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/ 16 November 2006
A project team has been set up to rectify the recent audit qualifications the Department of Labour has received from the auditor general, the department said on Thursday. Department of Labour director general Vanguard Mkosana said the project team will help to manage the department’s assets and report on issues timeously.
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/ 16 November 2006
The Eastern Cape health department says it is not correct that extreme-drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) patients at a Port Elizabeth hospital are being kept in the same wards as other TB patients. This follows a protest on Wednesday by about 40 patients at the Jose Pearson TB hospital with the less virulent multi-drug resistant strain of the disease.
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/ 15 November 2006
The final issues are being sorted out between Alcan, the Canadian aluminium company, and South Africa over the building of a smelter at Coega in the Eastern Cape, Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said on Tuesday. Briefing the parliamentary media, the minister said his government had been "in touch" with Alcan "quite a lot in the last two weeks".
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/ 14 November 2006
A 17-year-old pupil was in a serious but stable condition in hospital after he was stabbed at his school in Nyanga on Tuesday, Cape Town police said. The boy was in a classroom at Oscar Mpetha High when two youths stormed in at 10.15am and stabbed him in the head and back, Captain Randall Stoffels said. Two teenagers were arrested.
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/ 14 November 2006
Only slightly more than one out of 10 South Africans with bank accounts have used their cellphones for banking, according to research released by World Wide Worx on Tuesday. A surprising finding from the research is that the youth market is the least likely to have tried cellphone banking.
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/ 9 November 2006
Eastern Cape legislature members have three different versions of an annual report for a department that has received nine audit disclaimers in 10 years, the Public Service Accountability Monitor said on Thursday. This was highlighted at a joint sitting of the legislature’s housing and local government committees last Friday.
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/ 9 November 2006
A Port Elizabeth school approached the high court to get the Eastern Cape’s education department to decide on the fate of two boys caught with dagga, the school’s principal said on Thursday. On Wednesday the school received the department’s decision, dated November 3, not to expel the boys, its principal said.
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/ 8 November 2006
Eskom will decide within six months whether to commission a second nuclear power plant to supplement its Cape Town Koeberg plant, media reports said on Wednesday. Phumzile Tshelane, Eskom’s technical strategy manager, said the company was looking at models of light-water reactors from French and United States suppliers, and one type of heavy-water reactor from a Canadian supplier.
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/ 6 November 2006
While President Thabo Mbeki will only give up his Union Buildings office in 2009, the next president will effectively be chosen in just over a year’s time at the ANC’s watershed elective conference in Polokwane, Limpopo. How will it happen? And how are the cards stacked? Zukile Majova and Mbuyisi Mgibisa investigated to bring you this exclusive report, taking you into the mechanics of an elective conference.
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/ 3 November 2006
New Springbok manager Zola Yeye has moved from being Jake White’s strongest critics to possibly one of his closest allies. The two men showed a united front at Yeye’s first press conference after being appointed as Springbok manager, though White admitted that he and the players had been sceptical of Yeye before the appointment.
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/ 3 November 2006
Nine months after the South African Football Association (Safa) decided to form a new company whose responsibility it was to increase the sagging profile of the national soccer team brand and take control of its administration ahead of the 2010 World Cup, the commercial wing is yet to start its work.
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/ 30 October 2006
A woman accused of witchcraft died in the Mount Ayliff hospital on Monday after being stoned by an angry mob from a local community, Eastern Cape police said. ”The community kept assaulting her when police arrived but they managed to get her away eventually,” said spokesperson Superintendent Nondumiso Jafta.
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/ 30 October 2006
Crime levels on commuter trains are still unacceptable, but the dedicated rail-police unit is making a difference, government and commuter-rail officials said on Monday. They were speaking in Cape Town at the national launch of the South African Police Service Railway Unit, which began operating in the Western Cape in 2004.
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/ 30 October 2006
Rescue teams recovered the bodies of the two remaining miners trapped underground at AngloGold Ashanti’s Tau Tona mine near Carletonville at the weekend. The recovery of all five missing miners was completed five days after the fall of ground at the mine, following two seismic events on Monday afternoon.
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/ 27 October 2006
It might seem that the politicians are dominating the headlines, but it’s an illusion created by the fact that the rugby season is over and the Springboks don’t play Ireland for another fortnight. The regular battleground of the Eastern Cape is hogging the domestic limelight, but over in the Antipodes even more Machiavellian forces are at work.
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/ 26 October 2006
OR Tambo International airport is one of hundreds of South African place names that have been officially changed since 2000. The airport’s new name and a bust of Tambo are due to be unveiled on Friday by President Thabo Mbeki. The South African Geographical Names Council lists 833 new names approved since 2000, including at least 145 names that were completely changed.
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/ 25 October 2006
Secrecy is fundamental to the initiation custom, the public hearing on initiation schools heard on Wednesday. The South African Human Rights Commission’s Free State office manager, Mothusi Lepheana, who spoke in his personal capacity, said secrecy is needed to preserve the ”copyright” of the initiation process.
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/ 24 October 2006
A South African cultural rights group on Tuesday urged the government to establish legal ground rules for male circumcision rituals to prevent botched surgeries by traditional healers. Over the last decade 83 people have died — including 19 this year alone — in the Eastern Cape province as a result of the age-old practice that marks the passage of boys into manhood.
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/ 24 October 2006
If metal detectors are necessary in certain schools to guard the safety of pupils, they must be used, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Tuesday. DA education spokesperson David Quail said there had been over 20 deaths in schools this year, and that media statements of shock and sympathy from the department are not enough to solve the problem.
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/ 23 October 2006
Initiation schools could avoid problems by avoiding commercialisation and keeping strict control, a public hearing on initiation schools heard on Monday. ”We don’t do it for gain. We do it for the pride that’s involved, the spirituality, the richness that’s involved,” said Titus Kgatoke, the secretary of an Ndebele initiation school based in Thembisa, north-east of Johannesburg.
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/ 22 October 2006
”On a visit home I collapsed on the night of June 7 and was admitted as an emergency case to the intensive care unit at the Nelson Mandela Hospital. There I was stripped and lay naked in bed under an obviously used sheet for two days until a member of my family managed to bring me some night clothes.”
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/ 21 October 2006
The South African Rugby Union (Saru) has called upon the executive of the Eastern Province Rugby Union (EPRFU) to resign. Saru released a statement after a meeting of the management committee on Friday, saying it was very concerned about the poor state of affairs of the EPRFU.
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/ 19 October 2006
The Highveld Lions will be pushing hard to establish their spot in the upper region of the log when they play an important double-header in the MTN domestic cricket championship this weekend. The Titans’ victory over the Warriors in East London on Wednesday has opened up the race for the semifinals.
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/ 19 October 2006
The Eastern Cape provincial administration was unable to account for R30,2-billion out of R34,1-billion (88,5%) it spent during 2005/06, the Public Service Accountability Monitor said on Thursday. The Eastern Cape auditor general issued five provincial departments with disclaimers for the 2005/06 financial year. These include the four major service-delivery departments.
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/ 18 October 2006
State-owned PetroSA has begun attaching the assets of oil trader Imvume to recover debt incurred in the Oilgate affair, the parastatal’s chief executive, Sipho Mkhize, said on Wednesday. He told a media briefing in Cape Town that assets worth an estimated R22Â 000 had already been attached from Imvume Management.
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/ 18 October 2006
In 2001, the Jali Commission started its inquiry into alleged incidents of corruption, maladministration, violence and intimidation in the Department of Correctional Services. It is now 2006 and the report of commission, named after Thabane Jali, the chairperson of the commission, has been publicised.
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/ 18 October 2006
Johannesburg police on Wednesday promised pupils at a Booysens high school they would monitor their safety following the fatal stabbing of a pupil on the premises. "I will be here all the time with the principal," said newly appointed Booysens Commissioner Rex Qabanisa Mochabi, speaking to pupils at Forest Hill High.
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/ 17 October 2006
Some economic analysts say the passion for land is dying out in modern South Africa as more rural residents move to urban areas to escape the crushing poverty that contrasts sharply with much of the country’s prosperous cities. But some SA women, who met on the weekend, showed land hunger was still strong at a conference with hundreds of activists, officials, traditional leaders and farmers.
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/ 17 October 2006
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka warned that the government may be forced to ask the Chinese to increase the quota of clothes and textiles they export to South Africa if local manufacturers fail to meet demands, the Dispatch Online reported on Tuesday. And should local businesses fail to make the most of the quota agreement entered into with China, it would expire, she warned.
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/ 17 October 2006
A Port Elizabeth man was expected to appear in the Uitenhage Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday following a hostage drama in Despatch, Eastern Cape police said. The man, in his 40s, allegedly locked a woman in his house at Azilia Park about 11am on Monday, said spokesperson Inspector Marianette Olivier. The man panicked when he saw police vehicles and neighbours gathering around the house and started shooting at bystanders.
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/ 16 October 2006
Correctional services is strengthening its ”onslaught” against fraud, corruption and unethical behaviour by publicly naming those found guilty and dismissed since the institution of various interventions. Briefing the media at Parliament on Monday, Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour released the first list of correctional officials dismissed after being found guilty of various charges.
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/ 16 October 2006
The National Development Agency (NDA) is tightening up its systems to prevent a repeat of an R8,8-million misappropriation of funds discovered in a recent forensic audit. It has also begun criminal proceedings against the former NDA employee allegedly at the centre of the fraud, NDA chief executive Godfrey Mokate said in Johannesburg on Monday.