A task team has been set up to find — within two months — ways to speed up the provision of classrooms, the education and public works departments said on Monday. The team will report by June with concrete plans to end the practice of teaching children outdoors, Minister of Education Naledi Pandor told reporters in Pretoria.
After deliberations that delayed the intended media conference by three hours at the Absa Stadium in Durban on Friday, SA Rugby finally announced a reshuffle in provincial affiliations in the enlarged Super 14 franchises for the next three years, subject to an annual review and initial three-year trial period.
Malegapuru Makgoba writes that ”a sector of white males have an adaptation problem”. So what? Who cares? Apart from the assorted monkeys themselves, nobody. Maybe baboons are a nuisance if you share quarters with them, but they are not ”a major obstacle to our democratic transformation”. In the greater scheme of things, they don’t matter. Something else does, writes Jo Lorentzen.
This whole white male/baboon matter has been shockingly one-sided. It’s one thing to sit, bathed in academic reverie in some university, composing long self-pitying tirades about the behavioural equivalences between certain cabals among Homo sapiens europeanus, and Papio ursinus in general. It’s quite another to take the trouble to canvass the opinions of the latter side of the equation.
Tyron Henderson blazed his way to another match-winning innings to send the Warriors to their second successive victory when they defeated the KwaZulu-Natal Dolphins by six wickets in their Standard Bank Pro20 Series cricket match at St George’s Park on Wednesday.
Ten miners have abandoned their illegal underground strike at a mine in KwaZulu-Natal since Thursday to seek medical help, it emerged on Monday. Some had been feeling unwell — one of them had flu — and some were feeling claustrophobic, said Michael Campbell, spokesperson for Zululand Anthracite Colliery, outside Ulundi.
The safety of miners engaged in an underground strike since Friday is more important than labour grievances, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Monday. ”They [mine management] might be 120 times wrong but we must focus on the health and safety of the miners now to avert a crisis,” said Cosatu.
Suzaan van Biljon has once again given selectors something to think about after qualifying for the World Championships for the third time at the Telkom National Swimming Championships in East London on Wednesday night. The 16-year-old claimed a comfortable victory in her 200m breaststroke semifinal in a time of 2:29,44.
Lance Klusener, the bowler, and Shaun Pollock, the batsman, could not prevent the Highveld Lions from sneaking home by one run in their Standard Bank Pro20 cricket match against the KwaZulu-Natal Dolphins at the Sahara Stadium in Kingsmead on Wednesday.
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KwaZulu-Natal finance MEC Zweli Mkhize told the Durban High Court on Monday how fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik financed a cash-strapped African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal from 1994. Mkhize was also questioned about a document dated May 1999 that was presented to the court by Shaik’s defence advocate Francois van Zyl.
Swaziland closing its borders with South Africa? Michael Jackson seeking asylum in Zimbabwe? Jean-Bertrand Aristide appointed Minister of the African Diaspora in the South African Cabinet? It’s that time of the year when gasps of disbelief are quickly replaced by a collective slapping of the forehead — April Fool’s Day.
The firearms amnesty has missed its target and many ”illegal” guns that have been handed in are registered on the police database, but not in the names of heirs who have inherited them, the South African Gun Owners’ Association (Sagoa) said on Thursday. A Sagoa spokesperson said such people are legal owners under previous legislation.
A leading children’s rights organisation is concerned that two proposed laws on child protection could result in duplication and a waste of resources. A child’s general right to health care has been reduced in the Children’s Bill, and the right to health care after sexual assault has been removed from the Sexual Offences Bill.
Trainer Jabulani Malinga and his sons Vus’Umuzi and Patrick are back in the professional boxing game after serving their suspension. Jabulani said their suspension ended last week. Vusi and Patrick both failed four drug tests after fights in April, and tested positive for anabolic steroids.
A string of cellphone messages on a purported hijacking this week turned out to be smokescreen for partying with prostitutes, News24 reported on Thursday. It said a KwaZulu-Natal technician had police on a national alert after unleashing a series of SMSes on Tuesday, saying he had been hijacked.
South Africa’s robust economic growth made a small, hardly noticeable dent in the country’s massive unemployment rate. Yet those who are lucky enough to be employed in the formal sector saw earnings increase faster than the number of their peers. The latest figures show youth unemployment remains chronically high, while 60% of discouraged work seekers are female.
KwaZulu-Natal has the most tuberculosis cases in the country, but hospitals are fighting a losing battle against deadly multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB). Although cases of MDR TB have increased dramatically at King George V hospital, not enough resources are being allocated to fight the disease.
An African National Congress branch chairperson in KwaZulu-Natal was shot and wounded on Thursday night, the party said. ANC provincial spokesperson Mtholephi Mthimkhulu said Nqobizwe Magwaza, chairperson of one of the Ulundi branches, ”miraculously escaped death” when he was attacked by two gunmen.
In the primate family, to which humankind belongs, there are certain heritage features which display ”clear dominance relationships among members, and the proclivity to imitate”, hence such terms as ”aping and monkey business”. Alienated. Quarrelsome. Spoilers. Certain white males exhibit all the symptoms of the dethroned male baboon.
A teacher was found stabbed to death on the grounds of Swayimane High School in Wartburg on Wednesday, apparently after an argument over school fees, KwaZulu-Natal Midlands police said on Thursday. The 47-year-old teacher had been stabbed in the neck, said police spokesperson Superintendent Joshua Gwala.
KwaZulu-Natal police officers have discovered a large cache of arms hidden in a shallow grave in the Midlands on Monday. Some of the ammunition included 43 M26 hand and rifle grenades and 60mm mortar barrels and magazines of various types, Superintendent Vishnu Naidoo said on Tuesday morning.
Two graves, believed to contain the remains of the ”Mamelodi 10”, were exhumed at the Winterveldt cemetery, north-west of Pretoria, on Monday by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to commemorate national Human Rights Day. The ”Mamelodi 10” were 10 youngsters abducted in June 1986 by the apartheid government’s security police.
Shocked residents of KwaZulu-Natal’s Mandawe village were trying to help police on Monday track down the murderers of a grandmother and her five grandchildren, who were burnt beyond recognition. ”At first, everybody was too shocked to speak but now they are trying to help us,” said police spokesperson Captain Tienkie van Vuuren.
Department of Home Affairs offices will be open on the weekend starting from April 1, the department said on Saturday. ”This is to accommodate those who cannot visit our offices during the normal office hours by providing them with extra opportunities to access our services,” said a departmental spokesperson.
The Aids pandemic carries the face of a woman, former president Nelson Mandela told thousands of people gathered at Fancourt, George, on Saturday night for his second Aids benefit concert. The purpose of the 46664 concert was to give a voice to the women of Africa in the fight against Aids, he said.
More than three-quarters of South African households receive free water and more than half receive free electricity, Statistics South Africa said in Pretoria on Thursday — but two million households are without toilet facilities. The figures are part of a non-financial census of municipalities for the year ending June 2003.
One of the biggest events in the swimming calendar, the National Aquatic Championships, will be going down to the shores of East London in April. Three of South Africa’s awesome foursome at the Athens Olympics, Roland Schoeman, Ryk Neethling and Darian Townsend, have already entered the competition.
The truth is out at last. Those most affected by that truth cannot read this editorial, but there is at least reason to believe officialdom is about to act on the national emergency of adult illiteracy. The 11th year of our democracy is late in the day for the national government to have noticed that about 40% of South African adults — eight million to 10-million people — cannot read or write, and so face bleak futures.
After almost 14 years the Masterbond curatorship was concluded by an order of the Cape High Court on Monday. The three Masterbond curators said in a statement their appointment had been cancelled by the court order, subject to certain conditions.
The former acting vice-chancellor of Vista University, Professor Sipho Seepe, has accepted responsibility for ”sloppiness” in an essay he wrote after it was pointed out that certain passages are identical to those on a number of websites. The essay was published in the book Towards an African Identity in Higher Education.
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The second witness for the defence in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial, Zandile Mdhladhla, told the Durban High Court on Thursday that the Jacob Zuma Education Trust Fund did not qualify for funding from the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. However, ”we received money from Mr Mandela as a person”, said Mdhladhla.
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Prosecutor Billy Downer completed his cross-examination of fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik in the Durban High Court shortly before lunch on Wednesday. Shaik, who has been charged with one count of fraud and two of corruption, has been under cross-examination since Monday last week.