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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.
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/ 19 January 2006
South African business tycoon Anton Edward Rupert (89), who died in his sleep at his home in Stellenbosch on Wednesday night, was a pioneering billionaire, entrepreneur and conservationist. From humble beginnings as a chemistry lecturer, manufacturing cigarettes in his garage, Rupert built the tobacco and industrial conglomerate Rembrandt.
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/ 19 January 2006
South African business tycoon Anton Edward Rupert (89), who died in his sleep at his home in Stellenbosch on Wednesday night, was a pioneering billionaire, entrepreneur and conservationist. From humble beginnings as a chemistry lecturer, manufacturing cigarettes in his garage, Rupert built the tobacco and industrial conglomerate Rembrandt.
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/ 18 January 2006
An Eastern Cape high school is to add fishing to its formal syllabus this year, the Dispatch reported on its website on Wednesday. John Amoah, principal of Inkwenkwezi High School in NU6 in Mdanstane, said he was offered a donation of 100 fishing rods in December, and at first he had no idea what to do with the rods.
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/ 18 January 2006
Charges of misconduct could be brought against 23 Eastern Cape school principals for inflating their pupil numbers, a Department of Education spokesperson said on Wednesday. ”This has been an ongoing problem in our province,” said Loyiso Pulumani.
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/ 15 January 2006
”The Inkatha Freedom Party is blowing the whistle to stop corruption, the party is prepared to govern and we seek victory in the upcoming local government elections,” IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi said in Durban on Sunday. Speaking at the launch of the party’s local government election campaign, Buthelezi said: ”Democracy empowers us with a right to change who governs.”
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/ 13 January 2006
A baby died when ”something like a tornado” destroyed homes and injured scores of people at Sithebe, near Qunu in the Eastern Cape, on Thursday afternoon, and a 45-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl were killed instantly when they were struck by lightning in Butterworth on Thursday, Eastern Cape police said.
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/ 12 January 2006
With more than 500 people relocated because of rain damage to their shacks, Johannesburg’s emergency services has urged people living near water lines and crossing low-lying bridges to exercise caution. Some residents of Klipspruit, Alexandra, Diepsloot, Ennerdale and Kaya Sands had been moved, Gauteng Provincial Services said on Thursday.
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/ 12 January 2006
Shots were fired at Johannesburg’s emergency services and police who had rushed to the rescue of three people reportedly swept away by flood waters in Kya Sands on Thursday. ”We arrived at where they were supposed to be washed away and suddenly shots were fired towards the river,” an emergency services spokesperson said.
The wet weather experienced over most of the interior is likely to continue for another two days before starting to clear up, Weather SA said on Monday. Forecaster Siyabonga Mphethwa said the rain is caused by a tropical low that moved in over the northern part of South Africa on Friday from Mozambique.
The number of shack dwellings in South Africa rose from 1,45-million in 1996 to 2,14-million in 2003, according to Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu. That was 417 new shacks a day on average between 2001 and 2003 and 210 shacks per day on average in the five years between 1996 and 2001.
The circumcision season death toll in the Eastern Cape has risen to 22 with the news that a would-be initiate had apparently hanged himself at Bholothwa in the Queenstown area. Provincial health department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said on Thursday that Mzwanele Diniso (24) was found hanging from a tree on New Year’s Day after going missing from the illegal initiation school he was attending.
As many as 4 000 people were still being registered by the City of Cape Town’s human-settlement unit on Thursday afternoon, following an early-morning fire that destroyed about 800 shacks in the Joe Slovo informal settlement near Langa. The people were registering for aid and new accommodation.
The road death toll for December has risen to 1 215, the Department of Transport said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Collen Msibi said 512 of the fatalities were pedestrians, 414 were passengers and 289 were drivers. The figure is down from 1 234 reported in the same period last year.
Road deaths during the Christmas holidays were at 1Â 162 by the end of December, the Department of Transport said on Monday. There was heavy traffic on the country’s main routes on Monday as holidaymakers returned home. Meanwhile, the bodies of five people who drowned after their car plunged into the Vaal River have been recovered.
The Eagles swooped into Cape Town and inflicted yet another defeat on the Cape Cobras as the home side finished their season winless. The Warriors overcame an atrocious start to the new year almost to snatch what would have been a remarkable victory in their final Standard Bank Cup limited-overs cricket match against the Highveld Lions.
Two mountain fires, fanned by a strong south-westerly wind, burned out of control in the Boland on Monday night, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported. One of the fires was raging in Du Toit’s Kloof at Donkerhoek and the second above Dewdale on the Hottentots Holland flank.
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/ 29 December 2005
Education Minister Naledi Pandor was disappointed on Thursday at the 68,3% pass rate recorded by the 2005 matric class. ”I’m not satisfied,” she told a media briefing in Cape Town where the figure was announced. ”How can anyone be satisfied when more than 30% of our children are failing? Surely you can’t have that. I’m not happy.”
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/ 29 December 2005
The Eastern Cape health department has hit back at a traditional leader who claimed it had incurred the wrath of the ancestors by meddling in the circumcision ritual. Contralesa provincial chairperson chief Mwelo Nonkonyana was quoted on Wednesday as saying the 18 circumcision-related deaths so far this summer season meant the department had ”dismally failed”.
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/ 29 December 2005
The shock of seeing his brother murdered caused evil spirits to enter the body of alleged housebreaker Nkululeko Tuntubele, the Cape Town Regional Court heard on Wednesday. The evil spirits had a major impact on his client’s physical condition, defence lawyer Asghar Mia told the court.
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/ 28 December 2005
The death toll on South Africa’s roads over the holiday season has reached 965, the Department of Transport said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Collen Msibi said 411 of the casualties were pedestrians and 88 were children under 14. Msibi said that although ”shocking”, the figure was down from the 1 140 deaths over the same period last year.
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/ 27 December 2005
A child died in a fire that destroyed about 60 shacks in an informal settlement off Lansdowne Road in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, on Monday, city fire-control spokesperson Gregory Carolissen said. A fire in the same area early on Monday morning razed about 200 shacks.
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/ 26 December 2005
Firefighters were still combating a brush fire at Melkbosstrand on Monday afternoon, Cape Town’s chief fire officer, Piet Smith, said. About 200 shacks were destroyed in a fire in an informal settlement at Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats on Monday morning, disaster-management services spokesperson John Brown said.
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/ 24 December 2005
The Matatiele-Maluti mass action group has filed an urgent application with the Constitutional Court asking to be excluded from Friday’s legislation on municipal boundaries, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reports. The legislation will transfer the Matatiele area from KwaZulu-Natal to the Eastern Cape.