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/ 31 October 2007
Mpumalanga-based Sipho Ngomane aims to stamp his authority at the Nedbank Soweto Marathon on Sunday. After his Comrades Marathon victory two years ago, Ngomane seemed to fade owing to a spate of injuries. He finished eighth in his attempt to defend his down-run title earlier this year.
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/ 31 October 2007
A 42-year-old Mpumalanga man has developed breasts after he was enrolled in the government’s antiretroviral (ARV) treatment programme, a media report said on Wednesday. The resident of Standerton’s Sakhile township said doctors and nurses at Standerton’s TB hospital had refused to listen to him.
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/ 30 October 2007
The Nkangala area of Delmas has been hit by an outbreak of diarrhoea, the provincial health department in Mpumalanga said on Tuesday. ”Under normal circumstances 10 cases of diarrhoea are reported in a week, but we treated 47 people last week and 26 yesterday [Monday],” said spokesperson Mpho Gabashane.
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/ 26 October 2007
A 16-year-old girl was murdered by her family for staying overnight with her boyfriend, Mpumalanga police said on Thursday. Spokesperson Abi Khoabane said the girl from Mayflower in Ermelo spent the night with her boyfriend and when she returned home she was attacked by her brother, mother and father.
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/ 25 October 2007
Rand Water intends spending R4-billion on upgrading and refurbishing its distribution infrastructure in the next five years, the company announced in releasing its results on Thursday. Of this, 57% would be allocated to augmentation projects and the rest to the renovation and upgrading of existing infrastructure, said Rand Water acting chief executive Zvinaiye Manyere.
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/ 24 October 2007
The nine South African soldiers killed during a military training exercise at Lohatla base were on Wednesday hailed as heroes and heroines during a memorial service in Kimberley. Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said that the five men and four women had fallen in defence of South Africa’s hard-won democracy.
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/ 23 October 2007
The Green Scorpions have shut down ArcelorMittal operations at its Vaal waste site over its dumping of hazardous waste and air and water pollution, it was announced on Tuesday. The move followed numerous ”futile attempts” at getting the steel company to clean up its act, Gauteng’s department of agriculture, conservation and environment said in a statement.
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/ 22 October 2007
Stock theft in South Africa has amounted to R327 676 500 in the past year, the National Stock Theft Forum said on Monday. ”At the moment, stock theft is hampering the profitability of the stock farmers and it is also interfering with the government’s land-reform process, as well as the empowering of the emerging farmers,” the forum said in a statement.
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/ 19 October 2007
Mozambican authorities need to continue to seek the truth on who killed Samora Machel, the country’s first president, almost 21 years ago. The call was made by Feliciano Gundana, Minister for the Affairs of Former Combatants on Friday when he was speaking on Radio Mozambique’s Café da Manha.
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/ 17 October 2007
A ruling by a full bench of the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday put another nail in the coffin of Afrikaans-only education in state schools. The court dismissed with costs a review application by Hoërskool Ermelo to set aside a decision forcing it to admit English-speaking pupils and become a parallel-medium school.
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/ 15 October 2007
About a third of the workforce at Sasol Mining near Secunda have begun a protected strike over wage increases, Sasol said on Monday. Sasol spokesperson Johann van Rheede said workers downed tools at Sasol’s five mines in Mpumalanga last Friday, continuing on Monday. The workers are members of the United People’s Union of South Africa.
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/ 13 October 2007
Two men who were found guilty of 21 charges against them — including seven counts of murder and six counts of rape — were sentenced to 445 years’ imprisonment each by the Middelburg High Court, Mpumalanga police said on Friday. The court found the men guilty on October 2 after a two-year trial.
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/ 11 October 2007
Polokwane will be a busy town come December with an expected 4Â 500 delegates, both voting and non-voting, attending the African National Congress’s (ANC) 52nd national conference. Smuts Ngonyama, head of the presidency of the ANC, on Thursday updated the media in Johannesburg on preparations for the conference.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has apparently thrown her weight behind leading businessman Tokyo Sexwale for the African National Congress presidency. Meanwhile, audited ANC membership figures have confirmed the Eastern Cape as the party’s strongest province, media reports said on Tuesday.
Emails suggesting that a severe storm with a tornado was to hit Johannesburg and surrounds on Monday afternoon were "greatly exaggerated", the South African Weather Service said. One email on Monday read: "Please be careful as a tornado dropped in Randfontein on Saturday and is expected today."
A swoop by environmental inspectors on the giant Highveld Steel and Vanadium Corporation’s Vanchem plant outside Witbank in Mpumalanga has uncovered shocking levels of air, ground and water pollution. Environmental management inspectors, better known as the Green Scorpions, carried out a compliance inspection at the plant at the end of August this year.
Limpopo’s environmental affairs and tourism department has given the go-ahead for rangers to kill lions that have escaped from the Kruger National Park, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Wednesday. Five more cattle were killed by lions at Gawula village outside Giyani on Wednesday.
Mpumalanga’s organised crime unit has arrested five men following a string of rapes in the province over the weekend. More arrests are expected. The unit’s spokesperson, Captain Leonard Hlathi, said on Tuesday that 27 rapes were reported throughout the province at the weekend.
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/ 27 September 2007
It was a day of wrangling over evidence in the drunken-driving trial of Judge Nkola Motata at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Thursday. The court adjourned on Thursday afternoon after prosecutor Zaais van Zyl attempted to enter five recordings made by Baird on his cellphone, allegedly of Motata using derogatory language.
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/ 26 September 2007
South African petrochemical giant Sasol has opened an office in Shanghai to market its range of chemical solvents in China. Sasol Chemicals Shanghai will initially market products from the global Sasol Solvents business, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
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/ 25 September 2007
The government is committed to meeting its target of eradicating the bucket-toilet system in all formal settlements established before 1994, it said on Tuesday. To ensure this deadline was met an amount of R1,6-billion had been made available ”to provide better and more acceptable sanitation for all”.
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/ 24 September 2007
Five veld fires that were raging in Mpumalanga had been put out by Monday morning, Working on Fire said. ”The five fires have been contained,” said provincial coordinator Jacques Benade. ”It is now overcast in Mpumalanga, there is moisture. We are fortunate that temperatures are lower than yesterday [Sunday],” he said.
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/ 18 September 2007
One of the runaway Kruger National Park lions was killed on Monday night after it was found eating a cow, said the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency. Spokesperson Jimmy Masombuka said the agency received a tip-off on Monday evening about the whereabouts of the lion and surrounded the area.
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/ 17 September 2007
Three lions which escaped from the Kruger National Park on Friday were still on the run, the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency said on Monday. Four lions escaped through a fence in the park on Friday and authorities had been notified by residents from the town of Emdlankomo in the Nelspruit area.
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/ 12 September 2007
Mpumalanga and North West have spent R166-million on strike recovery measures, Education Minister Naledi Pandor told the National Council of Provinces on Tuesday. Replying to oral questions, Pandor said Mpumalanga had spent R96-million on teacher remuneration for Saturday and holiday classes.
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/ 12 September 2007
Samson Mashaba struggles to retain his sense of humour as he waits to see his doctor. ”If you’re unlucky, you’ll die standing here,” says the 69-year-old as he surveys the queue ahead of him at a rural hospital in Mpumalanga. While South Africa may boast some of the finest hospitals on the continent in cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town, rural healthcare is dogged by a lack of cash, personnel and facilities.
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/ 7 September 2007
During the question-and-answer session at the launch of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class in Mpumalanga, a journo asked how he was supposed to fit all the info about the new model into a 750-word story. We all laughed and agreed that that was a challenge: trying to summarise how much the C-Class had changed and what it had to offer.
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/ 2 September 2007
Businessman Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday said he has no interest in joining the African National Congress presidential succession race — this after the Sunday Times reported that Ramaphosa had joined the race. ”I have no interest in standing for this position,” he said in a statement.
A villager from Songeni near Thulamahashe in Mpumalanga is recovering in hospital after he was kicked and dragged by a cow he was tied to, losing most of his teeth in the process. A media report said on Friday that the man had been accused by his employer of spreading a rumour about him.
As the bell summons delegates to the Polokwane rendezvous, is the ANC inspiring confidence as a leader capable of taking the country into a new age? This question assumes currency not only because we are dealing with South Africa’s strongest political party. Supporter, critic and opponent alike concur that, historically, by ably advancing the synthesis of a common humanity, the ANC has been the glue that has held this country together.
An alleged hit man in the murder of Govan Mbeki municipality deputy mayor Thandi Mtsweni confessed to the killing in the Evander Magistrate’s Court in Mpumalanga on Thursday, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported. The alleged assassin is Sikhosiphe Gwala (42).
South Africa is at the forefront of research into so-called clean-coal technology, aimed at reducing the huge volumes of greenhouse gases emitted by its power stations, MPs heard on Wednesday. The country’s high-quality coal was mined out, leaving more environmentally harmful, lower-grade coal for use in the country’s power plants, MPs were told.