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/ 14 February 2005
A feasibility study for the second phase of the multibillion-dollar Lesotho highlands water project will begin at the end of April, Lesotho’s natural resources minister said on Monday. The study — funded by the Lesotho and South African governments — is expected to take two years.
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/ 10 February 2005
Begging on street corners will soon be a thing of the past for Johannesburg street children and beggars in general, the Gauteng social services department said on Thursday. The department has begun a drive to register street children for birth certificates and identity documents.
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/ 9 February 2005
Security at all Gauteng public hospitals will be reviewed, the province’s health department said on Tuesday, after the alleged rape of a terminally ill elderly woman in her hospital bed in a gynaecological ward at the Pretoria Academic hospital. The patient’s subsequent death was probably more to blame on her illness than the attack, the department said.
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/ 9 February 2005
The psychiatry head of the Gauteng health department will consult a mentally ill woman after she attacked a fellow patient at a hospital. Departmental spokesperson Popo Maja said on Tuesday the woman, being held at Sterkfontein mental hospital after she slit the throat of a pensioner at the Cresta shopping centre in Johannesburg, would be visited on Thursday.
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/ 8 February 2005
The 35-year-old woman who slit the throat of a pensioner at the Cresta shopping centre in Johannesburg has attacked a fellow patient at the Sterkfontein mental hospital. Kanellie Hazikonstandinou was committed to the hospital after a court found that she was not fit to stand trial for the murder of 81-year-old Maureen Naughtin.
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/ 6 February 2005
The Democratic Alliance on Sunday refused to participate in any attempt to use Parliament to intimidate or interfere with the Scorpions in their investigation of Travelgate. In a statement, the DA said the African National Congress’s threat to summon the Scorpions is ”a naked abuse of power”.
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/ 4 February 2005
The Gauteng government has asked police to investigate the awarding of an information technology (IT) contract to Capstone 518 for the province’s ”Gauteng Shared Services Centre (GSSC)”, finance MEC Paul Mashatile said on Friday. The company Capstone 518 was contracted as sole provider of IT software services to the GSSC.
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/ 2 February 2005
Mpumalanga Economic Empowerment Corporation chief executive Ernest Khosa has resigned again, the province’s finance department confirmed on Wednesday. Spokesperson Thomas Nkosi said Khosa resigned on Tuesday. He resigned last week, but withdrew his resignation over the weekend.
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/ 2 February 2005
It is a common refrain: South Africa is a unitary state and it is reactionary and small-minded to engage in parochial battles about which town should fall under which provincial government. So why would councillors resign, tyres be burnt and stayaways be held because some residents of the far East Rand and far West Rand do not want to be moved away from Gauteng?
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/ 1 February 2005
Gauteng shebeen owners have until the end of February to apply for trading permits while they prepare themselves to comply with the province’s new Liquor Act. The Gauteng liquor licensing office extended the closing date for the application of shebeen permits from January 31 to February 28.
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/ 26 January 2005
After a recent spate of drownings across the country, police have emphasised the need for water-safety awareness. ”In Gauteng, we had 41 drownings in December and 22 in January,” police spokesperson Eugene Opperman said on Wednesday. The bodies of three children who drowned in separate incidents were recovered on Tuesday alone.
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/ 26 January 2005
Sixteen of the best horses currently racing in South Africa go to the post just after 5pm on Saturday afternoon to contest the R1,5-million J&B Met at Kenilworth in Cape Town. As always, this is no ordinary race — it is an event that brings the Cape capital to a standstill for many locals and overseas visitors.
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/ 26 January 2005
The Gauteng health department has identified four hospitals with management problems and poor patient care. ”We are reluctant to name them. We don’t want to inform them through the press. We want to inform them in our own way,” department spokesperson Popo Maja said on Tuesday.
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/ 25 January 2005
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union accused the Department of Education on Tuesday of taking the credit when pupils from disadvantaged schools do well, while downplaying the bad conditions under which they learn. Tuesday was the last day of the Access to Learning Material Conference in Parktown, Johannesburg.
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/ 25 January 2005
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa on Tuesday declared a dispute at the Volkswagen South Africa manufacturing plant in Uitenhage over an incentive scheme and what it calls unilateral outsourcing of the packing department at the parts-distribution division at Roodekop in Gauteng.
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/ 19 January 2005
Two of Russia’s brightest gymnastics stars of the new millennium, double Olympic champion Elena Zamolodchikova and triple Olympic medallist Ekaterina Lobazniouk, have arrived in South Africa to kick-start a local club’s programme. They are accompanied by one of Russia’s foremost acro-gymnastic choreographers.
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/ 18 January 2005
Chief land-claims commissioner Tozi Gwanya says he believes that all 22 447 unresolved land-restitution claims will be settled by the end of this year. ”We are confident,” he said on Monday in Cape Town, where he and provincial commissioners are holding their regular quarterly meeting.
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/ 17 January 2005
Firearms handed in to police in three provinces in the first two weeks of a three-month amnesty period were mostly legal weapons. On Monday, about 560 firearms had been already been handed over to police in Gauteng, who also received more than 21 000 rounds of ammunition, of which most were handed in voluntarily.
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/ 15 January 2005
KwaZulu-Natal swimming star Terence Parkin kept going on his world-record-breaking streak, while Gauteng marathon man Isaac Mahlake put his best foot forward to take bronze as Team South Africa kept pulling in the medals at the Deaflympics in Melbourne, Australia, on Friday.
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/ 15 January 2005
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Friday came out in support for prison warders in their dispute with the Department of Correctional Services. Cosatu said a meeting of its public-sector affiliates on Thursday agreed on a programme of action to rally support for the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union.
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/ 15 January 2005
Aids activists will join President Thabo Mbeki and anticipated thousands of other mourners at the funeral of former president Nelson Mandela’s son, Makgatho Mandela, on Saturday. Makgatho died of Aids-related complications last week, and Mandela used the announcement of his death to plead for openness on the disease.
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/ 14 January 2005
As the new school year gets under way next week, Western Cape health authorities warned on Friday of a measles epidemic in Cape Town if children are not immunised against the highly infectious disease. A measles outbreak was detected in Cape Town’s Fish Hoek and Sun Valley, with Gauteng and Kwazulu-Natal already experiencing epidemics.
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/ 13 January 2005
Team South Africa’s swimming golden boy, Terence Parkin, smashed his fifth deaf world record in six days as the medals continued to flow the rainbow nation team’s way, at the Deaflympics in Melbourne, Australia, on Thursday. Durban-based Parkin set a 200m butterfly world record of two minutes and 5,23 seconds.
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/ 12 January 2005
One of the reasons for an increase in the number of vehicles being hijacked in and around Cape Town is residents are buying more cars, and so the hijackers have more to choose from, according to Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula. Hijackers from Gauteng had also moved their activities south, and Capetonians were unaware of the strategies they used ”and easily fall prey”.
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/ 11 January 2005
The South African retail petrol price is likely to be increased once again in March if the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ basket price remains above $38 per barrel and the rand stays near R6 per dollar. On Monday, there was already an under-recovery of almost 20 cents per litre.
The Merafong municipality, which includes Carletonville and Khutsong, may soon be incorporated into the North West province.
The head of Johannesburg’s Summit College died on New Year’s Eve when he fell 40m down a rockface at the Victoria Falls while trying to recover spectacles he had dropped, Zimbabwe police confirmed on Tuesday. Rocks and vegetation are notoriously slippery along the lip of the 80m chasm, which is wetted continually by spray.
South African health and beauty retailer New Clicks Holdings is forging ahead with its plans to include pharmacy dispensaries in many of its Clicks stores in the new year, as well as expanding its Hyperpharm brand, despite the current legal and regulatory uncertainties surrounding medicine pricing and pharmacy fees.
Six injured South African survivors of the tsunami in Thailand arrived at Lanseria International Airport on board a rescue flight from Bangkok on Saturday night, as one of the biggest relief efforts ever seen finally cranked into action, with world aid pledges passing the -billion mark.
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/ 30 December 2004
Tsunami survivors slammed government officials and singled out the South African ambassador in Thailand on radio and the press for their handling of the tsunami crisis. A Pretoria newspaper quoted survivors accusing South African officials in Thailand of incompetence.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=177242">SA rallies to aid of Tsunami victims</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=177241">Tsunami toll nears 120 000</a>
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<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=177229">SA tsunami survivors return</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=177200">South Africans still missing</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=177227">Aid arrives in tsunami disaster zones</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=177203">Calls for UN to lead relief effort</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=177202">The true horror emerges</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/content/l3_fl2.asp?cg=tsunami%20disaster&o=194303">Tsunami disaster special report</a>
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/ 29 December 2004
Tsunami survivors sobbed and broke down when they met their families at Johannesburg International airport on Wednesday after arriving on a mercy flight from Phuket, Thailand — and praised two young South Africans who coordinated the rescue effort. Meanwhile, the number of people killed in Sunday’s earthquake and tsunamis neared 81Â 000.
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/ 29 December 2004
The 2004 matric class has achieved a pass rate of more than 70% for the third year in a row, says Education Minister Naledi Pandor. The official results in eight provinces were released during a media briefing at Parliament, but the results in Mpumalanga have been withheld because some are under investigation.