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/ 26 October 2004
The Gauteng province will consider increasing taxes to raise extra funds if research shows this to be justified, the provincial treasury said in Pretoria on Tuesday. Addressing the Gauteng legislature’s finance portfolio committee, Nomfundo Tshabalala, acting deputy director general, said greater revenue raising powers were needed in the province.
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/ 26 October 2004
Investigators have found that allegations of matric examination papers leaked in Gauteng were ”baseless and unsubstantiated”, the provincial education department said on Tuesday. It was alleged on Monday that a business economics paper was leaked in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg.
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/ 25 October 2004
Only 200 of an expected 5 000 residents marched on the Natalspruit hospital in Katlehong on Monday afternoon to demand a response to a memorandum handed to the hospital’s management last month. One of the marchers, Patricia Mkani, said nothing seems to be going right at the hospital.
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/ 21 October 2004
Are the ruthless hierarchs of the ruling Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe finally facing up to the fact that Zimbabweans are going hungry? With Amnesty International releasing yet another report about the worsening food crisis, there were reports this week that the Zanu-PF politburo was preparing to debate the issue. Typically, more pressing bureaucratic matters swamped the agenda.
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/ 16 October 2004
Schabir Shaik’s Nkobi group paid almost a quarter of a million rand to woo Zulu King Goodwill Zwelethini from the Inkatha Freedom Party to the African National Congress, according to a document handed to the Durban High Court. The document is the transcript of an interview Scorpions investigators conducted with Shaik’s former business associate, Professor Themba Sono.
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/ 15 October 2004
A wealthy South African, accused of illegally exporting more than R200-million-worth of precious metals, was arrested at Johannesburg International airport on Friday. The man, now living in Newmarket, United Kingdom, had arrived in South Africa for a holiday with his family when he was arrested at the airport.
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/ 15 October 2004
Stephen Saad — MD of South African pharmaceutical company Aspen Pharmacare Holdings — has been named as the South African winner of the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year Awards for 2004/05, Ernst & Young announced on Friday. Saad will represent South Africa at the global awards ceremony, to be held in Monte Carlo in May next year.
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/ 15 October 2004
”It is no secret that our ability to manage leadership succession in the movement and state structures is under a serious test.” This is an extract from an African National Congress (ANC) Gauteng document, which calls for the presidential succession debate to start. It has stirred a hornet’s nest. It also reveals the factionalism, careerism and other threats facing the party.
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/ 14 October 2004
Themba Luke Radebe, one of four men accused of murdering members of two Benoni families in February, on Thursday accused the police of assaulting and torturing him to extract a confession. Radebe (44) told Judge Nico Coetzee in the Secunda High Court that a plastic bag was put over his head and kept there until he fainted.
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/ 14 October 2004
The African National Congress has rejected media speculation that it is opening debate on who is to succeed President Thabo Mbeki as South African leader. In a statement on Thursday — in response to such speculation — the party said it wants to clarify a number of issues regarding the leadership succession.
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/ 14 October 2004
The first witness in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial, Independent Democrats deputy leader Themba Sono, was in the witness box in the Durban High Court on Thursday. Sono said he met Shaik in 1996 through a colleague.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123695">Tangled web of intrigue at Shaik trial</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123679">Zuma debt aired in Shaik trial</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=123667">State shows link between Shaik, Zuma</a>
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/ 13 October 2004
Improved security for banks and cash-in-transit vehicles has seen robbers turn to the retail industry, which has suffered a R12-million loss so far this year, Kobus Kuyler, general manager of safety and security at Pick ‘n Pay, said on Wednesday. This is up from the total loss for 2003 of R9-million.
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/ 12 October 2004
Ordinary South Africans on Monday celebrated a decade of democracy by sharing with Parliament their experiences of the ”rainbow nation”, whose post-apartheid Constitution ensures equality for all. But many of the 150 participants who attended the special session complained that the black majority were still sidetracked after decades of oppression, and formed the main chunk of the jobless.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have 12 hours to get out of South Africa, the Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) said in Pretoria on Thursday. About 150 marchers walked from the IMF building in Park Street to the World Bank building in Pretorius Street to protest againstAfrica’s debt and the institution’s pro-privatisation policies.
Hundreds of anti-debt campaigners were expected to take to the streets of Pretoria on Thursday in protest against the World Bank’s privatisation policy. Sonto Mthimkhulu, chairperson of the Gauteng branch of the International Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC), said they would march from the International Monetary Fund offices in Park Street to the World Bank building in Pretorius Street to hand over a memorandum.
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.
The ambulance crew who failed to transport an injured, homeless man to hospital in Johannesburg will appear before a disciplinary tribunal on Thursday. Johannesburg Metro spokesperson Gabu Tugwana said on Monday that an initial inquiry by the city’s emergency management services into the incident had found the men had acted negligently.
Four policemen were behind bars on Friday following an exposé on South African Broadcasting Corporation television showing policemen demanding bribes from prostitutes and their clients in Johannesburg suburbs, said Gauteng safety and security minister Firoz Cachalia. Seven policemen were identified and suspended after the television programme.
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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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/ 30 September 2004
Since the front section of this paper seems to be getting all the good stories, Oom Krisjan is happy to be the first to bring details of Travelgate II. On a recent whip-around of city press clubs to tell the public why they are not a bunch of high-flying gadabouts, the speakers of the National Assembly and the National Council of Whatever all arrived in the Big Smoke on the same plane. Definitely a step in the right direction, you’d say.
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/ 29 September 2004
Kanellie Hatzikonstandinou, accused of murdering an 81-year-old shopper at the Cresta shopping centre in Johannesburg on Monday, appeared in the Randburg Regional Court on Wednesday. Her tearful father, Iounno Hatzikonstandinou, entered the dock and before giving her a hug, said in a Greek accent: ”I want to apologise for what happened… I am saying sorry to the family.”
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/ 29 September 2004
A police task team has been appointed to investigate corruption following an exposé on SABC television on Tuesday night showing policemen harassing prostitutes in Johannesburg. ”We view the allegations in a serious light… at the moment we will be investigating corruption,” said a police spokesperson, senior superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht.
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/ 23 September 2004
It’s nice to know that Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has a faithful bunch of people working for her at the ministry — folk who put the interests of the nation above such petty instincts as doing a day’s work. Lemmer’s musings were prompted by a call made recently to the Ministry of Health by a staffer at an Aids NGO, who was trying to trace an official to answer an important query …
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/ 22 September 2004
The Public Services Coordinating Bargaining Council stalled on Wednesday when the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) felt it had not gathered enough of a mandate to sign the government’s proposed agreement. However, the wage dispute ”technically” came to an end after the minister of public service and administration signed an increase proposal.
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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
A fire has ravaged the Madalakufa informal settlement in Thembisa on the East Rand, the Gauteng housing department said on Sunday. Departmental spokesperson Mongezi Mnyani said the fire started on Saturday night and was extinguished in the early hours of Sunday morning.
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/ 19 September 2004
Thousands of mourners, of all races and creeds, packed the Aasvoëlkop Dutch Reformed Church in Northcliff on Saturday to pay their final respects to Afrikaans anti-apartheid activist Beyers Naude in a moving ceremony. ”Oom Bey” — once rejected by his own people for rejecting his church’s justification of apartheid — died on September 7 at the age of 89. President Thabo Mbeki said it was because of Naude that black and white South Africans could walk together.
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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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/ 16 September 2004
Hundreds of guests and delegates gathered for the opening of the Pan African Parliament’s (PAP) second sitting at the Gallagher Estate conference centre in Midrand on Thursday morning. Delegates from 46 countries that have ratified the PAP protocol are to take part in deliberations from this Friday until October 7.
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/ 15 September 2004
Black economic empowerment company Akani Leisure Investments has taken over the Halcyon Hotels Group — which includes in its portfolio the prestigious Bay hotel and Blues restaurant in Camps Bay. The acquisition represents the first major empowerment transaction at the top end of the Western Cape hospitality industry.
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/ 13 September 2004
The department of health is being taken to court again by Aids pressure group the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which is demanding the department release its detailed anti-retroviral rollout programme. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has already filed notice of her intention to oppose it.