Roofs of houses and businesses were in danger of collapsing under the weight of snow in Barkly East and Elliot in the Eastern Cape, Arrive Alive said on Wednesday. Disaster teams and traffic authorities were using graders to clear snow off the road. ”But it is very, very cold and the snow is very thick,” said an Arrive Alive spokesperson.
She considers herself lucky to be alive, says Patricia Mbiza, who was seriously wounded in last week’s boardroom shooting in Pretoria. The Pretoria News on Monday quoted her as saying: ”He wanted to kill us, and he killed my colleagues and friends.” Mbiza recounted how a colleague at a Sunnyside engineering firm, Happy Nkosi, pulled out a firearm at a board meeting on Friday.
The National House of Traditional Leaders says it is planning public hearings on circumcision in a bid to counter the continuing deaths resulting from the ritual. Chief Dikgale Solomon, head of a four-man task team, said on Friday it was intended to hold the hearings before the December circumcision season.
A 35-year-old man appeared in the Ermelo Magistrate’s Court on Monday after he allegedly stole a corpse from a local mortuary and had sex with it, Mpumalanga police said. The man faces charges of breaking and entering, theft and violation of the body of a dead person, said Superintendent Abie Khoabane.
Civil servants who fraudulently claimed social grants include police officers, National Prosecuting Authority employees and a staffer in the president’s office. The list of 1 792 civil servants who are required to pay back fraudulently obtained grants was released by the Department of Social Development.
The Asbestos Relief Trust, set up to compensate asbestosis claimants, paid out more than R91-million in 1 378 claims in the past two years. Trust chairperson John Doidge said in his report on Monday: ”The manager’s report shows that to date we have been able to compensate 1 378 people suffering with an asbestos related disease.
This week South Africa experienced weather extremes starting with a berg wind and a tornado, and ending with snow and floods. A report by South African Weather Service meteorologists Luis Fernandes and Lee-Ann Clark — from the National Forecast Centre in Pretoria — detailed the week’s strange weather.
The body of a 45-year-old Mpumalanga woman was stolen from a mortuary in Ermelo, police said on Friday. Superintendent Abie Khoabane said that Sibongile Nhlabathi’s body was taken to Siza Funeral Services at 11am on Thursday after she died of natural causes.
Criminals have become so determined that they have resorted to blowing up ATMs with explosives believed to have been stolen from mines. In the last two months, seven ATMS have been blown up, and the police believe that the explosives were stolen from mines. Three of the affected ATMs belong to Standard Bank while four belong to Absa Bank.
Fourteen people were rescued from a truck in a flooded river in Plettenberg Bay using a front-end loader, the National Sea Rescue Institute said on Wednesday. A massive cold front has brought freezing conditions and flooding to the country. Four bodies were recovered after a car was washed away in floods in George.
A massive cold front sweeping across South Africa has brought freezing conditions to much of the country, with snow reported as far north as Bloemfontein in the Free State and parts of Gauteng, as well as reports of serious flooding in the southern Cape and a tornado in Dullstroom in Mpumalanga.
Labour unions embroiled in a wage dispute with mining company Kumba will continue strike action until their demands are met, the unions said on Tuesday. The workers are demanding a 9% wage increase for higher earners and 10,5% for lower earners. Kumba has countered with an offer of 7% for higher earners and 8% for lower earners.
The Department of Arts and Culture has received ”hundreds” of submissions on the proposed renaming of Johannesburg International airport to OR Tambo International airport, the department reported on Monday. The deadline for submissions is at midnight on Monday. Ministry spokesperson Sandile Memela said that submissions were streaming in ”every moment of every hour”.
Getting through a month of enforced abstinence from one’s favourite addiction, alcoholic or otherwise, is not easy. In my case, I’ve just spent four weeks in Addis Ababa, mainly teaching a course at the university, during which time I was forced to do without my daily dose of South African media, and specifically without my weekly Mail & Guardian.
Business is helping tackle crime, with several initiatives by Business Against Crime bearing fruit. Vehicle theft and hijackings are down about 16% over the past five years from about 115 000 in 2001 to 96 000 last year. Even more impressive is the 30% reduction in Gauteng hijackings last year.
Mining company Kumba hopes to avert a massive strike planned for Sunday by several trade unions, the company said on Thursday. The unions, however, were adamant that the strike will have a severe impact, with more than 6 000 of Kumba’s 9 000 workers taking part.
Residents of Lydenburg in Mpumalanga are to march this week against changing the name of their town, contending that correct procedures had not been followed. ”Proper procedures were not followed. We have all the proof of all the minutes of the name-change committee and the attendance registers,” said Democratic Alliance councillor Isabel Dickson.
They belch hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year, but South Africa’s coal-fired power stations will remain the major suppliers of the country’s energy needs for years to come, Eskom said on Wednesday. ”We need to be very clear: coal will remain a major, major part of our [energy] supply,” Eskom said.
A meeting between Sasol and two unions that may join Solidarity’s strike was underway on Wednesday at the chemical industry’s national bargaining council. Bosole Chidi, the acting general secretary of the South African Chemical Workers’ Union, and Welile Nolingo, the general secretary of the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union, were at the meeting.
Officials of the trade union Solidarity and Sasol managers were holding talks on Tuesday intended to end a strike that began earlier in the day, the union said. The meeting was to take place in Secunda, Mpumalanga, after the union’s general secretary, Flip Buys, had spoken to striking members, said Dirk Hermann, Buys’s deputy.
The government’s plan to establish a seventh regional electricity distributor (RED) to take care of the power-supply distribution for all non-metro municipalities may end up "fixing" non-existent problems, says the official opposition Democratic Alliance.
When the world’s soccer fans descend on South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, most of them will disembark at OR Tambo International airport, as Johannesburg International airport will soon be known. Minister of Arts and Culture Pallo Jordan announced on June 30 that more than 50 place names will be changed, including that of the airport.
The National House of Traditional Leaders is to appoint a four-member task team to get ”first-hand information” on ongoing problems with traditional circumcision ceremonies. The resolution follows the deaths of 16 youths and the hospitalising of dozens more in the Eastern Cape over the past few weeks.
An estimated three million children in South Africa are involved in exploitative labour, a conference on the matter heard on Thursday. ”The government of South Africa estimated that 32,5% of children aged five to 14 years were working in 1999. Between 248Â 000 and three-million children are engaged in exploitative child labour in South Africa,” Dr Helene Aiello of Khulisa Management Services told the Reducing Exploitative Child Labour in South Africa conference in Boksburg.
An awaiting trial prisoner shot during an attempted escape in Lenasia, Johannesburg, has died, police said on Tuesday. He was wounded during a shoot-out with two policemen who were transporting him and two other men to Potchefstroom in the North West province. Sergeant Modukeng Riba (44) was shot and killed and Inspector Piet Maleka (49) was critically injured.
A ”frightening” number of police officers have died in Gauteng so far this year, with almost as many slain in the first six months of 2006 as in the whole of last year, said the office of National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. The deaths of four police officers in a bloody siege in Jeppestown last Sunday brought the tally to 19 since the start of the year.
Most recent robberies in Gauteng were carried out by foreigners, South African police union president Mpho Kwinika said on Thursday. He was speaking at a memorial service for four slain police offices held at the Littlefalls Christian centre in Roodepoort. ”The first invasions in Gauteng took place in 2003 on a highway in Germiston. A gang of 14 men tried to rob a cash van … eight of them were foreigners.”
According to information obtained from a DA parliamentary question, only 52% of South Africans infected with TB are treated successfully, compared with the World Health Organisation’s target of 85%, the DA’s spokesperson on health, Dianne Kohler-Barnard, said in a statement on Monday.
The forestry sector could lose almost R900-million because of invasive alien wasps, says Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks. In written reply to a question by Democratic Alliance MP Janet Semple in the National Assembly, Hendricks said a control programme to limit damage had been introduced.
The Council of Education Ministers has approved measures to beef up security at public schools, and the department will identify ”problem schools” needing immediate attention, Minister of Education Naledi Pandor announced on Monday. These are aimed at schools around the country.
Gases and welding products group African Oxygen (Afrox) is to invest approximately R350-millionin several major new gas production facilities around South Africa during the year. Craig Falconer, Afrox’s general manager process gas solutions, says this expenditure results from increased demand from the company’s existing customer base as well as by new business wins.
The media might have fabricated fears reportedly expressed by judges about pending constitutional amendments affecting the court system, Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Johnny de Lange intimated on Tuesday. ”I don’t trust the media,” he told Parliament’s security and constitutional affairs select committee.