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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
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.
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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 PetroSA plant outside Mossel Bay was calm on Monday morning after it was hit by a strike last week, Southern Cape police spokesperson Captain Malcolm Pojie said. He said police had set up a joint operations centre along with the parastatal at the plant, which has been shut down for annual cleaning and maintenance, to monitor the situation.
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/ 10 October 2006
Delegates at Free State public hearings on initiation schools on Tuesday called for special courts to be established to deal with transgressors of initiation customs. The call was made in a joint statement by the South African Human Rights Commission, the National House of Traditional Leaders and the Commission for the rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities.
A 78-year-old woman managed to identify the men who raped her and then set fire to her body before she died, Eastern Cape police said on Thursday. The brutal rape and murder of the woman and her niece on Tuesday last week have left the Grahamstown community shocked and angry, according to police spokesperson Captain Mali Govender.
There appeared to be little relief in sight for the rain-sodden Eastern Cape, with the whole province on high alert as heavy rains continued, disaster management said on Thursday. Disaster Management’s Captain John Fobian said warnings had been issued all over the province from the Fish River to Port Elizabeth.
Four street children stole a cellphone and a pair of shoes after stabbing and killing 52-year-old Quintin Boutel in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape police said on Thursday. Spokesperson Superintendent Johann van Greunen said Boutel and his girlfriend were walking home from the Pub & Grub restaurant in Newton Park at about 10.30pm on Wednesday when they were confronted by the youths.
Any South African who uses national highways or main roads in our cities will sooner or later run into a government convoy. Depending on the rank of the politician being taxied, the convoy can stretch from two to eight cars. At the last count, President Thabo Mbeki had eight. Jacob Zuma may be out of government, but he has almost as many.