This would resolve the issues of shrinking allocations to the Western Cape and poor delivery in its neighbour, he told the provincial legislature.