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/ 28 January 2005
Despite recent rain, Lake St Lucia — South Africa’s first World Heritage Site — is still below its normal levels, Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife said on Friday. At present, the level of the lake is about 80cm below mean sea level, and the lake’s surface area is about 30% of normal. The lake has become compartmented into three distinct water bodies.
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/ 25 January 2005
Unemployment, poverty and inequality have all grown; and an HIV/Aids epidemic of tragic proportions has unfolded…Since January 2003 a research project on social movements has been conducted jointly between the Centre for Civil Society and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Richard Ballard, manager of the project, reflects on some of the initial findings.
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/ 24 January 2005
A man and a woman are being questioned at the Tugela Ferry police station following the murder of five children at Msinga near Greytown in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, South African Broadcasting Corporation news said on Monday. The suspects are reportedly being questioned in connection with the murder of four girls and one boy.
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/ 23 January 2005
Inkatha Freedom party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi has challenged KwaZulu-Natal premier Sbu Ndebele to ”assert, affirm, recognise and protect” his ”Zuluness”. Buthelezi, who is also the so-called ”traditional prime minister” of the Zulus, said the ”Zulu nation” had reached a crucial point.
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/ 21 January 2005
Security remained tight at Lindelani, north of Durban, on Friday following the killing of the area’s Inkatha Freedom Party leader, Thomas Shabalala. The Durban serious and violent crimes unit is investigating the killing. Shabalala was shot twice in the head and chest at his driveway gate just after 8pm. Police do not suspect the killing to have been politically motivated.
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/ 21 January 2005
Ispat Iscor has obtained approval from South African environmental authorities for the construction of a new coke oven battery in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, the company announced on Friday. The plant is expected to enable the company to expand its market coke production by about 450 000 tonnes a year for the domestic ferro-alloy industry.
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/ 19 January 2005
At least 15 Durban-based medical specialists have offered their services to a local welfare group, the Gift of the Givers Foundation, as it prepares for a mercy flight to tsunami victims in Somalia. The foundation’s director, Dr Imtiaaz Sooliman, said Gift of the Givers is ready to leave with 40 tonnes of food, medical supplies and water.
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/ 18 January 2005
Chief land-claims commissioner Tozi Gwanya says he believes that all 22 447 unresolved land-restitution claims will be settled by the end of this year. ”We are confident,” he said on Monday in Cape Town, where he and provincial commissioners are holding their regular quarterly meeting.
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/ 15 January 2005
KwaZulu-Natal swimming star Terence Parkin kept going on his world-record-breaking streak, while Gauteng marathon man Isaac Mahlake put his best foot forward to take bronze as Team South Africa kept pulling in the medals at the Deaflympics in Melbourne, Australia, on Friday.
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/ 15 January 2005
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Friday came out in support for prison warders in their dispute with the Department of Correctional Services. Cosatu said a meeting of its public-sector affiliates on Thursday agreed on a programme of action to rally support for the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union.
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/ 14 January 2005
As the new school year gets under way next week, Western Cape health authorities warned on Friday of a measles epidemic in Cape Town if children are not immunised against the highly infectious disease. A measles outbreak was detected in Cape Town’s Fish Hoek and Sun Valley, with Gauteng and Kwazulu-Natal already experiencing epidemics.
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/ 13 January 2005
The Red Cross has appealed to the public for food and clothing donations for victims of the recent flooding in KwaZulu-Natal, where some people began receiving assistance on Thursday. "Some dramas, like the recent floods in KwaZulu-Natal, are right on our doorstep," said provincial Red Cross manager Derick Naidoo.
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/ 13 January 2005
More prison workers could be fired following threats of legal action by the South African Prisoners Human Rights Organisation (Sapohr), National Correctional Services Commissioner Linda Mti warned on Thursday. Sapohr has served papers on the Department of Correctional Services after the dismissal of prison staff in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
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/ 10 January 2005
KwaZulu-Natal minister of agriculture Lindumusa Ndabandana and five others who had to be rescued from the Drakensberg mountains after their helicopter made an emergency landing on Saturday were found unharmed, his department said on Monday. A doctor reported that although the six were found depressed, tired and hungry, they are doing well.
South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance has called for a judicial commission headed by a respected judge to probe "the serious questions" that continue to hang over Auditor General Shauket Fakie and President Thabo Mbeki involving South Africa’s arms deal, following press reports of a "cover-up" and alteration of an official arms deal report.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=Insight-National&ao=177542">Arms report sanitised</a>
South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance has said Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri is to blame for what has been described as exorbitant and monopolistic tariffs introduced by dual-listed Telkom. But the Communications Users’ Association of South Africa said the full blame should not be focused on Telkom.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=177438">Telkom is ‘milking’ locals</a>
At least five people were killed and hundreds left homeless when heavy storms swept through KwaZulu-Natal on Monday night. Five people in the Umhlahlani area in Ulundi died in a fire and six others were seriously injured when lightning struck their hut and caused a blaze that razed it.
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/ 30 December 2004
South Africans are emptying their pockets this festive season to help victims of the devastating tsunami in South East Asia through a number of emergency response funds set up locally to channel money to needy people — and animals.
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/ 29 December 2004
The 2004 matric class has achieved a pass rate of more than 70% for the third year in a row, says Education Minister Naledi Pandor. The official results in eight provinces were released during a media briefing at Parliament, but the results in Mpumalanga have been withheld because some are under investigation.
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/ 28 December 2004
The KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape coasts have experienced unusual tidal activity and sea currents in the wake of the earthquake that struck south-east Asia at the weekend which sent giant waves across large areas of the Indian Ocean. In the PE area one person is missing, believed drowned, as a result of higher than usual swells
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/ 27 December 2004
The National Sea Rescue Institute and the SA Navy have warned the public and fishermen against high waves along the KwaZulu-Natal Coast and parts of the Eastern Cape following the tsunamis which killed tens of thousands of people in Asia and East Africa.
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/ 23 December 2004
A stalling police vehicle caused the death of a police officer in a road rage incident in Chatsworth, KwaZulu-Natal police said on Thursday. Superintendent Vishnu Naidoo said Inspector Sithembiso Louis Mkhize (41) was travelling in a police car along Woodhurst Drive when it began stalling on Wednesday night. The vehicle came to halt on the on-ramp to Higginson Highway and Mkhize got out of the vehicle.
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/ 23 December 2004
A hunting boom driven by wealthy tourists is pushing black South Africans off the land to make way for game, generating anger that, a decade after apartheid, whites still own most of the countryside. Hundreds of commercial farms have evicted their labourers and converted into game parks, turning swaths of arable land into fenced wilderness for trophy animals such as lions and antelopes.
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/ 20 December 2004
A man convicted on a rape charge walked out of custody in Durban on Monday on bail of R50, after serving three years of a 10-year sentence. This followed the admission by his 19-year-old step-niece, who was the alleged rape victim, that her evidence had been a lie, his lawyer, Vassist Sewpal, said.
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/ 19 December 2004
Deputy President Jacob Zuma handed over a traditional court, king’s chamber, community hall and other facilities to the people of Klipfontein, Mpumalanga, on Saturday. The project is part of the government’s commitment to ”improve the status and position of traditional leaders in our country”, he said.
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/ 17 December 2004
KwaZulu-Natal police on Friday declared a media blackout on details surrounding the deportation of convicted child molester Alan Pyle from New Zealand to South Africa. This follows media reports that Pyle, a South African convicted of abusing three girls in New Zealand, was to be arrested at Johannesburg International airport on Friday morning.
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/ 17 December 2004
The Department of Social Development launched a major anti-corruption campaign recently, asking for public support in its fight against fraud, but a large proportion of the fraud is committed by civil servants. The corruption takes many forms, including syndicates operated by corrupt government officials, doctors, lawyers and priests. We investigate how government officials collude with members of the public to defraud the state of millions of rands.
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/ 17 December 2004
”Two weeks ago, my sister was raped coming home from school. How is my sister supposed to look at me and my brothers and not think of this man? How is she going to trust another man? At the tender age of 14, what picture will she have of men in general?” A policeman and and a brother tells of his anguish at gender violence.
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/ 15 December 2004
The number of road deaths so far this December appears about the same as last year, the Department of Transport said in Pretoria on Wednesday. ”This is incredibly disappointing for us,” said the department’s chief director of land transportation regulation, Wendy Watson.
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/ 9 December 2004
KwaZulu-Natal women who lay charges of domestic violence and then withdraw them could face prosecution this festive season, provincial minister for safety and security Bheki Cele said on Thursday. Unveiling his festive-season security strategy, Cele said domestic violence usually increases considerably during this time.
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/ 9 December 2004
The six-year-old boy struck by lightning on a Pretoria golf course on Wednesday is still in a very critical and unstable condition, the Pretoria East hospital said on Thursday. His internal organs have suffered from the heat and electricity that surged through him in the lightning strike that killed his father, paramedic Roger Owen-Ellis.
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/ 8 December 2004
Thirty correctional services officials were arrested in KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday in connection with a R30-million medical aid fraud scam, Scorpions spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi said. The arrests stem from information given to the Jali Commission of inquiry into prison corruption and an investigation which began in 2002.