Sickness prevented Epainette Mbeki from travelling to Pretoria to receive the Order of the Baobab on Thursday, said the chancellor of the national orders, Frank Chikane. Mbeki was to have been conferred with the honour by her son, President Thabo Mbeki, for her ”exceptional contribution to the economic upliftment of the underprivileged communities of the Eastern Cape and her commitment to the fight against apartheid”.
President Thabo Mbeki will on Thursday pin one of South Africa’s highest honours on his mother Epainette as she and 26 other heroes are recognised for their services to the nation. Among those to be honoured, some posthumously, are activists who died during the struggle against apartheid, two kings and a former head of state as well as former president Nelson Mandela’s biographer.
SA Rugby board of directors has decided to halt the participation of the Southern Spears in the Vodacom Super 14 next year, and instead put measures in place to help the franchise and the region reach acceptable levels of readiness. The board said it was aware that the decision might not go down well with some members of the affected communities.
The state of health care in the Eastern Cape under the stewardship of sacked provincial minister Bevan Goqwana had been ”deplorable”, the watchdog Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) said on Tuesday. ”The PSAM calls on the premier to urgently appoint a suitably qualified replacement,” the Grahamstown-based organisation said in a media statement.
Two Eastern Cape traditional kings have damaged the brand-new luxury German cars the provincial government gave them last month, Dispatch Online reported on Tuesday. The vehicles belonged to King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo of AbaThembu BakaDalindyebo and King Zwelonke Sigcawu of AmaGcaleka.
Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela on Monday fired her provincial ministers for health and economic affairs, Dr Bevan Goqwana and Andre de Wet, both of whom she has clashed with in recent weeks. She named Mbulelo Sogoni to take over from De Wet, while social development minister Thokozile Xasa will temporarily take on Goqwana’s portfolio.
Life insurers saved R347-million in 2005 by preventing dishonest policy holders and financial advisers, as well as crime syndicates, from making fraudulent claims. This was an increase of nearly 40% on the previous year, Gerhard Joubert, chief executive of the Life Offices’ Association said on Thursday.
Confirming the suspension of the Eastern Cape’s superintendent general of health, provincial health minister Bevan Goqwana on Wednesday resisted calls for him to resign. ”I don’t think I will resign,” Goqwana said. Asked if he was satisfied with his work, Goqwana said: ”I’m a human being … I’m satisfied. I think I’m on the right track.”
Some cases in Port Elizabeth’s Magistrate’s Court have been delayed by up to 10 years and others are being withdrawn because of absent magistrates, media reports said on Monday. In the latest blow, 10 cases in which children were either raped or indecently assaulted were struck off the roll this week.
Reasons given by Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi for Matatiele’s incorporation into the Eastern Cape from KwaZulu-Natal were wrong, the Constitutional Court heard on Thursday. ”The minister’s facts are wrong geographically, ethnically, culturally … And his wrong facts are compounded by the fact that nobody has spoken to these people,” said lawyer Alastair Dickson.
The Cape Town Book Fair provides the ideal platform for getting South Africa’s new writing and publishing out there, but it is being launched with performance, not hype, in mind. Karen Rutter reports.
Since its inception in 2000, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival has included a world-class photographic exhibition as part of the visual arts mix. This year’s exhibitors include Peter Magubane, Fanie Jason and Mike Mzileni. Magubane began a distinguished photographic career for Drum magazine in 1955. At the Rand Daily Mail in the Sixties, he […]
The fate of the Southern Spears is expected to be decided at a president’s council meeting of the South African Rugby Union on Wednesday. At its meeting last Friday, the council poured cold water over the Spears’ chance of playing in the Super 14 competition next year. The move has been slammed by the African National Congress.
The government plans to improve staff and management of tuberculosis (TB) services and to improve access to laboratory services where it is poor. This forms part of the TB crisis plan launched by Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang on Friday, World Tuberculosis Day, at Durban’s King George V hospital.
Phil Naledi has changed the lives of residents along a leafy street in the north-eastern Johannesburg suburb of Sydenham. He earns R900 a month for guarding the houses in the relatively affluent suburb, working 12-hour shifts. ”No one can make a life if they spend so much time working for this little money,” he explains.
Police were keeping an eye on striking private security guards in the Johannesburg city centre on Friday. About 100 guards had gathered at Beyers Naude Square by 9am, police said. In other centres, striking security workers were also expected to march in support of their demands for better wages and working conditions.
Protesting security guards in Pretoria began to disperse on Thursday afternoon after their strike turned violent earlier, with a security vehicle set alight and rubbish strewn in the inner city. At one stage police fired rubber bullets at the protesting guards in an effort to calm the situation.
Police fired rubber bullets at protesting guards after they apparently set alight a security van in Pretoria on Thursday afternoon. Guards made their way to Church Square, trashing rubbish bins and causing havoc in the city centre. Shops were also set alight. The violence came on the first day of a security-guard strike in seven provinces.
Security-guard employers were reporting little absenteeism in Johannesburg and the East and West Rand on Thursday, the first day of a two-day security-industry strike in six provinces. In the Cape and Pretoria, however, some companies experienced 80% absenteeism, and cases of intimidation were reported.
”As I write this, I’m sitting in Centane, a rural town in the Eastern Cape and a world apart from my office in Houghton, Johannesburg. Centane, along with Butterworth and Ngqamakwe, forms part of the Mnquma local municipality — home to about 300 000 people,” writes Gloria Serobe, CEO of Wiphold.
As South Africans celebrate Human Rights Day on Tuesday, some organisations will use the occasion to raise awareness of issues that particularly concern them. Human Life International said on Monday that it would continue its efforts to lobby until the human rights of all born and unborn children were legally protected.
Swine fever has been detected at Uitenhage in the Nelson Mandela Metro and about a thousand pigs will be culled this week, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Wednesday. Road blocks have been set up around KwaNobuhle in Uitenhage in an effort to contain it, but this measure does not seem to work as the disease has continued to spread throughout the province.
A meeting between Transnet unions and Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin yielded progress on Monday after another day of national strikes crippled the transport industry. ”Erwin has agreed that government will facilitate a resolution of certain pension issues related to Metrorail,” said his spokeswoman Gaynor Kast.
Economists have warned that the economy will suffer because of the Transnet strike and intermittent power outages in major cities, media reports said on Monday. These factors would keep the country’s growth rate for the first quarter below 3%, economists said at the weekend.
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South Africa has taken a giant step towards the goal of gender equality and the emancipation of women in the recent municipal election, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. The election results show the success the African National Congress has achieved to increase the numbers of women in the municipal system, he said.
Although South Africa was the biggest importer of poultry in Africa, it was also the country best prepared against avian flu, a Southern African Development Community (SADC) workshop on the epidemic heard in Pretoria on Thursday. ”South Africa is in a very good place. You are used to fighting bird flu.”
The SA Transport and Allied Workers’ Union has threatened to make its national strike on Monday next week the launching pad of a second round of downing tools. This follows the union’s claim that Transnet, at the weekend, went ”behind labour’s backs” and signed an agreement to transfer Metrorail to the SA Rail Commuter Corporation by the end of this month.
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The Democratic Alliance said on Monday afternoon that it had been offered a deal that would give it control of the city of Cape Town. DA Western Cape leader Theuns Botha said the offer would give a grouping of 106 seats — enough for a clear majority in the 210-seat council.
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The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) has called for a multi-party governance system in the Western Cape after Wednesday’s local government elections. The party’s leadership made the call on Friday after no single party won an absolute majority in Cape Town, paving the way for political parties to form coalitions.
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The Democratic Alliance stands ready to co-operate with other parties on a case-by-case basis in the interest of good government, DA leader Tony Leon said on Thursday. ”Although final election results are still awaited, it is clear that in a number of towns and cities around South Africa, no party has a clear majority,” he said in a statement.
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Provisional results show a 46,72% poll with just more than 14-million votes cast from a pool of 21Â 054Â 957 registered voters. The African National Congress had swept the board in the Northern Cape by 9.45am on Thursday, and the DA’s worst fear seemed to have come true in the Western Cape.
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The Democratic Alliance and the African National Congress were neck and neck in the local government election race in the Western Cape with the Independent Democrats trailing in third place on Thursday morning. Only 232 people voted for municipal ward candidates in the troubled Khutsong township in Merafong City on Wednesday.