Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) providing hospice and home care for HIV/Aids patients in Gauteng are struggling because of late payment by the Department of Health, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday. ”Some of these NGOs have not been paid for almost four months,” said spokesperson Jack Bloom.
Prison authorities asked the Law Society of the Northern Province on Friday to help some awaiting-trail prisoners and those eligible for parole to be released in an attempt to ease overcrowding in prisons. Speaking at a conference of the society, Johan Wilkens, acting regional head of corrections in Gauteng, said prisons in the province were 171% full.
Soweto pupils planned a march to the Gauteng premier’s office in Johannesburg on Friday afternoon in protest against a lack of school buses, the Congress of South African students (Cosas) said. ”Since this term began, many students have been left stranded due to the lack of transport and the Department of Education is to blame,” Cosas provincial chairperson Percy Ntsolo said.
Carlos Alberto Parreira, who quit his post as head coach of Brazil on Wednesday following the South Americans’ poor showing at the World Cup, has agreed to come to South Africa to take charge of Bafana Bafana. A source on the South African Football Association (Safa) executive says Parreira has agreed to the financial terms. All that is required now is his signature.
Burger King’s claim to be ”the home of the Whopper” has been challenged by Johannesburg in the past couple of weeks. Although the United States fast-food chain’s advertising slogan refers to its trademark huge hamburger, Egoli’s bid for the title is based on a different meaning of ”whopper”: that of a great big fib.
Gauteng has to plan now for population growth of five million to an estimated 14,5-million people by 2015, Premier Mbhazima Shilowa warned on Wednesday. He stressed that immediate intervention is needed to avert future crises. ”If we have this congestion with 9,5-million people, how will it be if there are 14,5-million?”
The government’s plan to establish a seventh regional electricity distributor (RED) to take care of the power-supply distribution for all non-metro municipalities may end up "fixing" non-existent problems, says the official opposition Democratic Alliance.
Most bus operators transporting Gauteng’s pupils to public schools stayed away from work on Monday, protesting against the provincial education department’s non-payment of their claims. The bus operators are owed R14-million by the Gauteng education department, and education MEC Angie Motshekga has promised to partly pay it on Monday.
Gauteng’s school-bus transport saga is over, the provincial education department said on Friday. Education provincial minister Angie Motshekga said that misunderstandings about the payment of bus operators had been handled at an urgent meeting in the morning.
Gauteng residents have been promised more visible policing, more roadblocks and improved 10111 call centres as part of an intensive new crime-fighting strategy to be implemented over the next six months — although an analyst has pointed out that parts of the strategy look like "more of the same".
No school buses will be running when pupils return to their classes on Monday unless the Gauteng education department comes up with R14-million allegedly owed to operators. The department is not honouring its contractual agreement, South African Bus Operators’ Association executive manager Eric Cornelius said.
The Potsdam hotel room of South African Airways’ (SAA) chief executive Khaya Ngqula was cleaned out by robbers during the World Cup final between Italy and France, it was confirmed on Monday. It is understood Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa was also targeted, as were Zuzi Buthelezi, the son of Inkatha Freedom Party president Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and businessman Dr Dudu Kunene, but this could not be confirmed.
The case of a 28-year-old man accused of murdering a Taiwanese businessman and his family before burying them was postponed in the Krugersdorp Magistrate’s Court on Monday. Bao Xin Long, a Chinese national, is due to appear in court again on August 31.
When the world’s soccer fans descend on South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, most of them will disembark at OR Tambo International airport, as Johannesburg International airport will soon be known. Minister of Arts and Culture Pallo Jordan announced on June 30 that more than 50 place names will be changed, including that of the airport.
South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance has announced a reshuffle of four key posts in its shadow cabinet, including the shifting of fiery health spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard to the safety and security portfolio. Kohler-Barnard takes over from Free State MP Roy Jankielsohn.
The embassy of Zimbabwe in South Africa on Friday criticised the media for what it believes are unsubstantiated allegations that former Zimbabwean soldiers are involved in crime. ”In an attempt to seek clarification on the veracity of these claims, the relevant authorities … have expressed shock … at these allegations, which have ho basis in fact,” ambassador Simon Moyo said.
The justice system is failing children because an important Bill that will protect the rights of children has virtually disappeared since 2003. This emerged on Wednesday at the Reducing Exploitative Child Labour in South Africa conference in Boksburg. ”The Child Justice Bill was the product of four years of work,” said Jacqui Gallinetti of the University of the Western Cape.
The Democratic Alliance is to invoke the Promotion of Access to Information Act in an attempt to force Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula to reveal how many police officers have been killed this year. Nqakula left for Burundi on Tuesday ”at a time when armed criminals are waging a war of their own against police … ”, DA spokesperson Roy Jankielsohn said.
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The Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust is angered by what it calls sensationalising of the multimillion-rand defamation claims that the former deputy president is launching against several media groups, a statement said on Wednesday. ”We are tired of the blatant media bias against our friend, Jacob Zuma,” a statement read.
The recent spate of violent criminal attacks has raised South Africa’s security threat profile, the South African Chamber of Business (Sacob) said on Tuesday. ”They are concerns that pervade both business and public sentiment, and reflect the low level of public confidence in the criminal justice system,” Sacob said in a media statement.
Speaking during the July update on the government’s programme of action for 2006, the second report back since the State of the Nation address, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said in Pretoria on Tuesday that all of the programmes of the economic and investment cluster were "well on track".
The government is developing an ambitious plan for every household in the country to use gas for its cooking and heating needs. The plan, which includes regulating the price of gas, foresees the development of special import facilities at the country’s harbours to ship in vast quantities of liquid petroleum gas from gas-rich countries such as Algeria.
A ”frightening” number of police officers have died in Gauteng so far this year, with almost as many slain in the first six months of 2006 as in the whole of last year, said the office of National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. The deaths of four police officers in a bloody siege in Jeppestown last Sunday brought the tally to 19 since the start of the year.
Budget cuts on the upgrading and maintenance of railway signals is to blame for the train accident that claimed a life and left 42 people injured in Kempton Park on Friday night, the Democratic Alliance said. ”The government must take full responsibility for deaths and injuries,” DA transport spokesperson for Gauteng James Swart said on Saturday.
A 37-year-old police officer died after he and a colleague were wounded in a shooting with robbers in Soweto on Tuesday morning, police said. Inspector Leslie Mashaba (37) and Captain Simon Matladi (38) tried to arrest two armed robbers at a shack in Kliptown at 3am when the shooting began.
Petrol will go up by 25 cents a litre at midnight on Wednesday, the Department of Minerals and Energy announced on Friday. That means 95-octane unleaded petrol will now cost R6,73 a litre in Gauteng, 93-octane unleaded petrol and lead-replacement petrol will cost R6,61, and 91-octane unleaded petrol will cost R6,60.
The police ordered into the Jeppestown incident to face 20 armed murderers were used as cannon fodder, the official opposition Democratic Alliance said on Friday. This follows a South African Cabinet statement sending condolences to the families of police personnel killed at Jeppestown. Four members of the South African Police Service lost their lives.
The African Christian Democratic Party has called on Christians to boycott the Comrades Marathon after the announcement that the race is to be run on a Sunday. ”You undermine the importance of family and you undermine the sanctity of the Sunday as a special day to get in touch with the Lord of lords and the King of kings,” the party’s Western Cape leader Hansie Louw said on Friday.
The world-famous Comrades Marathon will no longer be run on Youth Day, Athletics South Africa (ASA) announced on Thursday. The race will be held on Sunday June 17 next year and on Sunday June 15 the following year. In 2009, it will be held on Sunday June 14, ASA president Leonard Chuene said.
The Little Falls Christian Centre, west of Johannesburg, was awash with tears at Thursday’s memorial for the four police officers killed in a shootout with alleged robbers in Jeppestown. Deputy Minister of Safety and Security Susan Shabangu broke down as she took the podium.
Most recent robberies in Gauteng were carried out by foreigners, South African police union president Mpho Kwinika said on Thursday. He was speaking at a memorial service for four slain police offices held at the Littlefalls Christian centre in Roodepoort. ”The first invasions in Gauteng took place in 2003 on a highway in Germiston. A gang of 14 men tried to rob a cash van … eight of them were foreigners.”
Police have clammed up about the Jeppestown attack in which 12 people — including four police officials — died on Sunday. No further details about the case will be communicated until further notice, said Gauteng police spokesperson Senior Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht.