A devastating strike and looming policy conference are finally prodding the shadowy contest for the leadership of South Africa’s governing party into the open, even if no candidate wants to admit it. The next African National Congress president will be formally elected in December at a party conference.
More than 2Â 000 jobs in road construction and maintenance in Gauteng will go to young people, Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa told a Youth Day rally at the Johannesburg Stadium on Saturday. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change said the ”spectacular courage” shown by the youth of South Africa on June 16 1976 inspires Zimbabwe’s youth.
Gauteng is to get about 10 new mixed housing developments in the current financial year, provincial housing minister Nomvula Mokonyane said on Friday. They will be in Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Mogale City and Johannesburg, she told the Gauteng legislature in her 2007/08 budget speech.
A security officer was stoned to death on Friday when residents of an informal settlement outside Pretoria resisted an attempt to evict them, Gauteng police said. The residents then set fire to a truck that was to be used to move their belongings, said police spokesperson Inspector Paul Ramaloko. Three Nissan 1400 bakkies were also set on fire, he said.
The Gauteng transport department is playing double standards with the new number-plate system, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Friday. DA’s transport spokesperson James Swart said it is not clear how much the new number plates will cost motorists.
No more floor-crossing Hats off to the African National Congress (ANC), which at its recent policy conference revealed that it intends to discuss the immoral floor-crossing legislation at its national conference in December, where there will undoubtedly be a strong recommendation that it be scrapped. In the meantime, the party has proposed that it would […]
M&G gagged Being a journalist myself, I am absolutely disgusted by what has happened. Can we regard South Africa as a genuine democratic nation and an example to the rest of Africa when those who once fought for democracy undermine one of the most important pillars of this phenomenon? How can it be that authorities […]
How can teachers not be essential? I am a matric student currently attending Pretoria High School for Girls. I would like to voice my opinion on the recent strike action on behalf of the youth of South Africa. I hope that Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi is a subscriber of your newspaper […]
Govt out of touch David Macarlane (June 22) highlights the education department’s flawed policy of requiring qualifying schools to exempt poor parents from fees, while failing to compensate them for lost revenue. In fact, it is the fee-paying parents, many of whom make considerable sacrifices to meet their obligations, who are subsidising exempted parents. Education […]
Black economic embarrasment After 10 years of democracy and equality in my African South Africa, it’s almost tragic to note that I have far more opportunities than my white South African counterparts. Affirmative action and black economic empowerment (BEE) are just flashy labels for flat-out discrimination. Since some of us are clearly more equal than […]
Deaths in South Africa are on the increase, with 590Â 000 in 2005 — 3,3% up on the previous year, according to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) figures on mortality and causes of death. ”The overall number of deaths shows a continuous increase from 1997 to 2005,” Stats SA said in a statement on Thursday.
Police have arrested 80 people for Road Accident Fund (RAF) fraud involving R3,7-million. Director Phuti Setati said they were accused of colluding with touts to fabricate information about vehicle accidents in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in May. ”False claims were allegedly submitted to the RAF for payment of fictitious injuries sustained in accidents that never occurred,” he said.
The former head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions told striking public-sector workers on Wednesday that negotiations should take place at the table and not on the streets. Mbhazima Shilowa’s comments were a sign of deepening differences between the ruling African National Congress and its allies.
Transnet’s plans to boost freight rail capacity include a feasibility study on a rail ring around greater Johannesburg to reduce delays, media reports said on Thursday. Moira Moses, the group executive for Transnet projects, said in a presentation: ”We want to build a new hub [to replace City Deep].” This proposal still needs to be presented to the Transnet board.
The Democratic Alliance on Wednesday said the planned replacement of Gauteng vehicles’ number plates had been kept a secret by the provincial department of transport. It was announced on Tuesday that the province’s motorists will have to purchase new number plates from January next year, as the current number system is almost exhausted.
Police have rejected as a hoax an email that warns people against ”stonings and shootings” on Gauteng highways on Saturday. National spokesperson Director Sally de Beer said on Wednesday the email claimed the South African Police Service and metro police were on standby because of the alleged threat.
Africa will have to find its own way and develop its own growth agenda, which will not be either the Indian or Chinese way of forging economic development, Mvelaphanda Holdings executive chairperson Tokyo Sexwale argued on Wednesday at a World Economic Forum media briefing at the start of the forum conversation on Africa.
South African trade unions have launched one of the biggest national strikes of the post-apartheid era in a move widely seen as spearheading the left’s challenge to win control of the ruling African National Congress ahead of next year’s presidential election. Public-service unions seem determined not to back down on their demands.
South Africa’s civil-service strike broadened on Wednesday as other union workers walked out, piling more pressure on the government in a dispute stoking political tensions in Africa’s largest economy. Union leaders have vowed to shut the country down in sympathy with civil servants, whose two-week-old strike has already caused chaos in hospitals, schools and public offices.
Five men arrested in connection with a burglary at Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Soweto home are to appear in the Orlando Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, said Gauteng police. The men were arrested on Monday. Tutu was in Europe at the time of the break-in.
An Alberton school principal was shot dead at his home on Tuesday, Gauteng police said. Spokesperson Superintendent Lungelo Dlamini said Nick Karvelas (44), head of the Little Sparrows Private School in Randhart, was apparently called home by a servant. ”It appears that the house was about to be robbed.”
If you weren’t one of the lucky visitors to experience throngs of product owners and travel journalists, fantastic tourism exhibitions (and some mediocre ones), aching feet, too many cocktail parties and wall-to-wall networking sessions, then you missed out on this year’s Travel Indaba at the ICC in Durban.
Last week John Perlman, the former host of SAfm’s morning show, started a new chapter at Gauteng regional radio station Kaya FM, hosting Today with John Perlman, a show he hopes to have a long-term commitment to. ”I’m not a dabbler. It’s not something I do,” Perlman said.
With only two weeks to go before the ruling party’s crunch national policy conference, most of the party’s provincial structures have not taken an official position regarding President Thabo Mbeki standing as African National Congress president for a third term.
The government’s firing of striking nurses will anger workers and their unions, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Saturday. ”All the trade unions will be extremely angry at this provocative and quite unnecessary move by the government,” said Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven.
While the Dutch Reformed Church had decided on a more accommodating approach to gay membership at its national synod meeting in Gauteng this week, it also firmly rejected gay marriage and sex. The synod was clear in its stance that marriage could only be between a man and a woman, newly elected moderator Professor Piet Strauss said on Friday.
The budget for the Gauteng health department has increased by 15,8% to improve health services for the province’s growing population, provincial minister Brian Hlongwa said on Friday. ”The growth in the budget is a reflection of the increasing demand for quality health services,” he said.
Gauteng would be short of 5-billion litres of fuel in 2010, Sipho Maseko, chief operating officer of BP Africa, has said. Media reports said the province did not have sufficient capacity to move imported product from the coast and this would put the soccer World Cup and economic growth at risk.
In a shift from their original bargaining position, public-service unions are set to table a new demand on Friday for a 10% pay increase, in a bid to end the week-long public-service strike, union sources have told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>. The unions will also propose the appointment of a facilitator to help break the wage impasse.
This month’s ANC policy conference, and its national conference in December, inspire both concern and confidence. The concern arises because the stakes are enormous: the outcome of these meetings will affect the course of South African history for many years to come.
Hundreds of people crowded into the Great Hall at Wits University in Johannesburg on Thursday evening to hear businessman Tokyo Sexwale talk about leadership. His address is part of the Wits public lecture series and is billed as ”Towards a common future: Public conversations on leadership with Tokyo Sexwale”.
There was no malice in the announcement made about a proposal to establish a monorail in Gauteng, nor in the oversight in not consulting with Transport Minister Jeff Radebe, the Gauteng Executive Council found on Thursday. This was after the council received a report on the matter on Thursday morning, said spokesperson Annette Griessel.