A Soweto man is due to appear in the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday after his teenage girlfriend was found dead in his fridge, Gauteng police said on Saturday. The body of the 17-year-old, from Ermelo in Mpumalanga, was found crouched in the fridge on Friday morning, said Superintendent Thembi Nkhwashu.
The Transport Ministry on Wednesday called on motorists to drive carefully over the Easter weekend. Among others, main routes out of Gauteng are expected to carry heavy traffic from noon until 10pm on Thursday and from 6am to noon on Friday, said ministry spokesperson Ntau Letebele.
This week saw the official launch and installation of Parliament’s new emblem, a design created by the people as a cornerstone for South Africa’s new democracy. ”A new emblem was an important step in establishing an identity for Parliament, one that represents its values, vision and mission,” Parliament said in a statement.
The JSE was higher at midday on Monday on the back of cheerful sentiment on Asian markets in the absence of market-moving news on the local front. By 11.57am, the all-share index was up 0,37% at 27 013,630 thanks to a 0,86% rise in resources. The platinum-mining index was up 0,36%, while the gold-mining index was flat (-0,04%).
Most people believe that corruption occurs to speed up approvals to which people are legally entitled, a survey has found. The number of people who believe this roughly equals the number of people who think that corruption is a means to ill-gotten gains. Business Against Crime and the German Technical Cooperation Agency commissioned the survey as part of business’s contribution to the South African National Anti-Corruption Forum.
R1-billion has been allocated this year to eradicate bucket toilets in established settlements by December, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry said on Friday. ”All bucket systems that exist in formal establishments and townships will be completely removed by December 2007,” said a departmental spokesperson.
South Africa is investigating two main sources of biofuel, maize and sugar, and already proponents are starting to square off. The windfalls task team has recommended investment incentives for the manufacture of biofuels, or liquid fuels from indigenous raw materials, excluding crude oil and natural gas.
Disintegrating boxes of medical waste left out in the rain and rotting waste from abattoirs dumped in ditches in the veld were among the environmental hazards discovered by the ”Green Scorpions” during a nation-wide blitz this week. Inspectors from the environmental police force this week carried out a series of countrywide enforcement inspections.
South Africa’s environmental police force, the ”Green Scorpions,” will be out in strength around the country on Thursday in a massive crackdown on polluters and poachers. The Department of Environmental Affairs is to crack down on illegal fishing, the disposal of hazardous waste and the activities of at least one chemical plant.
The South African government was set on Saturday to take possession of the first farm to be expropriated in a move designed to silence criticism that it is dragging its feet over land reform. Land commission agents, along with chief claims commissioner Thozi Gwanya, will descend on Pniel Farm near the diamond mining town of Kimberley to meet with the outgoing owners.
Crime is an ”illness” that affects all and makes the population live in fear, businessman and former premier of Mpumalanga Mathews Phosa said on Wednesday. He was speaking at a symposium at the University of the Free State on the effect of serious crime and violent crime in South Africa.
Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) needs a proactive networked response particularly when it appears together with HIV infection, an international discussion on MDR-TB heard in Johannesburg on Monday. ”It is one disease where there are more questions than answers,” said Dr Norbert Ndjeka from Limpopo.
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/ 26 February 2007
Isolated drought conditions and the heatwave of the last 10 days in many parts of South Africa have affected the maize crop severely, said the general manager of Grain SA, John Purchase, on Monday. ”[With] the heat at 35 to 36 degrees Celsius daily, [or] even higher, there was no chance that maize crops could pollinate and produce,” said Purchase.
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/ 22 February 2007
With five suspected criminals beaten to death in Mpumalanga over the past few weeks, police on Thursday warned residents not to take the law into their own hands. ”It’s out of anger, but it’s not crime prevention. They are actually causing more crime,” said Captain Leonard Hlathi.
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/ 22 February 2007
A disaster-management team was on full alert in eastern Mpumalanga as Cyclone Favio hit Mozambique on Thursday. The South African Weather Service said there was no immediate threat from Favio, which made landfall at about noon. ”There is no immediate threat in South Africa,” a forecaster said.
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/ 22 February 2007
Creating two separate time zones in the country could lead to a massive annual saving of about 500MW of electricity generation, says an internal Eskom study. Eskom’s figures show that it currently costs R10-million per megawatt to build new power capacity, suggesting that energy savings from more efficient use of time zones could obviate the need for R5-billion in new capacity.
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/ 16 February 2007
Four finance youth ministers will be in Parliament as guests of Finance Minister Trevor Manuel when he delivers his budget speech on Wednesday. They will attend a pre-budget function and will meet Manuel and Minster in the Presidency Essop Pahad, Johan Reiners of the South African Youth Ministers’ Programme said on Friday.
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/ 14 February 2007
Opposition parties have accused the government of exploiting the schooling and legal systems and of wanting to take control of every single school in South Africa. ”The minister of education [Naledi Pandor] is exploiting the schooling system and the legal system to lead an ideological crusade against Afrikaans,” Democratic Alliance spokesperson Desiree van der Walt said on Wednesday.
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/ 9 February 2007
January is mango season in Hoedspruit, in the Limpopo province, and casual fruit pickers, mostly women, flood the area’s farms in search of work. Conditions on the farms already make them a potential breeding ground for HIV infection. Workers usually live in overcrowded compounds away from their families and isolated from HIV and Aids interventions.
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/ 8 February 2007
Police officers on Thursday shot rubber bullets at protesters burning African National Congress T-shirts bearing President Thabo Mbeki’s face during a march to the mayor’s office in Moutse district, a municipality of greater Groblersdal. More than 30 marchers were injured in the scuffle, and 46 protesters were arrested and charged for public violence.
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/ 7 February 2007
The productivity of South Africa’s mining sector has not been affected by the Aids pandemic to the extent forecast in some of the ”doom-and-gloom” scenarios of a decade ago, the Chamber of Mines said on Wednesday. The chamber’s chief executive, Mzolisi Diliza, said that intervention strategies now mean that up to 94% of workers being treated are returning to work.
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/ 5 February 2007
Almost 35% of the total South African personal income of R1,232-billion accrued to Gauteng in 2006, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 16,3% and the Western Cape with 14,7%, a new report showed on Monday. Gauteng led the pack despite the 2005 boundary changes that favoured the Northern Cape.
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/ 1 February 2007
Twenty people died and five were injured in a head on collision on the road between Standerton and Embalenhle, Mpumalanga police said on Thursday. Superintendent Abie Khoabane said a Ford Laser overtook a municipal water-tank truck and collided head on with a Quantam minibus taxi on Wednesday evening.
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/ 1 February 2007
The pensioner stepfather of a 44-year-old Witbank businesswoman has agreed to pay her R300 000 following claims by the woman that he raped and sexually abused her over a period of 13 years. The woman initially claimed R1,8-million in damages from the elderly man in the Pretoria High Court.
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/ 25 January 2007
No dates have yet been set for the scrapping of taxis in Gauteng, Transport Department spokesperson Sam Monareng said on Thursday. Dates have also yet to be set for the destruction of old vehicles in the North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga, he said. All Monareng could indicate was that dates would be announced ”soon”.
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/ 22 January 2007
The bodies of five men who died while illegally mining gold near Barberton were found on Monday, Mpumalanga police said. Superintendent Benjamin Bhembe said the bodies were found in a search by the miners’ families and friends. ”This [Monday] morning they recovered the body of one miner and they continued their search.
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/ 22 January 2007
Thirty-four government officials have been arrested in Mpumalanga for fraud and corruption, the provincial health and social services department said on Monday. Spokesperson Mpho Gabashane said the officials were from different departments in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Gauteng.
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/ 17 January 2007
Holiday season traffic deaths and accidents dropped by less than 5% compared with a year ago, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said on Wednesday. Radebe issued his report on the December 1 to January 10 holiday season traffic at Atteridgeville in Gauteng. The number of fatal accidents dropped by 59 from 1 428 to 1 369 compared with the same time a year ago.
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/ 15 January 2007
The bodies of five illegal miners are still inside an abandoned mine near Barberton, said Mpumalanga police on Monday. ”Today [Monday] we are going to ask the mine’s rescue team to help us,” said Constable Jabu Ndubane, explaining that the operation at the abandoned Fairview mine will be risky.
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/ 15 January 2007
A 15-year-old boy wearing blood-spattered clothing, has been arrested in connection with the murder of 78-year-old Mpumalanga farmer Sarel Breedt, News24 reported on Monday. The blood was thought to be that of Breedt, who was tied to a chair at his Honingsdraai farm and shot in the head on Thursday afternoon.
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/ 13 January 2007
The search for five illegal miners missing in an abandoned Barberton mine would probably be called off until daylight, Mpumalanga police said on Friday night. Superintendent Mtsholi Bhembe said police would probably stop searching in the dark and start again on Saturday morning.
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/ 12 January 2007
The African National Congress (ANC) is to celebrate its past 95 years in style in Witbank on Saturday — but thoughts about the future are more likely to dominate the minds of those attending. In nine months’ time, the ruling party has to make a watershed decision about who will be the new president of the ANC.