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/ 22 November 2007
As Piet Koornhof quietly shuffled of this mortal coil last week, an Eastern Cape man said he still had a question for the apartheid-era Cabinet minister.
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/ 21 November 2007
Four youths appeared in the Grahamstown High Court on Wednesday on charges of murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances. They are alleged to have killed their victim by repeatedly stabbing him, and dropping a 50kg rock on his head.
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/ 12 November 2007
Two men accused of raping a 12-year-old girl after plying her with drinks denied guilt in the Grahamstown High Court on Monday. Appearing in court were Moos Lawens (41) and Eric Fossie Ben (27), both from a farm near Cradock. The two are alleged to have raped the girl after getting her intoxicated at a drinking party on a farm.
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/ 6 November 2007
A 21-year-old man was handed a life sentence by the Grahamstown High Court on Tuesday for raping and killing his sister-in-law. Judge Nambitha Dambuza, who sat with two assessors, also sentenced Themba Ngxokongxa, of Siviwe, Komga, to 20 years for rape and 15 for robbery with aggravating circumstances.
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/ 5 November 2007
An Eastern Cape man was on Monday convicted of indecently assaulting and murdering his aunt because she owed him R20. Grahamstown High Court Judge Jeremy Pickering found that Caswell Nkanunu, of Emasimini, murdered Nomanci Taliwe (47), of Elliot, in her house on December 11 2004.
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/ 19 October 2007
A man accused of raping three elderly women was expected to plead guilty in the Grahamstown High Court on Friday, but changed his mind at the last minute. This prompted his lawyer to withdraw, and the trial was postponed to January 29 2008. The women’s ages ranged from 54 to 65.
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/ 17 October 2007
The elderly victims of an alleged rapist recounted their ordeals in the Grahamstown High Court on Wednesday. ”He grabbed me and pushed me into the bedroom and hit me with his fists, and with a bottle of brandy in his left hand,” one of the women told the court. ”I struggled but because of my age, I got tired. Then he raped me.”
A 31-year-old Eastern Cape man should be jailed for life for raping an elderly woman and trying to kill her husband, the Grahamstown High Court heard on Tuesday. Beneza Allah, of Phumlani, Jansenville, who was 29 at the time of the crimes, appeared before Judge Zamani Nhlangulela.
Whether it costs the Makana municipality two cents or R100-million to change the name of Grahamstown and the names of other places and landmarks, the names will change, said Grahamstown mayor Phumelelo Kate on Thursday. ”You cannot equate the transformation of our country to costs. Change must happen and nothing is going to stop it,” Kate was reported as saying.
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/ 25 September 2007
A 34-year-old man raped two young girls and bought them chicken and Coke afterwards, the Grahamstown High Court heard on Tuesday. The man has pleaded not guilty to the rape and indecent assault of two girls — one who called him an uncle — near the Victoria Park Tennis Club in Port Elizabeth in January.
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/ 20 September 2007
A 34-year-old man convicted of raping a seven-year-old girl should be sent to prison for life, the Grahamstown High Court heard on Thursday. The court heard that he had lured the girl and her 10-year-old friend into the house, threatened the girl with a knife and then raped her as her terrified friend watched.
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/ 17 September 2007
The name Grahamstown is a step closer to being renamed after a Makana council meeting resolved that ”Grahamstown must go”. Makana mayor Phumelelo Kate told Grocott’s Mail on Monday that the name change proposal was based on historical reasons.
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/ 17 September 2007
A 42-year-old former attorney appeared in the Grahamstown High Court on Monday on charges related to the theft of R1,4-million from his trust account. He is alleged to have misappropriated an amount of R1 396 278 — paid to him on behalf of a client by the Road Accident Fund between December 2000 and May 2001.
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/ 4 September 2007
A divorced father of four was sent to jail for 25 years by the Grahamstown High Court on Tuesday for raping and sodomising a mentally-ill girl of 13. ”The crimes were as bestial as they were heinous,” Judge Andre Erasmus told 44-year-old Mlandeli Mvandaba, of Zola township, Bathurst.
The man who took revenge on his brother’s murderer by hacking him to death with an axe last year was sent to prison for 12 years by the Grahamstown High Court on Thursday. Judge Andre Erasmus said that Milile Ngiwa (26) had struck Luvo Mzozayana (22) with an axe and ”destroyed his face and brain”.
In his National Arts Festival Winter School lecture this year, 30 Years On: The Legacy of Steve Biko, Barney Pityana — a friend and intellectual confrère of Biko — dexterously balanced the personal and the political, and eloquently demonstrated why the former so often constitutes the latter.
A total of 65 arrests have been made since the start of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown police said on Monday. This was ”far less than expected”, especially as the end of the month coincided with the start of the festival, Grocott’s Mail reported.
Grahamstown’s arts festival is the most varied in the country, but still lacks diversity, writes Brent Meersman.
A suspected dagga dealer, fearing arrest, tried to get rid of a bag of dagga by throwing it over his fence — where it landed on the bonnet of a police car, Grocott’s Mail reported on Thursday. The Port Alfred man then ran away, but was arrested after a brief chase.
A Grahamstown resident whose dreams of being a soccer star were shattered when a bullet from the gun of a negligent police officer struck him in the head nine years ago is suing Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula for R8-million. This is according to lawyers acting on behalf of 27-year-old Daluxolo Simama.
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/ 20 February 2006
Three tourists were killed and four others were injured in an accident at the Shamwari Game Reserve near Grahamstown, Eastern Cape police said on Monday. Spokesperson Superintendent Michelle Matroos said the driver at the reserve was taking seven visitors sightseeing on Sunday afternoon when he experienced difficulties on an uphill slope.
The names of the three people killed when a parcel exploded outside a house in Grahamstown this week were released on Wednesday. The victims were Justin Martin (52), Johannes Kortrooi (58) and five-year-old Leonardo Lottering, who died in hospital on Tuesday.
For one week, a historic university town in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province reverberated with some unlikely noises: the sound of rockets igniting, robots chirping and home-made cars racing. Most of all, though, it was the voices of thousands of pupils racing between venues that reminded Grahamstown locals that Sasol SciFest was under way.
The Public Service Accountability Monitor has called for the immediate suspension of Eastern Cape housing minister Neo Moerane-Mamase following her arrest on Friday morning for corruption. Mamase and her husband, Max Mamase, were arrested on Friday morning by the joint anti-corruption task team.
Two bank officials had petrol poured over them and were threatened with being burnt alive during an armed bank robbery in Fort Beaufort on the weekend. Inspector Mali Govender said the employees were saved from possible injury after complying with the robbers’ demands.
The Eastern Cape soccer referee who allegedly shot and killed a coach and injured two players during a dispute over a decision is still on the run, Grahamstown police said on Tuesday. The shooting allegedly occurred during a match between the Ekuphumuleni and Marcelle soccer teams at Kenton-on-Sea on Saturday.
On April 3 it will be 25 years to the day since the first white Government Garage lorry rumbled on to Klipfontein farm, and the recollection is still etched in Desmond Njajula’s memory. Njajula still lives at Glenmore, where he was relocated, now an established settlement of about 550 households. But the difficulties that Glenmore faces, Njajula says, are in many ways the same as those of 25 years ago.
A 42-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly raping two friends, aged seven and 10, on two separate occasions in Gugulethu, Middeldrift, Grahamstown police reported. The police said the rapes occurred on Monday while the children were playing outside their house.
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/ 30 December 2003
Undetected by most media Richter scales, important shifts are taking place beneath the architecture of globalisation. Journalists’ silence about this story is surprising given that much of the movement has been directly about the media and their relation to other powerful pressures welling up from subterranean levels.
Reform school as a sentencing option for juveniles is ”all but a dead letter” in South Africa as there is only one reform school to service eight of the nine provinces, the Grahamstown High Court heard on Monday.
Rhodes University in Grahamstown was struck by a third tragedy in as many months on Tuesday when another student committed suicide.
Zimbabwe would prove an acid test for the New Partnership for African Development (Nepad) as well for South Africa’s commitment to enforcing the values enshrined in it, Cape High Court Judge Dennis Davis said in Grahamstown on Thursday.