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.
Four years ago the National Association of Conservancies of South Africa (Nacsa) did not exist. Now it operates in seven provinces, with 750 conservancies, protecting about 30-million hectares of land. "That is five times more than SANParks and the provinces control, and we do it on no budget at all," says Nacsa chairperson Anthony Duigan.
The government stuck to its guns on Tuesday in the current pay dispute with public servants, saying the current salary demands of the public servants were not realistic. Public-service unions rejected a revised offer of a 6,5% pay rise by the government on Monday and are demanding a 12% rise.
Residents of Gauteng earn more, are better educated and are likely to live longer than people in other provinces, a South African Institute of Race Relations study has found. In a report released on Tuesday, it identified ”glaring inequalities” in service delivery and living conditions across the provinces.
Motorists should not put ”pressure on the pumps” ahead of Wednesday’s fuel-price hike as some filling stations may run dry, the South African Petroleum Retailers’ Association said. Spokesperson Peter Noke said Gauteng has been experiencing fuel shortages, and on Monday 23 Engen petrol stations were without fuel for the entire day.
Striking public-sector workers in South Africa warned on Monday that government threats to sack health workers would derail efforts to resolve an increasingly bitter pay dispute. Fikile Majola, secretary general of the National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union said negotiations would resume on Monday.
Debate on how to strengthen the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), occasioned by its 10th anniversary, will not achieve the desired outcome if led by critics who are distanced from the institution. This includes the press. Earlier this year, NCOP chairperson Mninwa Mahlangu remarked that in general, the media had scant knowledge of the council.
The government warned striking health workers to return to work on Monday or face being fired while soldiers staffed hospitals and private ambulance services moved seriously-ill babies to private facilities. ”If they are not at their workplace [by Monday], then we will be instituting a process of terminating their services,” said national director general of health Thamsanqa Dennis Mseleku.
Soldiers, volunteers and private hospitals have stepped in to help public-health facilities crippled by the public-service pay strike which started on Friday. Army medics were on duty from 8am on Sunday in wards of the hard-hit King Edward VIII hospital, in Durban.
A woman was critically injured when she plunged more that 15m down a mountain at a resort in Potchefstroom on Saturday. ER24 spokesperson Werner Vermaak said the woman was climbing up the Vredefort Chimney at the Thabelo Thabong Mountain Resort with other climbers at 9.30am when she fell.
Union leaders sought to draw other sectors into their wage dispute with the government on Friday as thousands of public servants countrywide downed tools. The first day of what the unions said would be an indefinite strike passed without major incident and had a patchy effect on service delivery.
The controversial monorail from Soweto to Johannesburg is on hold while the provincial government consults more widely on the proposal, said Gauteng’s provincial ministers of transport and finance on Friday. The project was announced on May 16 but Transport Minister Jeff Radebe subsequently ordered it to be put on hold.
The national public-service strike was largely peaceful on Friday, but got off to a violent start in Cape Town, police said. Police used stun grenades to disperse protesters outside Tygerberg Hospital after about 500 people had blocked both the entrance and the road outside the facility, said Inspector Bernadine Steyn.
The retail price of all grades of petrol will rise by 23 cents per litre from Wednesday June 6, the Department of Minerals and Energy announced on Friday. The latest changes bring the retail price for a litre of 95 octane unleaded petrol in Gauteng to R7,24 a litre and to R7 a litre at the coast — the highest to date.
Motorists were asked to avoid the Johannesburg inner city on Friday, as a protest march by striking public servants was expected to block the streets. The march was expected to start at about 11am from the Educon building in De Korte Street, and proceed to the premier’s office at the corner of Simmonds and Fox Streets.
Fifty-four percent of South African drivers claim to have been on the receiving end of aggressive or threatening driving behaviour in the past 12 months, a recent study has found. A total number 1 986 respondents from Gauteng, Durban and Cape Town were asked about various acts of road rage experienced, ranging from persistent honking of horns to actual physical violence.
A fashion designer was shot dead by hijackers while visiting the Gauteng provincial legislature, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Thursday. ”This is truly shocking and sad. It shows that we have a far way to go in ensuring safety in the inner city despite the CCTV cameras and the extra policing,” said the DA’s Jack Bloom.