Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown, the man at the centre of what could be South Africa’s biggest-ever corporate-investment scandal, is behind bars. He and group accountant Graham Maddock were arrested by the Scorpions at their luxurious Cape Town homes shortly after 8am on Tuesday.
Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) needs a proactive networked response particularly when it appears together with HIV infection, an international discussion on MDR-TB heard in Johannesburg on Monday. ”It is one disease where there are more questions than answers,” said Dr Norbert Ndjeka from Limpopo.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) needs a courageous leader who will be able to challenge and engage the African National Congress when it errs, DA Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip said on Sunday. He said this will create a vigorous, rational and open-debate in a society that sought solutions to problems faced by the country.
A small blackboard and a pointed archaeologist’s trowel lay on top of pauper’s grave number 5 910 in Mamelodi West cemetery where Looksmart Ngudle’s family hoped to find his remains. Chalked on the blackboard was ”Mam-07/001 (5910) 01-03-2007”, for the forensic anthropology team’s photographic record of the exhumation.
The sudden upsurge in right-wing Afrikaner mobilisation and the purge of Somali traders from Port Elizabeth’s Motherwell township both underscore how far South Africa still has to travel in dealing with diversity and xenophobia to stem inter-group hatred and find the holy grail of non-racialism.
The bones exhumed from a paupers’ grave in Mamelodi West cemetery near Pretoria on Thursday could well be the remains of African National Congress liberation fighter Looksmart Ngudle, who died four decades ago, said the exhumation team.
The National Prosecuting Authority on Thursday started digging up an unmarked grave at Mamelodi West cemetery, near Pretoria, in search of the remains of an African National Congress liberation fighter who died in detention 44 years ago. The family of Looksmart Ngudle was at the site of the digging.
A South African company said on Thursday that it was bidding to build a Formula One race circuit near Cape Town’s international airport at an estimated cost of R1-billion. David Gant, chief executive of the South African Grand Prix Corporation, told reporters the project could be scuttled by land problems.
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/ 28 February 2007
A prestigious Eastern Cape high school is embroiled in a legal battle after refusing to accept a teenager because of her alleged ”bad” behaviour, the Dispatch reported on Wednesday. The classroom drama pits the 14-year-old girl, her parents and the Education Department against Queenstown Girls’ High School.
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/ 27 February 2007
The Eastern Cape’s health services brain drain is being turned around with more than double the number of health professionals recruited than resigned in the past year, the provincial health department said on Tuesday. Spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said the Eastern Cape had managed to recruit about 3 600 new employees, mostly clinicians, in the financial year now ending.
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/ 27 February 2007
Democratic Alliance (DA) CEO Ryan Coetzee has put paid to rumours he might make himself available for election as DA leader when incumbent Tony Leon relinquishes the reins in May. In a terse statement on Tuesday, Coetzee said only: ”In response to ongoing speculation I wish to confirm that I will not be standing for the leadership of the DA.”
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/ 27 February 2007
On the savannah plains of Africa, there is perhaps no greater body of myths than those about the city, and none are more fanciful than those about Johannesburg, variously known out there as Jozi, Jubheki and Egoli. It is the ill fortune of Pretoria always to tag along in the shadow cast by mammoth Johannesburg.
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/ 26 February 2007
Democratic Alliance (DA) national chairperson Joe Seremane on Monday announced he will stand for election as his party’s new leader. ”I state it, unequivocally, right now, that I shall make myself available as candidate for the DA leader’s vacancy at our coming congress in May this year,” he told reporters in Cape Town.
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/ 24 February 2007
The president of the South African Rugby Union (Saru), Oregan Hoskins, on Friday called on the country’s provinces and Super 14 franchises to raise their transformation game. Saru came under fire in Parliament this week about a shortage of black players in its Super 14 teams.
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/ 24 February 2007
Port Elizabeth high-school girls were organising ”cocaine parties” via their cellphones, the Herald Online reported on Saturday. At least 20 girls, mainly from high schools in the city, were organising cocaine parties through the cellphone chat service MXit, said Gerrie Cronje, chief executive of a rehabilitation centre.
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/ 22 February 2007
Former internationals performed well for the Diamond Eagles as they saw off the Eastern Cape Warriors by 61 runs in the opening Standard Bank Pro20 match at Goodyear Park in Bloemfontein on Wednesday. Jacques Rudolph, Morne van Wyk and Nicky Boje were notable as the Eagles began their title defence in impressive fashion.
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/ 19 February 2007
Hunger and desperation are driving pupils to suicide at a school near Mthatha in the Eastern Cape, the media reported on Monday. Upper Corana High School principal Suthukazi Lujabe said that most pupils walk long distances on empty stomachs to get to school. She said one or two pupils had killed themselves because of hunger every year from 2001 to 2006.
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/ 18 February 2007
A prisoner is taking Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour to court after an offer to reduce his sentence failed to materialise, media reports said on Sunday. Balfour allegedly offered Xolani Mahambehlala a sentence remission after he filmed acts of corruption by prison warders in the Eastern and Western Cape.
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/ 15 February 2007
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Cricket South Africa revealed that batsman HD Ackerman had been suspended for three matches following an on-field altercation with an opponent. One of the charges laid was that HD’s actions ”brought the game into disrepute”. Ja nee Lemmer reckons he did that just by pulling on his shirt and advertising the slimeball of the week.
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/ 14 February 2007
Fidentia executive chairperson Arthur Brown and his cronies are responsible for reducing R2-billion in other people’s savings to a meagre R8,5-million. This claim emerged on Monday night when one of the curators of Fidentia, forensic accountant George Papadakis, said that about R8,5-million is left in the company’s ”larder”.
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/ 13 February 2007
Most municipalities in the Eastern Cape are in chaos, a provincial government lekgotla (meeting) agreed on Tuesday, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported. Provincial minister Sam Kwelita said participants agreed that the government needs to take action on the condition of municipalities.
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/ 12 February 2007
All the assets of financial-services firm Fidentia will be used to recover millions of rands it cannot account for, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Monday. It said this was decided at a meeting in Cape Town earlier in the day between curators and officials of the transport Seta (Sector Education and Training Authority).
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/ 12 February 2007
Drastic new measures have been proposed to stop the spread of the virulent strain of tuberculosis (TB) that has claimed at least five lives in the Eastern Cape. It was reported on Monday that the suggested steps include infection monitoring at airports and border posts and the isolation of patients — even against their will.
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/ 8 February 2007
South Africa is not experiencing a heatwave, the South African Weather Service said on Thursday. ”It is close to a heatwave, but it [the temperature] will be cooling down rapidly tomorrow [Friday],” said spokesperson Garth Sampson. He said a heatwave is measured in the smallest province of the country, which is Gauteng.
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/ 7 February 2007
The European Union has earmarked R9-billion in development funding for South Africa over the next seven years, EU ambassador to South Africa Lodewijk Briët announced on Wednesday. ”We want to work with South Africa to enhance its democratic roots … and to help South Africa and Southern Africa, and all of sub-Saharan Africa, to move ahead,” he said at a briefing in Cape Town.
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/ 5 February 2007
Almost 35% of the total South African personal income of R1,232-billion accrued to Gauteng in 2006, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 16,3% and the Western Cape with 14,7%, a new report showed on Monday. Gauteng led the pack despite the 2005 boundary changes that favoured the Northern Cape.
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/ 5 February 2007
Shipped halfway across the world to Asia as a seafood delicacy, abalone has become a prized commodity for South African entrepreneurs as well as criminals who have poached the mollusc almost to extinction. Known colloquially in South Africa as ”perlemoen”, abalone is so endangered the government has drastically reduced the total allowable catch.
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/ 31 January 2007
A R50-million biomass fuel-pellet project has been launched at the Coega Industrial Development Zone near Port Elizabeth, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Wednesday. The plant is expected to create thousands of jobs when it starts production in July.
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/ 31 January 2007
In a major crackdown on alcohol abuse, liquor-outlet owners in the Eastern Cape who sell booze to drunk patrons could be held liable if drunken customers cause harm to others. Bingeing boozers also face being monitored when they are out on the town — and may be banned from the province’s pubs and taverns.
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/ 30 January 2007
Provincial health departments in the nine provinces of the country are in a state of paralysis due to corruption and neglect, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Tuesday. ”A DA analysis of the nine provincial health departments reveals a pattern of neglect, mismanagement and blatant corruption,” DA health spokesperson Gareth Morgan said on Tuesday.
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/ 30 January 2007
After initially declining, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) on Tuesday accepted an invitation by Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana to attend a ritual ceremony where a bull will be slaughtered. ”As a leader of our country the minister is sure to uphold the law,” said SPCA executive director Marcelle Meredith.
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/ 30 January 2007
A 45-year-old Butterworth woman was arrested after she shot dead her son, mistaking him for an attacker, Eastern Cape police said on Tuesday. Captain Jackson Manatha said the woman was having a fist fight with a neighbour when her 15-year-old son tried to intervene at around 8pm on Monday.