More than 500 woman from the Khutsong Women’s Forum marched to the local police station on Friday to call on the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to intervene in the ongoing unrest in Khutsong. Spokesperson for the forum Pearl Khanyile said they had asked SAHRC chairperson Jody Kollapen to accept the memorandum.
Gauteng’s planned monorail should be kept off taxi routes, the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) said on Friday. Santaco secretary general Philip Taaibosch said there was no agreement between the taxi industry and the government on the planned monorail between Soweto and central Johannesburg.
Opposition parties on Friday demanded answers on the troubled electronic national traffic information system, following allegations the Auditor General had warned of problems before the system was introduced. The Inkatha Freedom Party said it has urgently tabled questions in Parliament to Transport Minister Jeff Radebe.
South African rugby this week found itself once again dancing to the strains of a political orchestra
The communities of Khutsong and Moutse will contest the demarcation issue in the Constitutional Court, their attorneys said on Thursday. ”We are now in a process of compiling papers,” said Rudolph Jansen of Lawyers for Human Rights. Jansen said papers for Khutsong would be filed soon.
The increase in the period of internship for doctors from one to two years in 2008 may cause a shortage of doctors, the Health Department said on Thursday. Spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said the department was making efforts to address the challenge. ”There is ongoing collaboration between relevant stakeholders,” he said.
Conditions in some Gauteng state hospitals pose a serious health risk to patients, Beeld newspaper reported on Thursday. It said this emerged from complaints by readers in the past week. They spoke of cockroaches in hospital kitchens, dirty toilets, faeces on the walls and of incompetent nurses who treated wounds without gloves.
An interim Labour Court order forced a halt to a security guard strike at Magnum Shield Security late on Wednesday, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union said. The strike was over the selling of work contracts, which would require some Magnum Shield guards to work for Springbok Fidelity.
Thirteen people were arrested overnight in the troubled Khutsong township and more police are being deployed in the area, North West police said on Thursday morning. Superintendent Louis Jacobs said the arrests came after a supermarket was broken into and looted at about 10pm and a spaza shop was burnt down.
Suburbs in the Ekurhuleni municipality experience at least one power failure a day, a Democratic Alliance spokesperson said on Wednesday. He made the comment after constant contact with councillors and listening to a radio broadcast on which Jacob Marogo, Eskom chief executive, was ”evasive” and non-committal about plans to curb the problem.
A petrol-bombed truck burned out and three petrol bombs were thrown at police vehicles in Khutsong on Wednesday, North West police said. Superintendent Louis Jacobs said residents had started throwing stones and burning tyres in the morning. Three petrol bombs were thrown at police Nyala armoured vehicles but did not cause major damage, he said.
A R12-billion monorail will be built between Johannesburg and Soweto in the next two years, it was announced on Wednesday. "By 2009, no one from Soweto should have to wait more than 15 minutes for transport," Gauteng finance and economic affairs minister Paul Mashatile said at the launch of the project in Sandton.
Taxi commuters in the Khutsong area were likely to be stranded on Wednesday after local taxi operators suspended services at midnight, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported. The suspension came in support of the community’s objection to the incorporation of Khutsong into the North West province, the report said.
Despite African National Congress (ANC) comments to the contrary, businessman Tokyo Sexwale has confirmed that he is being lobbied for the post of party president, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Tuesday. Lobbying would be followed by nominations and Sexwale said he would want to know why he was wanted.
The Gauteng African National Congress (ANC) on Tuesday said it had not yet started discussing names of candidates for ANC national leadership positions. ANC provincial spokesperson Ignatius Jacobs said provincial leadership had decided earlier this year to ”focus on the principles of leadership and not on any names”.
South Africa’s 18th Gay and Lesbian Pride celebrations will be held in the streets of Rosebank, Johannesburg, it was announced on Tuesday. The Johannesburg Pride is the largest gay and lesbian event on the continent, and celebrates South Africa’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex communities.
Zero pupil attendance was reported at some Khutsong schools on Tuesday, hours after two people were arrested for attacks on three spaza shops. Police spokesperson Superintendent Louis Jacobs said two people were arrested for housebreaking and theft in the early hours of Tuesday.
In the same week that a major climate conference said that gas-emission cuts need to be both drastic and urgent, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk gave his go-ahead for a giant new Eskom coal-fired power station. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that the world has just 10 years to implement new strategies to combat global warming.
South African environmental inspectors discovered 10 venomous snakes smuggled in video-cassette cases when they searched a suspicious package at a post office, officials said on Monday. Working on a tip-off, the inspectors seized the package from the Czech Republic.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday questioned the Gauteng health department’s rejection of 22 out of 50 applications for new private hospitals and clinics in the past seven years. Jack Bloom, the party’s Gauteng health spokesperson, said it was ”crazy” to turn down so many proposals by the private health sector.
There was no schooling in Khutsong on Monday despite a 90% attendance by pupils at some schools after a month-long boycott. ”We have confirmation that where learners turned up in large numbers, teaching never took place,” said North West education spokesperson Charles Raseala.
Cosmo City is a place of hope for the new working class looking for an affordable home and a dream come true for people from informal settlements who now live in more than an enclosure of zinc sheets. It brings together sectors of the country’s population who would never have imagined living side by side.
Pupils were returning to schools in Khutsong on Monday after almost a month’s boycott in protest at incorporation from Gauteng into North West. ”In my school, learners are here,” said Khutsong Representative Council of Learners president Sibusiso Kula, who is a grade-12 pupil at Babiri High School.
Hundreds of Taiwanese, Chinese and South Africans gathered to pay their last respects to murdered journalist Gino Feng in Edenvale on Saturday. ”He was my good teacher,” said Jason Wu, who has taken over from Feng as editor-in-chief of the China Express. ”This thing has shocked the Chinese community.”
Business tycoon Tokyo Sexwale said he would ”consider” nomination for the African National Congress presidency at the party’s December conference should he be asked to stand. In January when the Sunday Times reported of Sexwale being approached to run for presidency he dismissed the reports as ”kite-flying”.
A Cape High Court judge involved in a defamation lawsuit that could sink his own judge president has been reported to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), media reports said on Saturday. Judge Siraj Desai has been reported to the JSC by the Pan-Africanist Congress chairperson in Gauteng, Thami ka Plaatjie, who claimed Desai did not have the ”impeccable character” needed in a judge.
The month-long school boycott continued in Khutsong township near Carletonville on Friday. Some matric pupils, who had not been taught in the last five weeks, blamed the government for the lost study time. ”The person who decided to move us to the North West is to blame …,” Mamsy Khumalo, a grade 12 pupil at Badirile High School, said.
Lives could be affected if Gauteng’s new R600-million centralised 10111 call system did not work properly when it was implemented, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Friday. This comes amid the chaos surrounding the recent implementation of the new electronic national traffic information system, said DA Gauteng safety spokesperson John Moodey.
African champions Hendrik de Villiers and Kate Roberts view the Triathlon World Cup’s opening kilometre of the cycling stage as a potential deciding factor on Sunday. ”The swim should be all right if it is not too windy in the bay area, but it’s the first 600m of the cycle stage … that could be a bit of a test for the athletes,” De Villiers said.
Representatives of learners in Khutsong on Friday urged pupils to go back to school. ”We will try by all means to make sure that learners are at school on Monday and that teaching is taking place,” Khutsong Representative Council of Learners member Sibusiso Kula told reporters.
We may all be preoccupied with the race for the presidency of the ANC, but the volume and tone of the reaction to Helen Zille’s election as DA leader suggests an interest far beyond the party’s electoral base in the future of opposition politics. Even President Thabo Mbeki has been conciliatory, inviting Tony Leon to the Union Buildings at long last.
Everyone knows <i>Sunday Times</i> columnist David Bullard has enough vitriol to run a small vehicle for a month.