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/ 14 October 2007
Six names of the nine South African National Defence Force soldiers who died during a training accident at the South African Army Combat Training Centre in Lohatla, Northern Cape, were released on Saturday. The Department of Defence has appointed a high-level board of inquiry to investigate the accident.
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/ 13 October 2007
A female artillery officer risked her life at Lohatlha on Friday in a desperate bid to prevent members of her battery being killed by their own anti-aircraft gun. By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazine, eight soldiers were dead. A ninth soldier, a woman, died soon after being airlifted to Bloemfontein.
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/ 12 October 2007
Nine South African soldiers were killed on Friday in a shooting accident involving an anti-aircraft gun during a training exercise at a base in the central Bloemfontein region, the army said. "I can confirm that nine of our people have died and another 15 were injured and taken to various," a South African National Defence Force spokesperson said.
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/ 21 September 2007
The African National Congress is intent on turning South Africa into an authoritarian state, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille warned on Friday. ”The evidence is now overwhelming: the ruling party is increasingly authoritarian, intolerant of criticism and hostile to the principles of an open society,” she said.
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/ 18 September 2007
”Palace politics” are the biggest threat facing the national democratic revolution, South African Communist Party secretary general Blade Nzimande said on Tuesday. ”Like all palace politics, it is the politics of backstabbing, the pursuit of individual wealth,” he told delegates at the Congress of South African Trade Unions central committee meeting.
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/ 13 September 2007
South Africa on Wednesday marked the 30th anniversary of Steve Biko’s murder as the country’s current leaders face accusations they have neglected the poor masses. His legacy is a rallying cry for some of the discontented, who believe the ANC leadership have placed the interests of the business community above those of the country as a whole.
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/ 11 September 2007
The working-class movement in South Africa is eating itself alive because of its leadership squabbles, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) president Willie Madisha said on Tuesday. ”The way many are conducting themselves is not proper,” he told a Food and Allied Workers’ Union conference in Randburg.
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/ 9 September 2007
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African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma questioned the ”Americanisation” of culture in South Africa, criticising television images of sex and violence during a speech in Johannesburg on Sunday. ”There’s more violence on the TV … there’s more open sex on TV. What education are you giving to us? Is that part of our culture?”
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/ 5 September 2007
African National Congress national chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota has defended his negative remarks about people singing freedom songs such as Umshini Wami, saying the issue was not about ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma, but about policy. ”These liberation and freedom songs are not pop songs … which we sing for personal entertainment here and there,” he said.
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/ 5 September 2007
The Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Western Cape suffered a further blow on Wednesday with the defection of two of its senior MPLs to the African National Congress (ANC). The defecting members are DA provincial chairperson Kent Morkel and Kobus Brynard, who is a member of the provincial executive.
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/ 4 September 2007
A lone South African submarine left some Nato commanders with red faces on Tuesday as it ”sank” all the ships of the Nato Maritime Group engaged in exercises with the South African Navy off the Cape coast. The SAS Manthatisi not only evaded detection by a joint Nato and South African Navy search party, it also ”sank” all the ships taking part in the fleet.
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/ 4 September 2007
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the Young Communists League took issue on Tuesday with African National Congress national chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota over his remarks about those singing the freedom song, Umshini Wami. ”We respect comrade Lekota’s views but we disagree with them strongly,” Cosatu said in a statement.
The United States Africa Command (Africom) should stay out of the African continent, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said on Wednesday. Africom was not really a new development, as the US has always had some kind of focus on the African continent, he told a media briefing in Cape Town.
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/ 15 February 2007
Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota took issue this week with South Africans who complained about crime.