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/ 9 November 2005
MPs on Wednesday were warned that the Gautrain rapid rail project may be suffering from "optimism bias" where the project may pan out to be far more expensive — and less popular in the eyes of the consumers — than the project planners envisaged.
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/ 8 November 2005
A member of the Gauteng legislature, the Freedom Front Plus’s Jaco Mulder, on Tuesday made a second attempt to buy "blacks-only" Eyethu shares from Nedbank. In a statement, Mulder — who is his party’s provincial leader — said he officially handed in his application to his Nedbank branch in Krugersdorp for his Eyethu shares.
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/ 8 November 2005
A Durban man says he was lucky to be able to tell the tale of a weekend pirate attack on his cruise ship off Somalia’s coast, the Mercury website reported on Tuesday. Charles Forsdick described how some passengers had to throw themselves to the floor to escape bullets.
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/ 7 November 2005
The township of Khutsong was quiet on Monday, with a march and stayaway planned for Friday as the next item on the protest calendar, the South African Communist Party said. The township saw protests last week over residents’ dissatisfaction with proposals to transfer the Merafong municipality from Gauteng to the North West province.
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/ 7 November 2005
The government is considering postponing the municipal elections until mid-2006 to allow for re-demarcation disputes to be resolved, media reports said on Monday. The reports said this would entail bringing a constitutional amendment before Parliament which could push back the deadline for the polls by up to two months to May.
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/ 4 November 2005
Johannesburg and Pretoria recorded the highest temperatures for November in 40 years on Thursday, the South African Weather Service said on Friday. Forecaster Lee-Ann Clark said Pretoria sweated in a sweltering temperature of 39 degrees Celsius on Thursday, while Johannesburg recorded 34.
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/ 4 November 2005
Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi will not be visiting Khutsong residents near Carletonville on Friday afternoon, his office said. Residents of the township have been protesting since Wednesday against a proposal that the Merafong municipality be included in the North West province.
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/ 4 November 2005
Enthusiasm is something Mimi Mthethwa, newly elected president of Netball South Africa, has in plentiful supply. The Empangeni-based deputy chief education specialist is still working on getting things in order. Julia Beffon speaks to the new boss of South Africa’s biggest women’s sport.
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/ 3 November 2005
Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi and provincial leaders will visit Khutsong on Friday, after two days of often-violent protests by residents over proposals to redemarcate the West Rand town. Protests broke out on Wednesday over the possible inclusion of the Merafong municipality into the North West.
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/ 3 November 2005
Citizens of the Merafong municipality, which includes Carletonville, were not consulted on a decision to incorporate the area into the North West, an South African Communist Party spokesperson said on Thursday. The demarcation has failed the community, said Jomo Mogale, local chairperson of the SACP.
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/ 3 November 2005
Although fires raging through South Africa are being brought under control, the Working on Fire programme warned on Thursday morning that fire danger has increased in three provinces. It said that in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Gauteng the ”high orange” on the fire-danger rating index has risen to red.
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/ 3 November 2005
Taxi drivers slowly edged their minibuses around boulders placed in the roads of Khutsong, in the Carletonville area, after a day of protests on Wednesday over a proposal that the Merafong municipality be incorporated into the North West province. It is in Gauteng at present.
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/ 2 November 2005
After two years of preparation, the Johannesburg Gay Games bid committee will present its final bid to host the 2010 Gay Games on November 12 in Chicago, it said in a statement on Wednesday. Johannesburg is bidding against Paris, France, and Cologne, Germany.
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/ 2 November 2005
A court application by two companies wanting to be declared the black economic empowerment (BEE) partners in the Gautrain project was dismissed with costs in the Johannesburg High Court on Wednesday. The application was to decide whether the companies held a 25% stake in the preferred bidder for the Gautrain project.
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/ 2 November 2005
Hundreds of residents of Migson Manor in Lenasia South, Johannesburg, blocked the Golden Highway with burning tyres after a taxi knocked down and killed a teenager on Tuesday afternoon, police said. Migson Manor Residents’ Association spokesperson Emmanuel Mphelo said residents were very agitated.
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/ 1 November 2005
Unemployment-induced poverty was causing many government housing beneficiaries to move back into shacks, a Human Sciences Research Council report revealed on Tuesday. ”Unemployment is undermining South Africa’s housing delivery strategy,” researcher Catherine Cross told reporters in Pretoria.
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/ 31 October 2005
A dragged-out land-claim process involving a group of farms near Heidelberg, Gauteng, has fuelled tensions and disrupted agricultural production, according to a committee of land owners. The Kudung community is claiming the 10 farms, said the community’s lawyer, Henri Bonsma.
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/ 30 October 2005
Godfrey Khotso Mokoena, 20-year-old holder of all South African records in the long and triple jump, set a new national long-jump mark of 8,27m at the fourth annual Prisma Comms Ericsson Athletics Championships at Pilditch Stadium in Pretoria on Saturday.
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/ 29 October 2005
A pilot was killed when his plane crashed at Cathedral Peak near the Lesotho border on Friday, KwaZulu-Natal police said. Captain Joshua Gwala said the pilot was travelling alone from Gauteng to Margate in KwaZulu-Natal when he reported he was experiencing engine problems.
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/ 28 October 2005
The price of petrol is be reduced by 31 cents per litre from Wednesday November 2, the Department of Minerals and Energy announced on Friday. The department said that during the period September 30 to October 27, the average international product prices for petrol, diesel and illuminating paraffin decreased.
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/ 27 October 2005
”Problems” with an electronic signalling system could have caused Wednesday night’s head-on collision between the Blue Train and a Shosholoza Meyl passenger train, Spoornet’s chief executive said. The Northern Cape health department said five people were critically injured in the collision.
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/ 27 October 2005
Six proposed changes to the Gautrain line will save 50 of the homes originally earmarked for expropriation. Three of the houses — all in Pretoria — have provincial heritage value, Gautrain spokesperson Jack van der Merwe said in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
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/ 27 October 2005
Dozens of train passengers suffered injuries in an overnight head-on collision between the Trans Karoo express and the luxury Blue Train at Deelfontein. A police spokesperson said 74 people aboard the hotel-on-wheels and 182 travelling on the Trans Karoo express were injured in various degrees. The driver of the Trans Karoo was seriously hurt in the accident.
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/ 25 October 2005
Gauteng roads are not public-transport friendly, Gauteng public transport, roads and works minister Ignatius Jacobs said on Tuesday. ”We need to make roads more friendly by creating dedicated public-transport lanes for buses and taxis,” he told a commuter indaba in Johannesburg.
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/ 24 October 2005
Thousands of workers belonging to the country’s largest union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), have embarked on strike action in the Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal provinces to protest against issues such as job losses, casualisation and racism in the workplace.
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/ 20 October 2005
Taxi operators told Transport Minister Jeff Radebe on Thursday that they would accept the taxi recapitalisation programme if they were given subsidies on top of the R50 000 scrapping allowance for their unroadworthy taxis. ”If we get rid of our taxis and get the R50 000 scrapping allowance which we can spend as a deposit for a new taxi, we won’t be able to make ends meet,” said Tom Muofhe, president of the SA National Taxi Council.
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/ 20 October 2005
Only a small number of Gauteng motorists on Thursday appeared to have heeded the government’s call to participate in Car-Free Day. Minister of Transport Jeff Radebe was walking and taking taxis in the Pretoria city centre on Thursday, raising awareness of Car-Free Day.
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/ 19 October 2005
The seclusion section of the psychiatric ward at the Dr George Mukhadi hospital in Ga-Rankuwa north of Pretoria was closed on Tuesday due to unsafe and unhygienic conditions, the Health Department said. Ministerial spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said the seclusion rooms had no toilets and the structure was also not in compliance with the Mental Health Act.
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/ 18 October 2005
Gauteng’s car-free day on Thursday will be voluntary, the City of Johannesburg said. Speaking to the media on Tuesday, the city’s deputy director for transport management, Alfred Sam, said the city would not close any routes for private cars. He conceded that Johannesburg did not have the best transport system in the world, but urged everybody to participate.
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/ 18 October 2005
The Department of Minerals and Energy has established an expert team to investigate the wider issues raised by a tremor that killed two miners and injured 20 others at DRDGold’s North West operations this year, it said on Tuesday. The panel will consider the risks to mine workers, mines and the public by seismicity in mining areas.
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/ 18 October 2005
On paper, regional integration in Southern Africa has made advances — with countries being knit together by protocols and agreements of every stripe. It’s a pity there isn’t a similarly comprehensive network of roads and railways, say transport analysts — who point out that true regional integration will remain a pipe dream if goods cannot move efficiently between Southern African states.
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/ 17 October 2005
One of 11 accused in a case possibly linked to the kidnapping of a young boy in Ennerdale, Johannesburg, was allegedly subjected to ”shock treatment” in prison near Cape Town at the weekend. Defence counsel Leigh Thompson, for accused Vernon Noel Victor, told the Cape High Court Victor needed urgent medical attention.