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/ 17 February 2006
Transnet will consider a proposal for mediation in the ongoing dispute with labour over the restructuring of the parastatal, a spokesperson said on Friday. John Dludlu said the company has informed the four labour unions involved in the dispute that it will consider their proposal for mediation as early as this weekend.
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/ 17 February 2006
While unions were reporting all Eastern Cape Transnet employees on strike on Friday, Metrorail maintained that all its critical staff were at their posts and transport services were at 100%. Metrorail’s Thandi Mlangeni said: ”All our critical workers, like train drivers, did show up for work.”
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/ 17 February 2006
An Eastern Cape policeman might be in hot water after an afternoon on the beach in full uniform in the company of a ”skimpily dressed colleague”, media reports said on Friday. Residents in the coastal village of Blue Horizon Bay near Port Elizabeth were fuming over the incident on Sunday afternoon.
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/ 15 February 2006
A Transnet strike in the Western Cape and Northern Cape kicked off on Wednesday with rail services in the Cape Town area severely affected. The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union said more than 5 000 employees downed tools to protest ”management’s unilateral decisions about restructuring the company”.
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/ 14 February 2006
Encroachment by subsistence farmers is threatening the survival of the delicate ecosystem of the coastal peat swamp forests of the St Lucia Wetlands Park in Maputaland, on the border of KwaZulu-Natal and Mozambique. But park authorities are reluctant to take action against the farmers.
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/ 13 February 2006
The Constitutional Court will decide on Tuesday whether it can be directly accessed by the Matatiele municipality and others over a demarcation dispute. The municipality wants the court to rule on the constitutionality of the Twelfth Constitutional Amendment and the Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws Repeal and Related Matters Act.
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/ 13 February 2006
Trade unions locked in a dispute with state-owned Transnet over restructuring have postponed their strike in the Eastern Cape until Friday to give the labour structures in the province enough time to finalise logistics and other outstanding issues, it emerged on Monday.
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/ 12 February 2006
Attempts by robbers to break into the house of the Eastern Cape health MEC raised suspicion on Saturday as to whether he was being targeted, his office said. Spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said MEC Bevan Goqwana noticed on Saturday morning that attempts had been made to gain entry into his Southernwood home in Mthatha.
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/ 9 February 2006
The South African Weather Service has warned of more rain for the flood-hit provinces of Gauteng and Free State. This came as traffic chaos and reports of cars and people being swept away in Gauteng dominated news reports on Thursday. In the Free State, reports indicated that homes had been flooded, and bridges were under water.
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/ 8 February 2006
South Africa will ban poultry imports from Nigeria following an outbreak there of the deadly strain of the H5N1 bird flu, the first on the continent, the agriculture ministry said on Wednesday — but Pretoria will not step up its precautionary measures as the outbreak remains far from Southern Africa.
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/ 8 February 2006
At least eleven people have been killed and several others were injured in a bus accident near Beaufort West in the Karoo on Wednesday morning, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported. A Cape Town Metro Rescue official said the accident happened on the R-61 just outside Aberdeen in the Eastern Cape on the way to Beaufort West.
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/ 7 February 2006
Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhenkesi Stofile has denied media reports that he supports the curbing of President Thabo Mbeki’s powers to hire and fire provincial premiers. ”The unscrupulous allegations quoted the minister as saying that ‘the appointment of premiers by the president should be changed’,” his office said on Monday.
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/ 6 February 2006
Host nation South Africa is to refurbish five existing stadiums and build five new venues for the 2010 Soccer World Cup, in terms of an agreement with international football association Fifa. Five new stadiums will be built, including ones in KwaZulu-Natal’s eThekweni metro and in Cape Town.
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/ 3 February 2006
The United Transport and Allied Trade Union (Utatu) said on Thursday that next week’s planned strike by Transnet workers over the parastatal’s restructuring plans will continue. Utatu spokesperson Chris de Vos said the union was disappointed that a meeting with Transnet management on Thursday yielded no results.
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/ 3 February 2006
It began life as the Super 6, with state sides from Australia and New Zealand joined by Western Samoa. When South Africa was readmitted to the international fold it became the Super 10 and when the game went professional at the end of the 1995 World Cup it expanded into the Super 12. Now the Super 12 is dead. Long live the Super 14.
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/ 2 February 2006
South African Airways obtained an interim Labour Court order on Thursday against a sympathy strike by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union. Spokesperson Jacqui O’ Sullivan said the order would remain in place until final judgement next Tuesday.
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/ 2 February 2006
A fire on a 80km front was still raging in some Western Cape areas on Thursday morning — although a blaze that caused havoc in Die Kelders, Gansbaai, had been put out. A Working on Fire spokesperson said much depends on the wind and temperatures.
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/ 1 February 2006
A march by thousands of Transnet workers in Durban ended on Wednesday, bringing to a close the first in a threatened series of strikes at the parastatal, a trade-union spokesperson said. A Durban metro police spokesperson said marchers were well behaved.
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/ 1 February 2006
Trade unions on Wednesday said they were ”very satisfied” with their first in a series of strikes against Transnet’s restructuring programme. ”We are very satisfied. On the short notice that we organised it, we never thought it would be this successful,” the United Transport and Allied Trade Union’s Chris de Vos said.
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/ 31 January 2006
Transnet workers in KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State ended their second day of strikes on Tuesday with unions claiming success. ”No matter which way you try and spin it, there’s no doubt the strike has been effective,” the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union’s (Satawu) Randall Howard said.
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/ 31 January 2006
Operations at the majority of state-held Transnet divisions were proceeding normally, company spokesperson John Dludlu said in a statement as the strike in KwaZulu-Natal entered its second day on Tuesday. Barring the Durban Container Terminal, Richards Bay port and Metrorail in "a few areas", operations were running at 100%, he said.
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/ 30 January 2006
The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) on Monday again declared its loyalty to the party’s beleaguered deputy president, Jacob Zuma, and said it opposes ”the creation of two centres of power” in the ANC. League functionaries also briefed the media on an ANCYL national executive committee meeting over the weekend.
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/ 30 January 2006
Only 42 out of Metrorail’s 140 weekday trains were running in Durban on Monday, because of a strike by Transnet workers. The strike also slowed operations at the Durban and Richard’s Bay harbours. Tshwane, the Witwatersrand, the Western and Eastern Cape were running trains as normal.
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/ 30 January 2006
The Durban and Richards Bay ports were running at 60% and 50% capacity respectively on Monday as unions embarked on a strike at Transnet. The United Transport and Allied Trade Union said about 15Â 200 workers from all four unions involved in the dispute over restructuring were on strike at both ports.
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/ 27 January 2006
A new local film depicting Jesus as a black man was launched with trepidation at the Sundance film festival last weekend. Rory Carroll reports.
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/ 27 January 2006
Prince Zwelonke Sigcawu was named on Friday as the new king of the Xhosa kingdom at Willowvale in Eastern Cape, the Xhosa royal house said. Sigcawu succeeds his late father, King Xolilizwe Sigcawu, who died in Pretoria last year after suffering a long illness.
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/ 26 January 2006
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South Africa’s municipal election on March 1 will be a test of whether the African National Congress (ANC) will be able to retain municipalities which ”turned” to it during two floor-crossing periods since the last national municipal election in December 2000.
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/ 25 January 2006
Two Eastern Cape provincial ministers have run up a R1-million bill for official mileage with their private vehicles in just 20 months, the Dispatch Online reported on Wednesday. They are finance minister Billy Nel and economic affairs and tourism minister Andre de Wet.
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/ 25 January 2006
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/262374/vote-box_blue.gif" align=left>Inkatha Freedom Party Ingwe municipality mayor Innocent Miya and three councillors from nearby Ubuhlebezwe municipality have defected to Ziba Jiyane’s National Democratic Convention (Nadeco). Miya, according to Nadeco spokesperson Linda Hlongwa MPL, has been mayor of Ingwe since 2000.
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/ 24 January 2006
Agriculture MECs were sent back to do their homework on Tuesday when figures they presented to Parliament’s finance select committee differed from those provided by the national treasury. Chairperson Tutu Ralane instructed Casca Mokitlane of the Free State and Dikeledi Magadzi of Limpopo to report back in five days on the apparent anomalies.
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/ 22 January 2006
A bizarre plan to relocate the remains of President Thabo Mbeki’s father to a Port Elizabeth struggle museum has been slammed as illegal and immoral by his family, the Sunday Times reported in its first edition. The plan is driven by Nelson Mandela metro mayor Nceba Faku and was detailed by the municipality last week.
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/ 21 January 2006
He is not meek, he is not blond and he most definitely is not white. A new interpretation of the Bible has cast Jesus Christ as a revolutionary fighting oppression in contemporary Africa. Son of Man, made in South Africa, was shot in rural Eastern Cape and in Khayelitsha township outside Cape Town.