Wet and windy conditions are set to make driving over the Easter long weekend even more perilous, Arrive Alive said on Thursday. Spokesperson Wendy Watson said traffic was expected to increase on all major routes as worshippers and holiday makers made their way to various destinations.
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The rest of Africa can learn much from South Africa’s election process, the visiting Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum said on Thursday. ”We have observed nine elections throughout the SADC since 1999 and realised how much other countries can learn from South Africa,” said the mission leader.
Special Report: Elections 2004
‘Why should artists vote for you?" This was the question posed to the fishers-of-votes by arts organisations in different provinces over the past month. Generally, it is pretty hard for arts-related concerns to get on to the radar screens of political parties, but in the game of elections, even artists qualify as players, writes Mike van Graan.
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Opposition political parties face tough questions about their future if — as expected — they perform poorly at the polls this election. Over three elections, more small parties have gained parliamentary representation, but the overall space for opposition parties has shrunk, courtesy of the continued growth of the ruling African National Congress.
One in 10 South Africans between the ages of 15 and 24 are HIV-positive — but there is hope, according to the findings of new survey, released on Wednesday. The 10,2% prevalence rate may amount to a stabilisation of infections in that age group, the survey report states.
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The convoy leaves before dawn, snaking deep into Zululand while villages sleep. By first light we are at the rendezvous and ready for the final day of Operation Rolling Thunder. Helicopters clatter down on to the field and in groups of 14 soldiers and police officers scramble aboard as the machines rise and race towards mountain peaks.
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Members of the African National Congress have laid about 20 charges of intimidation, assault and disruption of political events against other political parties in KwaZulu-Natal in the run-up to the April 14 election, the ANC said on Monday.
Special Report: Elections 2004
Global banking group HSBC, which was recently awarded a banking licence in South Africa, has opened a branch in the country — its first sub-Saharan branch in Africa. The branch is based in Johannesburg and was officially opened by South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni.
If one gives in to the uncanny impression that the men in Zwelethu Mthethwa’s new series of photographs are waiting for something or someone, one sets in motion a whole train of problems, writes Bronwyn Law-Viljoen.
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Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille received a movie star welcome in a Pietermaritzburg suburb while campaigning for the April 14 elections. Children swarmed around De Lille begging for her autograph which she signed on pamphlets outlining what her party was about.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>One way of analysing elections is to think of them in four phases. First, there are the campaign issues: what do people care about? Second, there is the response of the contesting parties: what campaign strategy do they employ? Third, there are the results. And fourth, political consequences. There is very little strategic capacity to run election campaigns in South Africa, writes Richard Calland.
Twenty-seven facilities had met the basic requirements for accreditation to provide quality care for Aids patients, the national Department of Health has announced. The 27 facilities will begin admitting patients and performing HIV testing and medical examinations.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>The African National Congress is demanding a public apology from the <i>City Press</i> newspaper following what the party calls "false" reporting of its campaigning in Ulundi, KwaZulu-Natal, at the weekend. The ANC said the newspaper had reported that the ANC campaign there had "ended in disarray".
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3_fl2.asp?o=40922">Special Report: Elections 2004</a>
The Democratic Alliance has questioned why the Department of Public Service and Administration has kept secret the results of a study on the impact of HIV/Aids on the public service. A Sunday newspaper reported that the study had found more than 100 000 civil servants were infected with HIV/Aids.
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It appears it will be a while before the African National Congress is welcomed with open arms into Ulundi, the traditional stronghold of the Inkatha Freedom Party, if Saturday’s response to an ANC election campaign is anything to go by. A large group of IFP supporters attempted to disrupt an ANC meeting in the KwaZulu-Natal town.
Special Report: Elections 2004
It’s been a confusing few months for world-weary observers of African elections, as they’ve sat and watched South Africa and waited for the smoke to rise. Where’s all the razor wire? This isn’t an election campaign, it’s a queue. And no one is cutting in. Frankly, this year’s election campaign has been decidedly dull.
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South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande says the alliance of the Democratic Alliance and the Inkatha Freedom Party represents the most backward elements created by apartheid. ”These two parties represent not only the interests of beneficiaries of apartheid but are reluctantly part of the new order,” he said.
Special Report: Elections 2004
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Western Cape Premier and New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk has emerged as the most popular premier candidate in that province in a Markinor poll conducted in January/February. In KwaZulu-Natal, the African National Congress’s top-ranking candidate for the legislature, S’bu Ndebele, won the popularity stake in the poll.
Special Report: Elections 2004
The Karoo dorp of Beaufort West is a curious mix. It is the birthplace of heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard and has a museum in his honour. It is the place where anti-apartheid activists downed a helicopter in the 1980s. Unemployment stands at an estimated 60% among the about 60Â 000 Central Karoo residents. Taking the Central Karoo from bust to boom needs more jobs that will stay.
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Ten percent to 12% of the vote — that is what Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille predicts her party will get in next month’s general election. The fiery party leader, called the one-woman-show by many of her opponents, on Tuesday introduced her provincial leaders and premier’s candidates to the media.
Special Report: Elections 2004
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The most critical challenge facing South Africa in its next 10 years of democracy is the issue of poverty, President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday night. ”These [general] elections are about what we need to do in our second decade of freedom,” Mbeki told a gathering at the Pietermaritzburg city hall.
President Thabo Mbeki’s office received a number of death threats against the president earlier in the week, Afrikaans daily newspaper Beeld reported on Friday. The threatening calls were received a day after a former South African National Defence Force Major, George Makume, was shot dead outside former president Nelson Mandela’s Cape Town house.
The right to vote and the opportunity it provides for an individual to contribute to social change is a very simple, powerful tool in the democratic process, and we in South Africa have waited long and suffered much to secure this right. For this reason alone we should all discharge our responsibility as voting citizens with due care and informed thought.
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The talk of violence in KwaZulu-Natal would cease if the African National Congress took the province in the upcoming general election, President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday. He told the community of Mafunze, near Pietermaritzburg, they should vote for the ANC to free themselves of people who ”intimidate them with spears”.
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President Thabo Mbeki was turned away by a chief in rural KwaZulu-Natal on Thursday in a bid to avoid possible tension between supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress. Mbeki was on his way to pay his respects to Chief Ngcobo in Mafunze when he was asked not visit the chief.
Zimbabwe will solve its problems quickly once formal negotiations get underway in that country, President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday. He said the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change would go into formal talks with an agenda currently being set in informal negotiations.
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The African National Congress in Gauteng on Wednesday lodged a formal complaint with the Independent Electoral Commission, accusing Inkatha Freedom Party leaders of obstructing it from campaigning for the upcoming election.
Special Report: Elections 2004
"I take strong exception to being lumped together with the so-called ‘Bantustan stooges’ and in fact these averments by your newspaper are defamatory per se." Minister of Home Affairs and president of the Inkatha Freedom Party Mangosuthu Buthelezi responds to the <i>M&G</i>.
Education Minister Kader Asmal defended his department’s education policies on Tuesday and praised the progress made since 1994, saying the extraordinary damage done by the apartheid education system should not be forgotten.
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Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon spelled out on Tuesday the goals of his party’s ”Coalition for Change” with the Inkatha Freedom Party, and predicted the two parties would win up to 30% of the national vote on Election Day. He said the coalition aimed to provide the ”core of an alternative government”.
The poor infection control practices in some of South Africa’s top academic hospitals raise the spectre of ”unexplained” HIV/Aids transmission, an article in the SA Medical Journal says. ”There is an urgent need to re-evaluate and improve infection control practices in health care settings,” the article concludes.
Gauteng province’s roll-out of antiretroviral drugs for HIV/Aids patients will begin on April 1, health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa said on Monday. The province hoped to treat about 100 new cases a week, starting in five hospitals, and expanding to 23 institutions by this time next year.