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/ 23 December 2006
Two awaiting-trial prisoners hanged themselves in two separate police stations in Mpumalanga, police said on Friday. One of the men, who had been arrested for the rape of his eight-year-old niece, used a blanket to kill himself. ”The 19-year-old was arrested on Wednesday, a day after the alleged rape,” Superintendent Abie Khoabane said.
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/ 23 December 2006
Two police officers were among people arrested for drunken driving in the presence of Transport Minister Jeff Radebe in separate roadblocks on the N3 in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday, the provincial traffic department said. By Friday, the death toll on South Africa’s roads stood at 907, down from last year’s 1 024 for the same period.
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/ 22 December 2006
A two-year-old cheetah, who had her paw mangled in a crude snare, is to have a prosthetic leg fitted in a ground-breaking operation by animal surgeons in South Africa. Betty Blue was operated on at the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre, near Johannesburg, after being rescued from the iron jaws of the trap which had clamped down on her left hind leg in Mpumalanga.
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/ 8 December 2006
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) formally declared a dispute on Friday with the Department of Education over non-payment of teachers. The dispute was declared over an agreement on incentives — termed ”accelerated progression payments” for good performance — Sadtu said.
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/ 7 December 2006
The Department of Education must give teachers detailed salary advice so they know what money is owed to them and what the money is for, the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa said on Thursday. However, the department slammed unions for ”misinformed and inflammatory” remarks.
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/ 7 December 2006
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) was the big winner in the last round of by-elections to take place this year, claiming all but one of the 12 wards contested in results. The municipal by-elections on Wednesday were marked by low voter turnouts, with an 11% turnout at ward three in Mbolela (Nelspruit).
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/ 7 December 2006
Seventeen prisoners escaped from police cells in KwaMhlanga and Dennilton in Mpumalanga, police said on Thursday. In Dennilton, nine men cut their way out of their cell in the early hours of Wednesday, spokesperson Superintendent Malcolm Mokomene said in a statement.
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/ 4 December 2006
Recent union remarks over outstanding payments to teachers are ”misinformed and inflammatory”, the Department of Education said on Monday. A settlement agreement for wage increases has been fulfilled by the department, said spokesperson Lunga Ngqengelele.
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/ 4 December 2006
Annanias Mathe, the Mozambican prisoner who escaped from Pretoria’s C-Max jail on November 18, was shot, wounded and arrested in Tembisa on the East Rand of Gauteng on Monday, police said. Mathe was arrested after he stole a car with a tracking device from a house in Craighall Park, national police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer said.
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/ 1 December 2006
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The South African government unveiled plans on Friday to reduce the number of people being infected with HIV by 50% within the next five years. A new action plan launched by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka also contains target pledges to provide care for 80% of the population.
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/ 24 November 2006
Police on Friday said that the man who escaped from the high-security C-Max prison in Pretoria on the weekend has ”the luck of the devil”. ”He must be the devil’s child himself because we get new leads every day but he has not yet been arrested,” said investigating officer Arnold Boonstra. ”He seems to have the luck of the devil.”
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/ 24 November 2006
Mpumalanga will continue to have poor matric results unless the government implemented a comprehensive education rescue plan, the Democratic Alliance said on Thursday. ”Information obtained by the DA indicate that the results for June exams are extremely poor and improvement in the 2006 matric results may be minimal, if any,” DA spokesperson on education Anthony Benadie said.
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/ 23 November 2006
A total of 303 cases of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) have been confirmed across the country, the Department of Health said on Thursday. ”They are in the hospitals, they are on treatment. Some of them have died,” said the department’s head of TB, Dr Lindiwe Mvusi. Mvusi did not have details at hand of how many had died.
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/ 23 November 2006
North West police shot and wounded a reverend during a search for the man who escaped from Pretoria’s C-Max prison on the weekend. Captain Elsabe Augoustides said on Thursday that the incident happened when police received information about the whereabouts of a man resembling Annanias Mathe (29), who escaped from custody on Saturday.
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/ 23 November 2006
A Mpumalanga man thought to be the Mozambican national who escaped from Pretoria’s C-Max prison has turned out to be someone else, police said on Thursday. ”It is not the Annanias Mathe we are searching for,” national police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer said.
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/ 22 November 2006
Over five million South African pupils and 13Â 000 schools will be exempt from school fees from January, the Department of Education said on Wednesday. ”The Department of Education wishes to announce that all the nine provincial departments of education have submitted their lists of the number of learners and schools [that] would benefit,” the department said in a statement.
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/ 22 November 2006
Wealthy tourists jetting into South Africa to stay at luxury safari lodges pay top dollar for the illusion of danger, epitomised by a trumpeting elephant or a lion moving in for a kill. But lodge workers and the impoverished surrounding communities face a threat far more deadly than the leopards and lions that thrill the visitors.
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/ 14 November 2006
Only slightly more than one out of 10 South Africans with bank accounts have used their cellphones for banking, according to research released by World Wide Worx on Tuesday. A surprising finding from the research is that the youth market is the least likely to have tried cellphone banking.
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/ 9 November 2006
An unprotected strike by health workers in Mpumalanga has been replaced by lunch-time pickets, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) said on Thursday. Provincial secretary December Manana said Nehawu met its members to report back on a meeting with Mpumalanga Premier Thabang Makwetla.
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/ 8 November 2006
A debilitating strike which affects health services in Mpumalanga is continuing on Wednesday, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said. Provincial spokesperson Norman Mokoena said a meeting between the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union and Mpumalanga Premier Thabang Makwetla deadlocked on Tuesday afternoon.
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/ 6 November 2006
While President Thabo Mbeki will only give up his Union Buildings office in 2009, the next president will effectively be chosen in just over a year’s time at the ANC’s watershed elective conference in Polokwane, Limpopo. How will it happen? And how are the cards stacked? Zukile Majova and Mbuyisi Mgibisa investigated to bring you this exclusive report, taking you into the mechanics of an elective conference.
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/ 5 November 2006
However reluctant a hero, Patrick Chamusso is about to find fame; the remarkable story of his life in apartheid South Africa has been made into a film already being tipped for an Oscar. Chamusso is a hero twice over. He fought to end South Africa’s apartheid regime and endured torture and 10 years in jail.
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/ 3 November 2006
Yolandi Groenewald looks at books that explore things that go bump in the night in South Africa.
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/ 3 November 2006
While the British government is making climate-change combat its priority, South African officialdom is squabbling over who should administer a green tax worth up to R600-million a year. Electricity users pay between R400-million and R600-million annually as a tariff on electricity usage to promote energy saving.
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/ 31 October 2006
A child-trafficking racket involving Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa is under investigation, said Mpumalanga police on Tuesday. Inspector Eddie Ngobeni said the investigation arose after a report from the Amazing Grace children’s home in Malelane, near Nelspruit.
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/ 26 October 2006
OR Tambo International airport is one of hundreds of South African place names that have been officially changed since 2000. The airport’s new name and a bust of Tambo are due to be unveiled on Friday by President Thabo Mbeki. The South African Geographical Names Council lists 833 new names approved since 2000, including at least 145 names that were completely changed.
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/ 25 October 2006
South Africa’s nine provinces are to receive an additional R28,2-billion over the next three years, according to Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement. Provincial government is projected to get R178,3-billion this year — 2006/07 — including R150,7-billion from the equitable share and R27,5-billion in conditional grants.
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/ 25 October 2006
President Thabo Mbeki warned earlier this month that strategic proposals conveyed by the South African Communist Party’s Blade Nzimande would result in the ”destruction of the African National Congress and the rest of the democratic movement”. But he decline of the ruling alliance was prophesied more than a decade ago, writes Ranjeni Munusamy.
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/ 24 October 2006
A Mpumalanga man is being hailed as a ”Crocodile Dundee” after surviving a four-hour battle with a huge crocodile at the weekend, media reports said on Tuesday. Alex Masinga (58) of KaMhlushwa in Nkomazi said he first defended himself against the 2,7m female by wrestling with it.
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/ 15 October 2006
A fundraising dinner in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, has raised more than R500 000 for African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Sunday. Among those attending were the provincial leadership of the ANC, provincial ministers, mayors and business people.
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/ 13 October 2006
The question whether the apartheid regime was responsible for the death of former Mozambican president Samora Machel on October 19 1986 remains unanswered 20 years later, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. Mbeki paid tribute to Machel, whose death in an aircraft crash at Mbuzini in Mpumalanga was mourned as much by the ANC as by Frelimo.
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/ 11 October 2006
Mpumalanga police fear an increase in farm killings in the province, a police spokesperson said on Wednesday. Last week, three separate farm attacks were reported near Malelane, Lydenburg and Barberton in which a farm worker was shot, a family was robbed and another woman seriously wounded with her own gun after she surprised robbers.