No image available
/ 15 December 2005
Word from Cape Town that Parliament had rubber-stamped a Bill that put an end to cross-border municipalities triggered violent protests in Khutsong on Wednesday. By evening, a police officer had been badly burnt during a petrol-bomb attack and five houses had been torched.
No image available
/ 14 December 2005
The National Council of Provinces gave the final green light to controversial legislation doing away with cross-boundary municipalities on Wednesday. The changes have sparked vehement protests, particularly in Khutsong — a part of Merafong municipality — where residents have been staging violent protests.
No image available
/ 14 December 2005
Minister of Minerals and Energy Lindiwe Hendricks is due to make an announcement on Wednesday following a meeting with the petroleum industry over fuel shortages. Addressing the National Assembly earlier on Tuesday, Hendricks said: ”Everybody knows the industry is to blame in this case.”
No image available
/ 14 December 2005
A night vigil led by the South African Communist Party in Khutsong, outside Carletonville, went ahead on Tuesday night, despite police declaring it illegal. The government decides on Wednesday whether the municipality, currently in Gauteng, will be incorporated into North West province.
No image available
/ 13 December 2005
The National Assembly on Tuesday approved legislation giving effect to the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment that abolishes cross-boundary municipalities. This affects 17 municipalities, including the contentious ones of Merafong (Gauteng to North West) and Matatiele (KwaZulu-Natal to Eastern Cape).
No image available
/ 13 December 2005
Parliament will have an attentive audience on Wednesday when residents of Merafong municipality gather to hear the result of their demand to remain part of Gauteng province. On Monday, a protest march ended in the handing over of a memorandum calling for the proposal that Merafong be incorporated into North West to be withdrawn.
No image available
/ 8 December 2005
The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund opted out of a big bash for underprivileged kids this year, and will instead deliver gifts to schools, it said on Wednesday. This was done in an attempt to ”minimise exposing children to unnecessary difficulties”, the fund said in a statement.
No image available
/ 30 November 2005
South African athletes won four gold medals on the second day of the 2005 Pacific School Games in Melbourne, Australia, on Tuesday. Jan (JP) Hoffman, world youth shot-put champion and one of the top athletes at the meeting, won the discus for boys in the 17-to-19 category with a good distance of 48,43m.
No image available
/ 28 November 2005
Health officials in the Eastern Cape are still searching for 19 boys believed to be at an illegal initiation school in the bush near Flagstaff, said a spokesperson for the provincial department of health on Monday. Also, one boy died after falling ill at another circumcision school in the area.
No image available
/ 28 November 2005
One boy has died and eight others were admitted to the Mthatha general hospital after they fell ill at a circumcision school in the area, the Eastern Cape Health Department said on Monday. ”When we got there on Sunday night one of the boys had already died. Two are in a critical condition and the others are stable,” said spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo.
No image available
/ 28 November 2005
”I am tiring of technocratic talk. Joel Netshitenzhe’s most recent statement, that the government would not change its mind on the provinces it has assigned to cross-border municipalities because to give in to peoples’s demands would be a ‘perverse incentive’, is really so much hogwash,” writes Rapule Tabane.
No image available
/ 25 November 2005
A whole lot of bull I am struck by the moral dishonesty of those who attacked the SPCA’s response to the slaughtering ritual Tony Yengeni was responsible for (”The great bull debate”, January 26). If someone objects to ”cultural practices” like bride burning, dry sex or female genital excision, is she also guilty of ”selective […]
No image available
/ 25 November 2005
How to tire Zuma The Art of Seduction, by JZ: If she is wearing a dress; she is asking for it. If she crosses her legs; she is asking for it. If she visits your house; she is asking for it. When a woman says ”no”; she is asking for it. Never visit the beach […]
No image available
/ 25 November 2005
Enough of the crocodile tears I read with dismay Nomboniso Gasa’s open letter to Jacob Zuma (March 17), and cringed at her crocodile tears. I am not politically correct and shall nail my colours to the mast: I align myself with Zuma’s fight to be accorded respect and dignity, not least by the partisan character […]
No image available
/ 25 November 2005
The Wail fills the passion gap Goodness gracious me! All these years I thought Steven Fried-person wrote the horse-racing column! Thank you, Madame Editor, for the honorary mention in your ”A 21st century M&G” piece celebrating/commemorating/salivating on 20 years of the newspaper. My Saturday afternoon slumber was pleasantly interrupted by an old friend, Aso Balan […]
No image available
/ 25 November 2005
Best the DA has to offer? It is laughable that the DA’s Athol Trollip is putting himself forward to replace Tony Leon at national level (“Trollip in race for DA’s top job”, January 12). Claiming that he can fill Leon’s shoes, albeit with difficulty, Trollip boasted on TV: “I am white on the outside and […]
No image available
/ 25 November 2005
Border cricket has been at the forefront of the United Cricket Board’s youth development programme since 1987 and is regarded as the best in the country. The programme provides schools and clubs with equipment every year in order to help them participate in their fixtures.
No image available
/ 24 November 2005
Johnnic Communications (Johncom) announced on Thursday that its interim headline earnings per share increased 156% to 179 cents for the six-month period ended September 30. The media and entertainment group said its profits increased by 24% to R160-million, while revenue jumped 14% to R2,2-billion.
No image available
/ 23 November 2005
A campaign to stop controversial German vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath from conducting ”illegal” HIV trials in South Africa will be stepped up, three organisations said on Wednesday. ”He has got to be stopped,” Congress of South African Trade Unions president Willie Madisha said.
No image available
/ 23 November 2005
Eight of South Africa’s nine provinces are being been severely affected by drought, the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs said on Wednesday. Hardest hit are northern parts of KwaZulu-Natal, said the department’s senior manager of drought and risk management, Ikalafeng Kgakgatsi.
No image available
/ 22 November 2005
A handful of residents of Kleinskool in Port Elizabeth were still burning tyres in the streets by 9am on Tuesday morning, in protest over alleged poor service delivery, Eastern Cape police said. Inspector Johan van Greunen said 10 people from the area set the tyres alight early in the morning.
No image available
/ 18 November 2005
A thousand Khutsong residents protested outside the office of Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa on Friday against plans to incorporate the Merafong municipal into the North West province from Gauteng. Stressing their dissatisfaction over the proposed re-demarcation, the group handed a memorandum over to officials.
No image available
/ 14 November 2005
Twenty-five people, mainly children, were taken to hospital after eating food believed to be dog meat in an Eastern Cape village on Monday, the provincial health department said. Departmental spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said the parents of a 17-year-old boy had told him to kill a dog that was attacking and killing their sheep.
No image available
/ 14 November 2005
”Massive” educational deprivation continues to plague sub-Saharan Africa, South African Minister of Education Naledi Pandor said on Monday. ”It is clear that an extraordinary effort will be required to ensure that all countries are directly assisted to succeed,” she told the 15th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Edinburgh, Scotland.
No image available
/ 14 November 2005
![]()
”What rape?” asked the headline of the Sowetan on Monday, in a report on allegations that former deputy president Jacob Zuma sexually assaulted a family friend staying over at his house. ”What can be inferred from all this is that it points to a witch-hunt,” Zuma’s lawyer, Michael Hulley, told the Herald.
No image available
/ 8 November 2005
South Africans should use water sparingly due to the drought in many parts of the country, Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Buyelwa Sonjica said on Tuesday. Indications from the South African Weather Service are that prospects for above-normal rainfall this season are not good.
No image available
/ 8 November 2005
About 60 people were left homeless on Monday after heavy rains flooded their homes in Dunken village in East London, Eastern Cape disaster-management officials said. ”What made it worse was that there was a blocked pipe near the homes,” said disaster management’s Owen Becker.
No image available
/ 7 November 2005
An Eastern Cape-based research body has called on Parliament to occupy the five seats currently allocated to the government in South Africa’s African peer-review mechanism (APRM) governing council. The APRM governing council for South Africa is made up of 15 members — 10 from civil society and five from the executive arm of the government.
No image available
/ 4 November 2005
Johannesburg and Pretoria recorded the highest temperatures for November in 40 years on Thursday, the South African Weather Service said on Friday. Forecaster Lee-Ann Clark said Pretoria sweated in a sweltering temperature of 39 degrees Celsius on Thursday, while Johannesburg recorded 34.
No image available
/ 4 November 2005
The tug-of-war over the fifth Super 14 rugby franchise will be among the issues tabled at a pending judicial inquiry into allegations of corporate mismanagement within the South African Rugby Union (Saru), the Dispatch reported on Friday. The franchise went to the South-Eastern Cape.
No image available
/ 3 November 2005
Although fires raging through South Africa are being brought under control, the Working on Fire programme warned on Thursday morning that fire danger has increased in three provinces. It said that in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Gauteng the ”high orange” on the fire-danger rating index has risen to red.
No image available
/ 3 November 2005
The Humansdorp fire department was still frantically answering telephone calls on Wednesday evening as blazes ran rampant through the southern part of the Eastern Cape. A spokesperson said the N2 highway, which was closed to traffic earlier on Wednesday and had vehicles backed up for kilometres, had been reopened.