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/ 10 November 2004
The bid by world number-six gold miner Harmony for world number-four gold miner Gold Fields remains too close to call, with both groups of shareholders likely to make their final decision to vote for or against the merger on the day of the shareholder vote, investment market players said on Tuesday.
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/ 2 November 2004
Rustenburg in the North West province has the distinction of having been South Africa’s fastest-growing urban area between 1996 and 2002, with an annual compound economic growth rate of 6%. The worst performance was put in by the Free State’s Goldfields, which showed an annual decline of 4,3% over the same period.
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/ 29 October 2004
Two critically endangered South China tiger cubs born in captivity and named Madonna and Tiger Woods were flown to South Africa on Friday so they can learn how to survive in the wild. With fewer than 30 of the tigers left at large and 60 in zoos, international experts predict the species could disappear by 2010.
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/ 22 October 2004
Whoever wins the United States election, nuance has become a no-no this year, bludgeoned by campaign attack ads and each side’s distortion of the other’s positions. Nuance, a trait most often associated with John Kerry and rarely with President George Bush, now is taken to mean flip-flop, wishy-washiness or appeasement.
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/ 21 October 2004
A witness in the Boeremag treason trial, former Bela-Bela farmer Deon Crous, described on Thursday preparations for a coup attempt, including renting cars for car bombs, stockpiling ammunition and making petrol bombs with beer bottles and government-issue condoms.
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/ 21 October 2004
Moeketsi Mosola has been appointed the new chief executive officer for South African Tourism from November, Environmental Affairs and Tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Wednesday. SA Tourism’s outgoing CEO Cheryl Carolus will take over as chairperson of the Board of the South African National Parks (SANParks), said Van Schalkwyk.
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/ 20 October 2004
There are a number of ”large networks” involved in illegal mining activity on the Free State gold fields, Parliament’s select committee on economic and foreign affairs heard on Wednesday. South Africa’s chief inspector of mines, May Hermanus, said the illegal mining is taking place via disused shafts and tunnels.
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/ 20 October 2004
The Free State government has decided that three of the province’s bigger district municipalities be placed under administration because they cannot perform their duties. Free State premier Beatrice Marshoff said on Wednesday that the Motheo, Moqhaka and Phumelela municipalities had been informed that they would be placed under administration.
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/ 20 October 2004
Absa Corporate and Merchant Bank, corporate advisers to Matlapeng Strategic Investments, has assisted with the acquisition of a 25% shareholding in the share capital of Raubex Construction. The transaction, which was closed on October 2, gives Matlapeng the opportunity to expand on Raubex’s national presence in the civil construction industry.
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/ 18 October 2004
A major re-ordering of South Africa’s gold mining industry is expected to get under way on Monday with Gold Fields of South Africa poised to announce a multibillion-dollar merger with one of its big Johannesburg-based rivals, most likely Harmony Gold. The move could create the world’s largest producer of the precious metal.
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/ 12 October 2004
The prevalence of HIV among health workers in South Africa is ”very high” and they need to be targeted with anti-retroviral treatment as part of a multipronged approach to augment the sector, the South African Medical Journal warns. The journal said the high prevalance of HIV in the health sector had serious implications for the health system, with increased absenteeism and non-infected workers becoming overloaded with work.
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/ 12 October 2004
Capitec Bank and MasterCard Southern Africa on Tuesday announced a pilot of the world’s first pre-authorised debit card based on the EMV standard, in the town of Phuthaditjhaba in the Free State. The new debit card is specifically designed to provide a straightforward, low-cost banking product with easy access to the mass market.
A cold front will hit the Western Cape province from Wednesday evening and should continue moving over South Africa, while at the same time bringing rain, until Tuesday next week, said South African Weather Service (Saws) forecaster Evert Scholtz. There should be heavy showers over parts of the Western and Eastern Cape up until Friday.
One of the Boeremag treason trial accused had to be rushed to a district surgeon after apparently suffering a nervous breakdown in the Pretoria High Court on Monday. Kobus Pretorius – whose two brothers and father are also on trial on charges including treason, terrorism and murder – suddenly jumped up and ran to the holding cells shortly after his advocate raised concerns about his client’s mental state.
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/ 30 September 2004
If there is one lesson to be drawn from events over the past month in the Free State, Gauteng and Eastern Cape, it is the central importance of mature political leadership. Confronted by the <i>M&G</i> with serious allegations against provincial minister Angie Motshekga, Gauteng has acted quickly, ordering a set of investigations into reports that she unfairly privileged an empowerment trust.
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/ 29 September 2004
Either 4,6-million or 8,4-million people had no jobs in South Africa in March this year — depending on whether one used official or expanded unemployment figures released on Tuesday. This translated into an unemployment rate of either 27,8% or 41,2%, according to the results of Statistics SA’s latest Labour Force Survey.
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/ 21 September 2004
Rabbit meat could be the food of the future for poor South Africans, according to a team of researchers from the University of the Free State. In a paper released at a Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa conference, they said the animals are a cheap and easy-to-raise form of low-cholesterol protein.
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/ 21 September 2004
Aggravated robbery was the only violent crime to show an increase over the past two financial years, national police commissioner Jackie Selebi announced on Monday. Murders dropped by 9,9%, attempted murder by 17,8%, serious assault by 4,3%, common assault by 2,6% and common robbery by 7,8%, he told reporters in
Pretoria.
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/ 20 September 2004
About 500 residents of Zamani in Memel were blocking the access road to the township in protest over service delivery, eastern Free State police said on Monday morning. Captain Veronica Ntepe said schoolchildren were among the protesters. The group were using old car wrecks and dustbins to block the road.
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/ 16 September 2004
The jury was out on the effectiveness of Thursday’s public-service strike in the Western Cape as unions claimed a massive turnout while the provincial government sought to downplay its impact. In Cape Town, police estimated about 17 000 strikers snaked their way through the city.
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/ 16 September 2004
More than 700Â 000 public service workers were on strike on Thursday, making this the biggest strike in South Africa’s history, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union claimed. Schools appeared to have been the hardest hit. Health services were mostly functioning without disruptions.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=122284">Strikers told to stay home next week</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=122301">Jury out on strike impact in W Cape</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=122277">Blow the vuvuzela: Strikers are ‘gatvol'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=122266">How strike will impact on economy</a>
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/ 3 September 2004
The Boeremag treason trial on Friday stopped unexpectedly when a state witness claimed he has proof that Boeremag leader Tom Vorster was a CIA and military intelligence agent. A defence advocate said the claims might result in the defence demanding a trial-within-a-trial to establish the truth of the claims.
A 17-year-old boy, hospitalised after police used rubber bullets to disperse a protesting crowd on the N3 near Harrismith on Monday, died in hospital on Tuesday. The teenager died from internal bleeding, a Free State police spokesperson said.
Twenty children shot in Harrismith
Twenty children were shot when police tried to disperse a group of protesters on the N3 highway outside Harrismith on Monday, Free State police said. Captain Paul Kubheka said about 4 500 children descended on the N3 highway on Monday morning to highlight concerns about service delivery in the area.
On a national tour ahead of the floor-crossing window for councillors, Inkatha Freedom Party national chairperson Ziba Jiyane is stressing its ”centre-right” position and its standpoint on family values. He also criticised the appointment of women with wealthy husbands in jobs above breadwinners.
Police are likely to approach the Bloemfontein magistrate’s Court on Tuesday for an order to bury Paul Meintjes, whose family was told by a ”prophet” that he would rise from the dead. By Monday evening, the family had not met their deadline to contact the police with funeral arrangements, said Free State police spokesperson Captain Sam Makhele.
The late Paul Meintjes whom a prophet had predicted would rise from the dead must be buried by Saturday, according to an order delivered by police to his family in the Free State town of Hertzogville on Thursday. On Wednesday his widow took delivery of Meintje’s 50-day-old corpse and has since kept it in a coffin beside her bed.
Mining magnate Patrice Motsepe this week unveiled the first full-year results of his new company African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) while revealing the next, and probably most interesting, chapter in his career. The results show how far Motsepe has come as a mining entrepreneur — and the hard work that lies ahead in turning ARM into a world-class diversified resources company.
The body of Paul Meintjes, whose resurrection was predicted by a ”prophet” after his death about six weeks ago, is back with his family, mortician Nico Foulds said on Wednesday. Foulds said he delivered the body to the family at their home in Hertzogville in the Free State.
A total of 118 South African women have discovered since the beginning of the month that they had been married without their knowledge, the Home Affairs Department said on Wednesday. This emerged from a campaign urging women to check their marital status on the department’s records in a bid to curb the problem of fraudulent marriages, the department said in a statement.
The body of a Free State man whose resurrection was predicted by a ”prophet” after his death six weeks ago is on its way to a state mortuary, if a local undertaker gets his way. On Monday some disgruntled family members and town residents protested in front of the Meintjes family home.
The well-known Afrikaans radio, television, stage and film producer Truida Louw died on Tuesday morning aged 91, her family said in a statement. She died at her home in Darrenwood Village, Linden, in Johannesburg. Louw was the widow of poet NP van Wyk Louw and the sister of actress Anna Neethling-Pohl and composer Jan Pohl.