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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.
South Africa is set to seize two more white-owned farms, one of them run by a church, to fast-track land reforms to rectify apartheid-era imbalances, a top land official said on Monday. ”The minister [of agriculture and land affairs] has signed the notices of expropriation and they have been sent,” chief land claims commissioner Tozi Gwanya told the media.
A nurse from Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga has been found guilty of infecting her stepson with HIV after giving him an injection with contaminated blood, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Thursday. Pinky Mabuza (33) stood trial in the magistrate’s court at Mkuhlu near Hazyview.
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/ 27 September 2006
South Africa had more than 2,7-million tourist arrivals between January and April, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk revealed on Wednesday. This was the first time arrivals had broken through the 2,5-milion mark in the first four months of the year, he quoted from the latest tourism review.
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/ 18 September 2006
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) on Monday denied that it mishandled a case where 10 people accused of a spree of bank robberies, which netted over R100-million, walked free from a Mpumalanga court. The City Press newspaper reported on Sunday that the NPA misquoted its own law in appointing the prosecutor, resulting in the collapse of the case.
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/ 12 September 2006
The auditor general’s (AG) performance audit on the approval and allocation of housing subsidies to municipal employees by the Mpumalanga department of local government and housing has highlighted discrepancies of more R4-million in subsidy allocation.
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/ 6 September 2006
The 21 000 civil servants caught fraudulently claiming social grants should all be prosecuted, face disciplinary hearings and be made to pay back the money, two rights monitoring groups said on Wednesday. ”It is vital that justice in these cases be seen to be done,” the Grahamstown offices of the Black Sash and the Public Service Accountability Monitor said in a joint statement.
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/ 4 September 2006
The statement by religious commentator and director of the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation in South Africa, Charles Villa-Vincencio, that South African whites should act in their own ”enlightened self-interest” and put something back into the country has evoked a storm of reaction.
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/ 4 September 2006
More children are attending and finishing school but more are vulnerable due to poverty and the death of at least one parent, said an Education Department report released on Monday. The report found that the demand for high school and higher education institutions would probably grow strongly while demand for primary schools would grow more slowly.
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/ 4 September 2006
South Africa had to become an advanced information-based society in which information and communication technology (ICT) tools were the drivers of economic and societal development,” President Thabo Mbeki said on Sunday. Although South Africa had a diverse and dynamic telecommunications market with world-class technology, there were still many untapped opportunities.
South Africa’s dams are 92% full, according to the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s records. The department reports on its website that the dams were only 65% full this time last year. This week, dam levels in the provinces ranged from overflowing in the Northern Cape to 72% full in Limpopo.
A police officer who was shot and wounded by two men in an attack in Lydenburg had one of his attackers arrested when the man was brought to the same hospital, Mpumalanga police said on Monday. Constable Dumisani Mhlanga was walking to his home at midnight on Saturday when he was wounded in his stomach and arm by four armed men, said Captain Leonard Hlathi.
Members of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) staged protests outside government offices around the country on Thursday. The illegal protest was part of a ”global day of action” to pressure the government on its response to HIV/Aids. However, the Department of Health said it will continue to focus on prevention in its fight against HIV/Aids.
Rainfall has eased in the sodden southern Cape but more is expected, said the South African Weather Service on Thursday. In the 24 hours to 8am on Thursday, the weather service recorded 11,6mm in Riversdale, compared to 28mm the day before, 4mm in George (71,5mm on Wednesday) and 18mm in Heidelberg (25mm on Wednesday).
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is remaining tight-lipped hours ahead of a planned international day of action on Thursday. ”It is a secret,” said Rukia Cornelius, the TAC’s national manager, on Wednesday. The day will see protests at South African embassies and government institutions in South Africa, the United States and Europe.
A police director of the South African Police Service (SAPS) who survived a car accident two years ago was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Kwamhlanga, Mpumalanga, police said on Wednesday. Director Kelly Chilli (41) was knocked down by a car on Monday, Commissioner Afrika Khumalo said in statement.
Eleven women and eleven girls were raped in Mpumalanga over the weekend, police said on Tuesday. Superintendent Leonard Hlathi said nine minors were raped in Siyabusa and four suspects were arrested. In one incident a 40-year-old man was caught in the act of raping a six-year-old girl. He was arrested.
A 28-year-old man was arrested after a chopped-up body was found dumped in a pit toilet in Tubatse near the border of Mpumalanga, Limpopo police said on Monday. A head, legs, hands and private parts were found severed from the rest of the body and in the toilet.
The government payment of R50Â 000 per vehicle in the taxi recapitalisation programme should be doubled or trebled and supplemented with a subsidy, the National Taxi Alliance said on Monday. The alliance said some taxi drivers are illegally overloading because they cannot afford the new standards.
South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki cannot demand a new positive image of Africa while continuing to condone the flagrant abuse of office and squandering of public money that typifies so much of the continent, says official opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon.
A decision to seize white-owned land if negotiations linger or end in deadlock is paying off with more and more farmers accepting the price offered by the state, a top land official said on Wednesday. ”These farmers have become more supportive because we are cracking the whip,” chief land claims commissioner Tozi Gwanya said in an interview.