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/ 1 September 2007
It was the kind of news item of which dreams are made. South Africa’s national radio led its 8pm bulletin with an announcement that the world’s biggest diamond had been discovered — and it was twice the size of the fabled Cullinan diamond. An hour later the discovery had fallen to the fifth item on the national news.
A man believed to have been the last person to see a boy before he was badly mutilated two weeks ago was found dead in Phela village in North West province on Friday, police said. The man’s body was found about 500m from the cattle post where he worked and where he last saw the boy.
More than half the construction sites visited by inspections from the Labour Department in the past week failed to comply with safety regulations. A statement from the Department of Labour said that inspectors visited 115 construction sites and of these, only 55 contractors (47,8%) were found to be fully compliant.
Previously known as Silver Stars, Platinum Stars officially announced their new identity at a press conference at the Sandton Convention Centre on Monday. The management of the team, led by Larry Brookstone, sold 51% of the club to Royal Bafokeng Sports Holdings and this prompted a name change for the Stars.
A notice of motion indicating an urgent application for an interdict will be brought against the pending change of Pretoria’s name on road signs to Tshwane. The notice of motion was filed by the Freedom Front Plus and one of its councillors on the City of Tshwane municipality as well as Afriforum.
Deon Meyer’s distinctive thrillers have done well in Europe, the US and South Africa, writes Yolandi Groenewald.
Some MPs protested on Wednesday at the Bill to regulate internet gambling. The National Gambling Amendment Bill was introduced to the trade and industry portfolio committee by Fungai Sibanda, the acting director general of the Department of Trade and Industry.
Frances Beatrice Marshoff, Edna Molewa and Dipuo Peters.
Four automated teller machines (ATMs) were blown up in separate incidents around the country in the past week. However, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre is confident there has been a decline in such incidents recently, and that the downward trend will continue.
A decision on winter schools in KwaZulu-Natal is expected on Monday when various stakeholders will meet to discuss it, the provincial department of education said on Saturday. Similar plans are afoot in North West and the Western Cape to recover from the effects of the lengthy public-service strike.
Johannesburg’s first real snowfall in more than 20 years and the freezing temperatures that accompanied it claimed at least one life on Wednesday morning. Motorists were warned to avoid all passes in the Eastern Cape on Wednesday due to snowfalls, the South African Weather Service said.
North West province has set aside R14-million for laboratory tests to diagnose tuberculosis (TB) and get patients on treatment as soon as possible, the provincial health department said on Tuesday. A departmental spokesperson said every month at least 2Â 100 new TB patients start treatment in the province.
Many residents of Gauteng woke up on Wednesday morning to a layer of snow turning lawns, rooftops and cars white, while the South African Weather Service predicted a freezing day with temperatures staying below eight degrees Celsius in Johannesburg. A number of roads in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were closed to motorists due to snow on Wednesday morning.
Severe cold and more snow is to hit large parts of the country later on Tuesday and Wednesday, the South African Weather Service has warned. It said temperatures will drop as low as minus nine degrees Celsius in places such as Sutherland in the Northern Cape. The town was blanketed in snow on Monday.
An initiation-school surgeon was arrested following the death of two initiates in Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape, the health department said on Sunday. Meanwhile, in Gauteng, a 15-year-old boy was found dead by fellow circumcision initiates at a mountain between De Deur and Orange Farm on Sunday morning.
Potchefstroom’s city council is to make an announcement on the city’s name on Wednesday. In a media invitation, the city council said the mayor, Maphetle Maphetle, will make an announcement ”about the decision that has been taken in relation to the name change of Potchefstroom”.
Sun City’s second Positive bash is a layer cake of art and entertainment celebrating survival, writes Matthew Krouse
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila arrived at Tuynhuys in Cape Town on Thursday for talks with President Thabo Mbeki. Kabila, who jetted into the city on Wednesday afternoon, is on an official visit to discuss, among other things, political and economic relations between South Africa and his mineral-rich country.
A deophobic sermon Shaun de Waal has written a deophobic sermon (“Fighting fire with fire”, May 25), but needs to deal with the evidence evenhandedly. If the wrong religion has done is evidence that belief in God is false, is the right religion has done evidence that belief in God is true? Likewise, does the […]
The South African Weather Service recorded 54 weather records in the icy wet and snowy weather this week. On Monday, there were 34 new temperature records and on Tuesday another 20. At least 17 people were reported dead from exposure or in fires trying to keep warm in the icy wet weather gripping the country.
The communities of Khutsong and Moutse will contest the demarcation issue in the Constitutional Court, their attorneys said on Thursday. ”We are now in a process of compiling papers,” said Rudolph Jansen of Lawyers for Human Rights. Jansen said papers for Khutsong would be filed soon.
Thirteen people were arrested overnight in the troubled Khutsong township and more police are being deployed in the area, North West police said on Thursday morning. Superintendent Louis Jacobs said the arrests came after a supermarket was broken into and looted at about 10pm and a spaza shop was burnt down.
Taxi commuters in the Khutsong area were likely to be stranded on Wednesday after local taxi operators suspended services at midnight, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported. The suspension came in support of the community’s objection to the incorporation of Khutsong into the North West province, the report said.
Zero pupil attendance was reported at some Khutsong schools on Tuesday, hours after two people were arrested for attacks on three spaza shops. Police spokesperson Superintendent Louis Jacobs said two people were arrested for housebreaking and theft in the early hours of Tuesday.
There was no schooling in Khutsong on Monday despite a 90% attendance by pupils at some schools after a month-long boycott. ”We have confirmation that where learners turned up in large numbers, teaching never took place,” said North West education spokesperson Charles Raseala.
If it were not for the efforts of a group of hardy community volunteers, social grant beneficiaries, scraping a living below the poverty line in the North West province might well have been in for a rough winter. ”Paying the right social grant, to the right person, at the right time and place” boasts the motto of the new South African Social Security Agency.
”Jacob Zuma is indeed a remarkable man. Witness his apparent political strategy. He has turned the effortless behaviour of keeping quiet while others say what they think into a political attribute. His supporters have not stopped telling us that he listens. This is part of the Zuma package — wisdom, humility, man of the people. One Who Listens,” writes Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.
Carel van Heerden feels no reason to apologise about his doomed lion-breeding business. ”Trophy hunters will always exist. We’re taking the pressure off the rest of the roaming lions in Africa.” The appetite for big-game hunting among foreign tourists sustains around 300 lion-breeding farms across South Africa.
Disgruntled residents of Khutsong township in Carletonville, west of Johannesburg, were locked in a meeting with government officials in a bid to resolve their problems on Monday afternoon, the Merafong municipality said. The meeting follows last week’s violent protest by residents, during which some houses belonging to ward councillors were petrol-bombed.
The Khutsong Anti-North West Forum on Friday called on African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma to mediate in the ongoing violent protests that have rocked the Merafong Community near Carletonville, west of Johannesburg. ”This is an ANC vs ANC fight,” said the forum’s organiser, Paul Ncawane.
South Africa is prepared to increase seizures of white-owned land to fulfil a promise to restore property to the black majority, a regional land claims commissioner said on Wednesday. The government’s aim is to return land taken during colonialism or apartheid by 2008.
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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.