Exactly 111 years since the birth of writer J.R.R. Tolkien in Bloemfontein, the Free State capital now aims to convert itself into a site of pilgrimage for the thousands of enthusiasts worldwide captivated by the fantasy world of Middle Earth.
How many of the year’s events can you remember?<br>
1 Who won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature?<br>
2 Which KwaZulu-Natal mayor said Cape Town could "keep [the] moffies and gays"?
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/ 28 December 2002
Praise for the 7,2% improvement in the 2002 matric exam results was tempered on Friday by warnings that huge inequalities still existed between South Africa’s nine provinces when it came to education resources.
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/ 25 December 2002
As the year draws to a close, a spate of farm attacks in various parts of the country has left at least three people dead. In the latest incident the bodies of Johan van Dyk (58) and his wife Christina( 54) were found on Tuesday morning on the farm Kareebosch, about 20km out of Polokwane in the Limpopo province.
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/ 13 December 2002
Although all political parties have lost support recently, the African National Congress (ANC) continues to be the dominant party in South Africa, according to the latest Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) survey.
A letter from IFP Youth Brigade national organiser PC Mashego to the manager of Standard Bank’s Simmonds Street (Jozi) branch was inexplicably delivered to the Dorsbult Bar…
ACCLAIMED South African artist Father Frans Claerhout is causing a furore in
art circles after revealing to a Sunday newspaper that hundreds of his
paintings are forgeries.
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/ 12 January 2002
Police raided the homes of several rightwingers on Friday in the wake of recent bombings blamed on the far right and threats of more violence.
Crawford von Abo, the Free State farmer who was arrested in Zimbabwe recently for being on his farm there, is determined to return to that country next month to face criminal charges.
A programme to provide a basic amount of free water to every household in South Africa has now reached an estimated 27-million people.
Around 100 white Free Staters braved the spring rain on Wednesday to attend a mass meeting in Bloemfontein organised by the provincial ANC aimed at ”bridge-building” between it and the white community.
Temperatures ranging from as little 2C to as high as 38,5C within only three weeks had damaged one of the most promising South African wheat crops in years.
The remains of the black South African soldiers who perished 85 years ago with the sunken SS Mendi war ship in France during the First World War will soon be brought home.
Harmony has secured the distribution rights to the United States and Canada for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The first donation out of the Free State business sector for the promotion of land reform was handed to the farmers’ union Free State Agriculture on Monday.
Limpopo was the province with the highest economic growth rate last year. It also has the highest economic growth rate on average over the past six years, Statistics SA said on Thursday.
A conservation campaign promoting South Africa’s yellowfish above the exotic bass and trout has elevated the indigenous species’ popularity with anglers so much that foreigners are starting to visit the country to add yellowfish to their trophy lists.
A 56-year-old farmer was killed and his wife seriously wounded recently when four burglars opened fire on them on their farm in the Free State.
The three-week municipal workers’ strike looks set to end after the SA Local Government Association announced on Tuesday night it had reached a tentative agreement with two trade unions.
Smaller parties lost their members to the bigger ones and 16 of a total of 555 municipal councillors who crossed the floor over the past two weeks had tried to switch political parties more than once, says the Independent Electoral Commission.
Free State ANC leaders met a group of Afrikaner community leaders on Thursday in what has been likened to the watershed Dakar talks in 1987 during the apartheid era.
The Johannesburg CBD has begun feeling the effects of the municipal workers’ strike, with most of the city’s busiest streets covered in a sea of rubbish on Wednesday morning.
Agri Free State farmers established their own special task force at a meeting this week to patrol the border between South Africa and Lesotho.
A sun-dappled morning breaks over Braam Pretorius street, a picture of leafy serenity, and the white-only staff of Radio Pretoria turn on the microphones for another day of vocal resistance to the new South Africa.
Percy Yutar, most prominent in the public eye during the early 1960s as a State prosecutor in the now-famous Rivonia Treason Trial, has died aged 90 in Johannesburg.
Three members of a Springfontein family were in custody on Thursday night after a woman allegedly stabbed a visiting cousin to death following an argument apparently fuelled by alcohol, police said.
An awaiting trial prisoner, who escaped with four others from a Free State prison, allegedly shot dead an accomplice and wounded another as police closed in on the group in Kroonstad on Thursday.
Political control changed hands in 21 municipalities in four provinces following a 15-day floor-crossing window period for local councillors — 13 of them in the Western Cape, it emerged on Friday.
Bloemfontein’s Grootvlei Prison head Tatolo Setlai, who allowed inmates to make a video of alleged warder corruption, has laid a complaint against his employers following his ”temporary transfer”.
A prominent Free State farmer has accused President Thabo Mbeki and the government of failing to protect his substantial business interests and those of other South Africans in Zimbabwe.
Over the last 10 days around 1 000 people, aged between three weeks and 95 years, have climbed — or been carried up — mountains across South Africa as part of a countrywide celebration of the International Year of the Mountain.
THE Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and its alliance partners announced that unemployment remained the most difficult challenge for government, as more workers lost their jobs and more people faced poverty.