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/ 17 January 2007
Holiday season traffic deaths and accidents dropped by less than 5% compared with a year ago, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said on Wednesday. Radebe issued his report on the December 1 to January 10 holiday season traffic at Atteridgeville in Gauteng. The number of fatal accidents dropped by 59 from 1 428 to 1 369 compared with the same time a year ago.
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/ 16 January 2007
The Free State department of transport on Tuesday announced changes to the province’s vehicle number-plate regulations. ”The [provincial minister] for public works, roads and transport, Seiso Mohai, has approved amendments to the provincial notices regarding number plates after the department was flooded with requests from the public,” Gunnett Kaaf, a departmental spokesperson, said.
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/ 16 January 2007
The restructuring of the country’s police management system has left some officers in the dark on where to report for duty next week, media reports said on Tuesday. Although some officers in the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal had to start working at their new offices by Monday, not all of them had been informed yet.
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/ 12 January 2007
South Africa’s Department of Labour has warned employers in the northern Free State to ”brace themselves” for intensive workplace inspections to check compliance with the country’s labour laws. Sectors which would be targeted for inspections would include private security, contract cleaning, wholesale and retail, manufacturing and construction.
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/ 10 January 2007
Provincial education departments experienced a smooth start to the first day of school on Wednesday with no major problems being reported. Schools reopened in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the North West and Free State. ”All our schools opened today [Wednesday],” said Gauteng education spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi.
Underperforming schools in Gauteng and the Free State will remain open, the provincial education departments said on Tuesday. ”The [provincial minister] is not closing any schools for non-performance,” said the Gauteng education department spokesperson Mbela Phetlhe.
Provincial education departments on Tuesday reported readiness for the arrival of millions of pupils at the start of the 2007 school year on Wednesday. Schools will reopen in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the North West and Free State. ”The Gauteng department of education is ready to roll out the 2007 academic calendar,” education provincial minister Angie Motshekga said.
Shebeens near schools are a source of school violence and an access to drugs and alcohol for minors, the Young Communist League of South Africa said on Tuesday. The league was announcing at a Johannesburg press conference the launch of its Joe Slovo ”Right to Learn” campaign, which will run from Thursday until the end of January.
A state funeral and private burial will be held respectively in Pretoria, Gauteng, and Bloemfontein, Free State, on Saturday for the late former state president Marais Viljoen, who died in Pretoria last week, according to the South African government news agency, BuaNews.
Police have arrested a third suspect after a Free State police officer was murdered near Bloemfontein on December 30. Inspector Harry Nagel said the third suspect, a 26-year-old man, was arrested on Thursday morning near Hoëveld in the Bloemspruit area outside Bloemfontein.
Welkom police divers will resume searching on Thursday for a man who is believed to have drowned when a boat capsized on the Vaal Dam early on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the body of a 35-year-old man was recovered from the Nigel Dam on the East Rand on Wednesday, and a man was found dead in a swimming pool in Johannesburg.
South African lion breeders are prepared to go to court to test regulations on canned hunting, specifically of lions, the deputy chairperson of the South African Predator Breeders’ Association said on Wednesday. The regulations, to come into force in March, stipulate the circumstances under which lion hunting can take place.
The festive-season death toll on South Africa’s roads has dropped despite an increase in the number of cars and drivers, the Department of Transport said on Tuesday. Spokesperson Ntau Letebele said 1Â 366 people had died in 1Â 168 crashes over the December 2006 period — a drop from 1Â 454 deaths in 2005.
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/ 30 December 2006
A total of 1 277 people have died in 1 104 traffic accidents since December 1, the Department of Transport said on Friday. Spokesperson Collen Msibi said that while this was a slight decrease compared to 1 372 deaths in the same period last year, the department was concerned about the increase of fatal crashes involving pedestrians.
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/ 25 December 2006
The driver of a bus in which 12 people, including three children, died and 34 were injured in KwaZulu-Natal on Sunday was caught driving with his blood alcohol level seven times over the legal limit last year, it has emerged. Police said the driver lost control of the vehicle and it overturned, slamming into pillars under a bridge on the N3.
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/ 25 December 2006
A baby and four others were killed in a three-car pile-up between Barkley West and Kimberley in the Northern Cape, police said on Monday. Meanwhile, the Stormvoël tollgate on the N1 highway near Pretoria has been reopened after a tanker’s horse caught fire on Sunday night, Tshwane metro police said.
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/ 22 December 2006
Imagine it’s the year 2010 and a United States tourist with an adventurous streak goes journeying through the South African countryside. Finding himself lost in the rural Free State, Sesotho is the only language he hears being spoken for miles. Disoriented and confused, he could try to sign and signal his way out of oblivion; or he could use his cellphone to learn a foreign language.
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/ 16 December 2006
All good fairy tales have a happy ending, as Cinderella Premier Soccer League club Silver Stars discovered when they beat Ajax Cape Town 3-1 in the Telkom Knockout final at Atteridgeville’s Super Stadium on Saturday afternoon and pocketed the record R4,25-million winners’ prize.
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/ 15 December 2006
Even those of us who have been critical of Nicky Boje over the years had to blanch this week as the national selectors cut his throat, tied him to their chariot and dragged him around the walls of the Wanderers. He may have spent much of his Test career rivalling Ashley Giles for the title of the most innocuous left-armer in the game, but nobody deserves to have his dignity mutilated like that.
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/ 14 December 2006
The leadership of the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) is experiencing a communication breakdown, Sanco deputy president Ruth Bhengu said on Thursday. ”We have not met since yesterday [Wednesday],” Bhengu said. Sanco’s fourth national conference at the University of the Free State was adjourned on Wednesday, its second day.
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/ 13 December 2006
A 35-year-old man was arrested at the Ficksburg border post on Tuesday after he was found with bags of dagga with an estimated street value of R2-million, Free State police said. Constable Mmako Mophiring said on Wednesday two police officers and a South African Revenue Service official discovered the bags hidden behind a false panel inside a truck.
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/ 11 December 2006
A member of the South African netball team, Yvonne Phiri, died in a car crash near Hartebeesfontein on Saturday night. Phiri (21) was returning home from the national team’s training camp at the High-Performance Centre at the University of Pretoria. She had been included in the team to tour the United Kingdom in January.
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/ 11 December 2006
More than 13 000 people die every year on South African roads, costing the economy R43-billion, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said on Sunday. He said economic growth contributes to the increase of accidents as the number of vehicles on the road is increasing.
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/ 8 December 2006
In a bid to develop the quality and quantity of milk production by black dairy farmers, Nestlé has joined forces with the Independent Development Trust. The two-year partnership will involve 40 dairy farmers in the Thabo Mofutsanyane district, which includes Harrismith and other areas in the Free State.
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/ 7 December 2006
The Department of Education must give teachers detailed salary advice so they know what money is owed to them and what the money is for, the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa said on Thursday. However, the department slammed unions for ”misinformed and inflammatory” remarks.
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/ 6 December 2006
What a strange business the Nationwide fracas has been. What is spin and what is the truth?
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/ 4 December 2006
Recent union remarks over outstanding payments to teachers are ”misinformed and inflammatory”, the Department of Education said on Monday. A settlement agreement for wage increases has been fulfilled by the department, said spokesperson Lunga Ngqengelele.
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/ 26 November 2006
A one-month-old baby allegedly stolen near Orkney has been found in the Free State, North West police said on Saturday. The baby’s mother identified her at a Parys hospital where she had been taken after allegedly being found abandoned, said spokesperson Superintendent Louis Jacobs.
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/ 24 November 2006
In football, teams are not given nicknames such as ”Glamour Boys” and ”Bold and the Beautiful” for fun. They are awarded such praise names because of their ability to outplay the opposition at all times. But victory often depends not just on the quality of the first-choice line-up, but on the balance and depth of the squad — giving a team the ability to rise from the dead, if you like.
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/ 23 November 2006
A disciplinary hearing into allegations of unprofessional conduct by the former chief state pathologist of the Free State, Dr Leon Wagner, has started in Bloemfontein without him entering any plea. It is alleged that Wagner recorded ”Aids” as the cause of death without the proper evidence and or examining the body.
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/ 23 November 2006
A total of 303 cases of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) have been confirmed across the country, the Department of Health said on Thursday. ”They are in the hospitals, they are on treatment. Some of them have died,” said the department’s head of TB, Dr Lindiwe Mvusi. Mvusi did not have details at hand of how many had died.
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/ 22 November 2006
Over five million South African pupils and 13Â 000 schools will be exempt from school fees from January, the Department of Education said on Wednesday. ”The Department of Education wishes to announce that all the nine provincial departments of education have submitted their lists of the number of learners and schools [that] would benefit,” the department said in a statement.