The wet weather experienced over most of the interior is likely to continue for another two days before starting to clear up, Weather SA said on Monday. Forecaster Siyabonga Mphethwa said the rain is caused by a tropical low that moved in over the northern part of South Africa on Friday from Mozambique.
Elephants roaming the parched plains of Africa’s national parks can get up to half their food by risky midnight raids into crop fields, according to scientists who tracked a herd by satellite monitoring in Kenya’s Samburu national reserve. It is a problem that also occurs in South Africa.
The road death toll for December has risen to 1 215, the Department of Transport said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Collen Msibi said 512 of the fatalities were pedestrians, 414 were passengers and 289 were drivers. The figure is down from 1 234 reported in the same period last year.
Road deaths during the Christmas holidays were at 1Â 162 by the end of December, the Department of Transport said on Monday. There was heavy traffic on the country’s main routes on Monday as holidaymakers returned home. Meanwhile, the bodies of five people who drowned after their car plunged into the Vaal River have been recovered.
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/ 29 December 2005
Education Minister Naledi Pandor was disappointed on Thursday at the 68,3% pass rate recorded by the 2005 matric class. ”I’m not satisfied,” she told a media briefing in Cape Town where the figure was announced. ”How can anyone be satisfied when more than 30% of our children are failing? Surely you can’t have that. I’m not happy.”
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/ 28 December 2005
The death toll on South Africa’s roads over the holiday season has reached 965, the Department of Transport said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Collen Msibi said 411 of the casualties were pedestrians and 88 were children under 14. Msibi said that although ”shocking”, the figure was down from the 1 140 deaths over the same period last year.
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/ 24 December 2005
The Matatiele-Maluti mass action group has filed an urgent application with the Constitutional Court asking to be excluded from Friday’s legislation on municipal boundaries, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reports. The legislation will transfer the Matatiele area from KwaZulu-Natal to the Eastern Cape.
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/ 21 December 2005
This year’s matric exams were valid and credible, education quality assurance body Umalusi said on Wednesday in Pretoria. It found that the country’s matric, adult education and vocational examinations were conducted in line with policy and the results were valid, reliable, fair and credible, said Umalusi chairperson John Pampallis.
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/ 20 December 2005
Rain and a drop in temperature to below 20 degrees Celsius are predicted for the entire coast from Plettenberg Bay to Durban on Christmas Day, according to the South African Weather Bureau. Mpumalanga and Limpopo will be hit by the colder, wetter weather late on Sunday, but Cape Town should experience fine Christmas weather.
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/ 19 December 2005
A massive effort is under way to provide fuel to the two sectors most in need — the deciduous fruit farmers in the Western Cape and the summer rainfall farmers of Gauteng, Mpumalanga, the Free State and North West — the South African Petroleum Industry Association (Sapia) said on Monday.
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/ 19 December 2005
North Rand police on Sunday arrested a 35-year-old man believed to be a hijacking and robbery kingpin, at his hideout in Tembisa. Spokesperson Superintendent Eugene Opperman said the man was wanted in connection with 14 cases of armed robbery in Gauteng.
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/ 18 December 2005
Dean Elgar of Free State was unfortunate to just miss a well-deserved century by one run when he scored 99 against Border at Fort Hare University, Alice, on Saturday on the second day of the Coca-Cola Khaya Majola Cricket Week. Elgar made his runs off 154 balls with eight fours and Free State totalled 192-6 in their 50 overs.
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/ 18 December 2005
While traffic volumes along major routes to holiday destinations declined by Saturday night, Arrive Alive said they were experiencing alcohol related problems on the roads. ”People are indulging in alcohol and many of them are travelling drunk long distances,” said Arrive Alive spokesperson Ntau Letebele.
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/ 17 December 2005
Twenty people were confirmed dead by 9am on Saturday after the bus they were travelling in overturned and plunged into a river near Wepener, Free State police said. Captain Elsa Gerber said 77 other passengers were removed from the wreckage and transported to several hospitals in the province.
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/ 15 December 2005
Gauteng police put a halt to a meeting on Thursday at Khutsong Stadium by residents protesting their municipality’s incorporation into the North West from Gauteng. Although the situation in Khutsong remained calm on Thursday, police maintained a strong presence in the area.
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/ 15 December 2005
Word from Cape Town that Parliament had rubber-stamped a Bill that put an end to cross-border municipalities triggered violent protests in Khutsong on Wednesday. By evening, a police officer had been badly burnt during a petrol-bomb attack and five houses had been torched.
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/ 14 December 2005
The National Council of Provinces gave the final green light to controversial legislation doing away with cross-boundary municipalities on Wednesday. The changes have sparked vehement protests, particularly in Khutsong — a part of Merafong municipality — where residents have been staging violent protests.
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/ 14 December 2005
A night vigil led by the South African Communist Party in Khutsong, outside Carletonville, went ahead on Tuesday night, despite police declaring it illegal. The government decides on Wednesday whether the municipality, currently in Gauteng, will be incorporated into North West province.
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/ 13 December 2005
Anthony Egan reviews two new books, which go a considerable way to helping us see the new South African Police Service (SAPS) more fairly.
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/ 13 December 2005
The National Assembly on Tuesday approved legislation giving effect to the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment that abolishes cross-boundary municipalities. This affects 17 municipalities, including the contentious ones of Merafong (Gauteng to North West) and Matatiele (KwaZulu-Natal to Eastern Cape).
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/ 13 December 2005
A call for members of the public not to panic over fuel shortages was made by Minister of Minerals and Energy Lindiwe Hendricks in the National Assembly on Tuesday morning. In Gauteng, the problem has been exacerbated by panic buying among motorists who do not even need to fill up with fuel, she said.
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/ 13 December 2005
Parliament will have an attentive audience on Wednesday when residents of Merafong municipality gather to hear the result of their demand to remain part of Gauteng province. On Monday, a protest march ended in the handing over of a memorandum calling for the proposal that Merafong be incorporated into North West to be withdrawn.
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/ 12 December 2005
As motorists struggled to find petrol on Monday, the government denied any fuel shortages inland. The situation inland constituted ”an inconvenience rather than a crisis”, and motorists should not wait for their tanks to empty before filling up, Minerals and Energy Minister Lindiwe Hendricks told reporters in Pretoria.
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/ 9 December 2005
What a difference three quarters of a year can make. In April this year, the South African gold industry was characterised by the cacophonous strains of a sector strangled by a strong rand and rising input costs and about to breathe its last. It had just announced that production output from last year had fallen to 308 tonnes — its worst level since 1930.
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/ 7 December 2005
Senior health officers from South Africa and Mozambique will sign an agreement formalising the treatment of Mozambicans in health facilities along South Africa’s borders, it was announced on Wednesday. The initiative was part of the health department’s efforts to address Mozambican’s use of South African resources in those rural and underdeveloped areas.
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/ 1 December 2005
Three Mpumalanga teachers and a principal have appeared in the White River Magistrate’s Court in connection with alleged examination irregularities, an official said on Wednesday. The four from the William English Medium School, a private school in Hazyview, were released on bail of R5 000 each.
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/ 30 November 2005
South African athletes won four gold medals on the second day of the 2005 Pacific School Games in Melbourne, Australia, on Tuesday. Jan (JP) Hoffman, world youth shot-put champion and one of the top athletes at the meeting, won the discus for boys in the 17-to-19 category with a good distance of 48,43m.
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/ 26 November 2005
Power was restored all parts of the Western Cape on Friday after a controlled blackout earlier in the day, but Eskom has appealed for people to use electricity sparingly. The outages followed a shutdown of Koeberg nuclear power station, which supplies the bulk of the Western Cape’s electricity.
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/ 25 November 2005
Is Mbeki race-obsessed? Is President Thabo Mbeki obsessed with racism, as whites claim? I’m beginning to suspect he is. When whites first made the claim, I was among the first to come to his defence. As blacks, we couldn’t afford to let our former oppressors publicly insult our leader — not after what they’d put […]
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/ 25 November 2005
Come down, Peter Mokaba! Forgive me, commander Peter Mokaba, for not speaking to you before. We have been preoccupied with managing hypocrisy and mediocrity in the organisation you died for. Commander, the youth league of Anton Lembede is burning — particularly in the province of your birth, Limpopo — and we need fire extinguishers. The […]
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/ 24 November 2005
The <i>Weekly Mail</i> was the first home of the country’s best cartoonists, writes Julia Beffon.
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/ 24 November 2005
Two more tourists were robbed at gunpoint at Waterval Boven in Mpumalanga, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported on Thursday. Last week, two tourists were stripped of a cellphone, a camera and cash at Waterval Boven, and earlier this month, 11 campers were robbed at gunpoint.