The Tourism Business Council of South Africa has a new CEO, Mmatsatsi Marobe, who stepped into her role on October 1. ”I am committed to taking the TBCSA to a new level of service delivery and to bringing together public and private partners to realise the potential of tourism in the country,” Marobe said in a statement.
A senior Gauteng transport official has acknowledged that he failed to follow proper procedures in awarding a R5-million tender to a Cabinet minister’s wife. Media reports on Wednesday quoted provincial transport department head Sibusiso Buthelezi as saying he did not advertise the tender ”because it was a matter of urgency”.
South Africa and China have signed an extension to the memorandum of understanding in the labour field agreed to in 2002. Briefing the media at Parliament after the signing ceremony on Monday, Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said the agreement focused on human resources development, job creation strategies and cooperation in the International Labour Organisation.
The South African Police Service’s claim that all Gauteng police stations have a family violence, child abuse and sexual offences (FCS) officer is ”a total untruth”, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday. A DA survey showed the SAPS was misleading the public about the closure of police family and child violence units.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has asked all its elected members in provincial legislatures and Parliament to lodge letters of resignation, the Mercury reported on Monday. It said this was aimed at rooting out ”dead wood”, and the letters would only be activated in cases where representatives had failed to perform.
Gauteng provincial minister of education Angie Motshekga is to apply for a court interdict prohibiting members of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union from striking, her department said on Friday. If the application is refused, the planned strike will affect examinations in the Soweto area, said spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi.
It was still unclear at lunch on Friday whether African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma and President Thabo Mbeki would both attend the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting on the weekend. The NEC will meet behind closed doors for three days at Esselen Park on Gauteng’s East Rand amid questions about a possible rift between Zuma and Mbeki.
Ten cases of the extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) have been reported in North West, the provincial department of health said on Friday. Spokesperson Lesiba Molala said four people have since died from the disease, while six others were being monitored at the Tshepong hospital complex in Klerksdorp.
Jacob Zuma was mum on Thursday on whether he would attend the weekend meeting of the national executive committee of the African National Congress (ANC). Speaking from his home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, a jovial Zuma said: ”I am not answering that question.” The ANC deputy president said he did not want the media to ”be speculating”.
Something is rotten in the Gauteng department of housing, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Thursday following the revelation of R100-million in tender irregularities in the department. The Star revealed on Thursday the contents of a report by the forensic unit of the Gauteng Shared Services Centre detailing allegations of tender irregularities.
The value of fraudulent claims submitted to the life insurance industry during the first half of this year dropped by almost 76-million rand compared with the first half of last year, from R175,2-million rand to R99,5-million. Lerato Mametse, communications manager at the Life Offices Association, says the reduction in claims fraud from January to June this year was a welcome respite.
The Airports Company South Africa says work on all its projects at Johannesburg International airport is in full swing and it is confident that by 2009 all the construction work will have been completed to ensure that there is no construction activity during the 2010 Soccer World Cup. As part of its R5,2-billion infrastructure development programme, Acsa is spending about R3,5-billion rand at the airport.
Any South African who uses national highways or main roads in our cities will sooner or later run into a government convoy. Depending on the rank of the politician being taxied, the convoy can stretch from two to eight cars. At the last count, President Thabo Mbeki had eight. Jacob Zuma may be out of government, but he has almost as many.
Gauteng’s commuters must be encouraged to use public transport, the province’s transport minister Ignatius Jacobs said on Sunday. He acknowledged that Gauteng’s public transport system was underdeveloped, but said it was also underused.
Hardly a week goes by without an article in either the Mail & Guardian or some other newspaper assailing Israel in the most extreme terms. There is little evident inhibition regarding the expression of moral outrage. Israelis are depicted as Nazis, colonialists, ”apartheidists”, brutal oppressors and, recently, child murderers, writes Mike Berger, an honorary research associate in the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research.
The Directorate of Special Operations (DSO, Scorpions) of the National Prosecuting Authority on Thursday night arrested a senior state advocate stationed at the DSO’s Gauteng regional office. The state advocate, who may not be named until she appears in court, was arrested on charges of corruption, defeating the ends of justice, extortion and contravention of the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act.
The retail price of petrol will decline by 50c to 51c per litre from Wednesday October 4, the Department of Minerals and Energy said on Friday. The retail price of Petrol 91 ULP will fall by 51c a litre, while that of 93 and 95 ULP and LRP will fall by 50c a litre. The wholesale price of diesel 0,05% sulphur will decline by 34c a litre (c/l) and that of 0,005% sulphur will fall by 37c/l on the same date.
The Gautrain link between OR Tambo International airport and Sandton will be finished in time for the Soccer World Cup in 2010, Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa said at a sod-turning ceremony for the project on Thursday. ”Bombela [International Consortium] has given me their assurance that we will be well in time for the Soccer World Cup,” Shilowa said at Alexandra in Johannesburg.
Gauteng public servant Crish Naidu has been paid R1,25-million in the past 27 months for doing nothing, media reports said on Thursday. Naidu was suspended after uncovering alleged fraud involving at least six members of staff. He worked as director of management services in the department of finance and economic affairs, with a monthly salary of R46 000.
Wednesday’s eventual release of the annual crime statistics raised strident calls for the figures to be made public more regularly. Democratic Alliance spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard said the government’s continued refusal to publish crime statistics on a more regular basis meant the public had to wait another year before finding out just how serious the current crime spike affecting the country was.
New cases of tuberculosis found in South Africa have raised fears there could be multiple versions of a highly drug resistant strain that has killed 62 people and threatens to spread across a region ravaged by HIV/Aids. An easily-transferred airborne respiratory disease, tuberculosis is the main direct cause of death for people with HIV/Aids in South Africa.
Following rigorous testing of multi-drug resistance tuberculosis patients, the Gauteng department of health has confirmed six cases of extreme drug-resistance tuberculosis (XDR-TB) in Gauteng, the province said in a statement on Tuesday. ”Three of these patients are already receiving medical care at Sizwe Tropical Disease Hospital,” the statement said.
Community and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) voiced anger on Tuesday over the disbanding of several Gauteng police protection units. ”We have worked so hard and for so long to establish an environment where victims of abuse feel safe enough to report, and this disbandment reverses what we’ve done,” said Miranda Friedmann, director of Women and Men against Child Abuse.
Extreme drug resistant tuberculosis is a challenge that needs a collective regional approach, Southern African Development Community (SADC) health ministers said on Friday. At a meeting held in Maputo, Mozambique, the ministers agreed that the free movement of people between SADC countries could compound the spread of the disease in the region.
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) vice-president Lucia Matibenga and a colleague, who suffered police beatings last week, have been admitted to the trauma unit of a Gauteng clinic, the Congress of South African Trade Unions said on Thursday.
Most South Africans seemed to have an opinion after former deputy President Jacob Zuma’s corruption court case was struck from the roll on Wednesday morning. Here are a selection of quotes from newspapers, including the <i>Star</i>, the <i>Citizen</i>, the <i>Daily Sun</i>, the <i>Sowetan</i>.
If there’s a substance we take for granted, but would have unimaginable consequences for modern life if we were to lose it, it’s concrete. It gives us much of the built environment we daily take for granted. Yet, as noted by a recent article in The Guardian, cement — the basic building block of concrete — comes at a high environmental cost.
Gauteng police will be reinforced by 3Â 011 additional members, the provincial minister for community safety said on Thursday. ”This will increase Gauteng’s capacity [to fight crime in the province] by 15% in terms of additional detectives and 8% in terms of visible policing,” said Firoz Cachalia. Cachalia was briefing media in Johannesburg on the province’s safety plan.
Gauteng province is not geared up to treat a killer tuberculosis (TB) strain for which patients have to be isolated, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Thursday. ”About 41 000 patients are currently being treated for TB in Gauteng, but the number of TB beds has dropped in the last year from 1 495 to only 820 beds,” spokesperson Jack Bloom said.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Thursday called for a total boycott of Shoprite Checkers stores around the country. Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi made the call while addressing striking Shoprite Checkers workers who had gathered at Beyers Naude Square in central Johannesburg.
A strike by taxi drivers that left commuters in Soweto and Orange Farm in Gauteng without transport was on Thursday called off, said a spokesperson for Top Six, the Gauteng taxi associations’s mother body. ”It is business as usual this [Thursday] morning and all drivers are back at work,” said spokesperson for Sicelo Mabaso.
The Johannesburg woman diagnosed with extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) has agreed to hospital treatment, the Gauteng health department said on Thursday. ”We are busy conducting more tests to establish what drugs she could respond to,” said spokesperson Zanele Zungu.