South Africa’s education system has been blamed for school violence that in the past week left one pupil dead and another with multiple skull fractures. A sense of spirituality and humanity is lacking, a Durban-based anti-drug forum said on Wednesday. Teachers lack empathy and the South African educational system needs to stop churning out workers, said forum chairperson Sam Pillay.
The South African Trade and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) on Friday accused Fidelity Springbok Security Services of discriminating against its members. Spokesperson Ronnie Mamba said in a statement on Friday that Fidelity ”continues to target Satawu members for abuse, intimidation and victimisation”.
A Limpopo chief, Fhulumani Kutama, was elected unopposed on Thursday as chairperson of the National House of Traditional Leaders. He replaces Mpiyezintombi Mzimela, who left the post after the dissolution of the house of traditional leaders in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Distribution of water, reliability of water supply, water storage and vandalism were problems still facing communities hit by a cholera outbreak at the end of 2000, scientists said on Wednesday. The outbreak in 2000 claimed the lives of 265 people in five provinces and 120Â 000 others were infected.
A man who allegedly shot and killed three people during a dispute over an electricity bill was killed by the police near Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday morning. Rodney Gxubane, who allegedly killed his landlord, the landlord’s daughter and a boyfriend of another of the landlord’s daughters last month was shot dead by members of the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit in Sweetwaters
The African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal said that accelerating development and service delivery is a greater priority that changing the name of the province. ”We don’t think the question of the name of the province is a priority for now,” the party’s provincial spokesperson Mtholephi Mthimkhulu told the South African Press Association.
Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini’s suggestion that KwaZulu-Natal’s name be changed should be supported because the current name is associated with suffering and humiliation, the Pan Africanist Congress said on Monday. Zwelithini has also called for the history of the Zulu nation to be rewritten to correct ”falsifications” of history.
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.
Human rights in health care is not just an apartheid-era issue, but one that still challenges health professionals in South Africa today, the director of the Steve Biko Foundation, Nkosinathi Biko, said on Wednesday. ”There is a tendency to think of it mainly in relation to politically derived violations of human rights,” he said at a conference on the subject.
A senior member of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was killed while on his way home on Monday night, the union said. Elias Mulaudzi, the NUM’s branch chairperson at Carletonville’s Driefontein gold mine, was murdered while on his way home from work. ”This is a great loss to us all,” NUM spokesperson general secretary Frans Baleni said on Tuesday.
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.
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Delaying Jacob Zuma’s corruption trial is ”not fair,” Schabir Shaik said on Monday. Shaik, the man described by Judge Hilary Squires last July as having had a ”generally corrupt relationship” with Zuma, said: ”I read it in the weekend papers. I don’t think it’s fair, but it really is up to Zuma and his team to make that call.”
Four men have been arrested in connection with the rape of two foreign missionaries and the shooting of one of them on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast. Captain Vincent Pandarum said the two women — one from Kenya and the other from the United States — were raped on Friday night as they were walking home on the Old Harding Road near Oslo Beach.
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.
Music and storytelling marked the celebrations of former president Nelson Mandela’s birthday in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
Everyone loves a winner, but it does not follow that joint winners will be doubly loved. Darryl Accone reports.
Police divers have recovered the body of a woman after the bakkie she and her husband were travelling in plunged into the Durban harbour on Wednesday night after an apparent hijacking. Paramedics said the 31-year-old woman had sustained about 12 stab wounds.
Nearly five-million people in South Africa are totally illiterate, Minister of Education Naledi Pandor said on Monday. Another 4,9-million South Africans were functionally literate — people who dropped out of school before grade seven. Pandor said the figures were compiled by a ministerial committee she appointed to help find the best way to tackle illiteracy.
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=soccer_world_cup_2006"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/272488/icon_focuson_wc3.gif" align=left border=0></a>The official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) says it is to submit questions to all national departments of government in South Africa about which politicians and officials have gone to Germany during the World Cup at taxpayers’ expense. This follows a report that the KwaZulu-Natal transport department was sending a delegation to look at the German transport system.
Heavy snowfalls are likely over the north-eastern parts of the Eastern Cape on Thursday, the South African Weather Service said. Forecaster Deon van der Mescht said very cold and wet conditions were expected in Aliwal North, Queenstown and Molteno. Snowfalls would then move to the Drakensberg.
The forestry sector could lose almost R900-million because of invasive alien wasps, says Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks. In written reply to a question by Democratic Alliance MP Janet Semple in the National Assembly, Hendricks said a control programme to limit damage had been introduced.
Primary school pupils at around 250 schools in South Africa are reading hot-off-the-press world news in their own newspaper sent to them via e-mail. Created by Johannesburg journalist Duncan Guy, The Times I Am Living In also serves as a source of general knowledge, challenges pupils with quiz questions and provides a glossary.
South Africa celebrated World Refugee Day on Tuesday by promising to fast-track its backlog of 100Â 000 asylum applications. The Department of Home Affairs launched four refugee-reception offices around the country to process the applications dating from 1994 to July last year.
There has been a break-in at the African Christian Democratic Party’s (ACDP) offices in the Kwazulu-Natal legislature, party spokesperson Cedric Sokhutu said on Monday. ”Paperwork files have been removed from MPL Joanne Down’s office and there is a possibility that the computer hard drive has been interrogated,” he said.
Gas supply in the Gauteng area is expected to return to normal over the next few days after a series of mishaps that has throttled supply since the onset of an early winter in May. Afrox, the market leader in bottled gas, says it has supplied an additional 50 000 9kg bottles to alleviate the shortage.
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Only when former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s corruption trial kicks off on July 31 will the defence teams and the National Prosecuting Authority know who will be the presiding judge. On Monday KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala said: ”You will see when he presides.”
A Pretoria Correctional Services official was arrested following a high-speed chase during which traffic officers reported speeds topping 200kph, the KwaZulu-Natal Road Traffic Inspectorate (RTI) said on Saturday. RTI spokesperson Rajen Govender said the Correctional Services assistant director was initially flagged down by RTI officers after he went through a speed trap at 168kph on the N3 near Cedara, north of Pietermaritzburg.
A new stadium, that will host one of the World Cup semifinal matches in 2010, was unveiled in Durban on Thursday. Named after King Shaka’s father, the King Senzangakhona Stadium will cost R1,6-billion to build and will seat a crowd of up to 80Â 000 soccer fans.
A Pietermaritzburg man who is now dead offered R10 000 for the life of a police officer who bore a grudge against him, the high court in the KwaZulu-Natal capital heard on Monday. The allegation appeared during the first day of the trial of Nkosinathi Mbhele (27), who has pleaded not guilty to murdering Inspector Noel Landsberg.
Sounds of Zulu war dances and a military parade filled the air on Sunday as South Africans hailed a Zulu hero whose rebellion a century ago sowed the first seeds of black resistance. Soldiers and Zulu warriors, dressed in traditional leopard skins, joined thousands to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Bhambatha rebellion, an event that had huge ramifications in South African history.
South Africans of all races are gearing up to mark a historic Zulu uprising against British colonial masters a century ago, seen as the birth of black resistance that later ended apartheid. Soldiers in uniform and Zulu warriors on Sunday will commemorate the 100th year of the Bhambatha rebellion in protest against a British tax.
South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) says the state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), is guilty of news manipulation and propaganda and it will consider a nation-wide campaign against it.