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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
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
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ended in the handing over of a memorandum calling for the proposal that Merafong be incorporated into North West to be withdrawn.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
Residents of Khutsong on the West Rand of Gauteng will hold a protest and stayaway on Monday against a decision to incorporate the community into the North West province. The community believes it will receive better services from the wealthier Gauteng province. The government has denied this.
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/ 25 November 2005
Residents of Merafong who want their municipality to remain a part of Gauteng shouted down speakers who wanted incorporation into the North West province at a public hearing in Carletonville on Friday, convened to hear views on a demarcation crisis in the area.
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/ 25 November 2005
Protesters sang pro-Gauteng songs as they arrived at a public hearing about provincial boundary demarcations in Carletonville on Friday. They had come to town by bus from nearby Khutsong, where the issue has been the focus of recent violent protest.
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/ 18 November 2005
A thousand Khutsong residents protested outside the office of Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa on Friday against plans to incorporate the Merafong municipal into the North West province from Gauteng. Stressing their dissatisfaction over the proposed re-demarcation, the group handed a memorandum over to officials.
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/ 16 November 2005
The government acted against the will of the people of Merafong by passing a Bill in Parliament to incorporate the Gauteng town into the North West province, the South African Communist Party said on Wednesday. ”There’s nothing democratic about what is happening in Merafong,” SACP district secretary Nkosiphendule Kolisile said..
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/ 11 November 2005
It was another momentous week for South Africa’s waBenzi, as three major black empowerment deals were announced in the diamond, hotels and casinos and aerospace sectors. But the deals by De Beers, Sun International and Aerosud, two of them worth R4,2-billion, have poured fuel on the smouldering Âcontroversy around black economic empowerment (BEE).
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/ 7 November 2005
Leisure, casino and hospitality group Sun International, which announced a R604-million broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) deal on Monday, is no stranger to BEE. In fact, the group was doing it long before it become either fashionable or practically obligatory.
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/ 7 November 2005
The township of Khutsong was quiet on Monday, with a march and stayaway planned for Friday as the next item on the protest calendar, the South African Communist Party said. The township saw protests last week over residents’ dissatisfaction with proposals to transfer the Merafong municipality from Gauteng to the North West province.
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/ 7 November 2005
Leisure casino and hospitality group Sun International announced on Monday that the company has entered into a broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) transaction that will result in 7% of the issued share capital of Sun International being owned by a group of historically disadvantaged individuals.
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/ 7 November 2005
The government is considering postponing the municipal elections until mid-2006 to allow for re-demarcation disputes to be resolved, media reports said on Monday. The reports said this would entail bringing a constitutional amendment before Parliament which could push back the deadline for the polls by up to two months to May.
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/ 4 November 2005
Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi will not be visiting Khutsong residents near Carletonville on Friday afternoon, his office said. Residents of the township have been protesting since Wednesday against a proposal that the Merafong municipality be included in the North West province.
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/ 3 November 2005
Taxi drivers slowly edged their minibuses around boulders placed in the roads of Khutsong, in the Carletonville area, after a day of protests on Wednesday over a proposal that the Merafong municipality be incorporated into the North West province. It is in Gauteng at present.
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/ 24 October 2005
Thousands of workers belonging to the country’s largest union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), have embarked on strike action in the Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal provinces to protest against issues such as job losses, casualisation and racism in the workplace.
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/ 13 October 2005
Murder convict William Nkuna on Thursday said politicians had influenced the judgement which found him guilty of missing Constable Frances Rasuge’s murder. Nkuna was pronounced guilty by Judge Ronald Hendricks in the GaRankuwa Circuit Court.
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/ 26 September 2005
Wildfires began claiming lives — both human and animal — on Monday as they ran unabated across the hot, dry countryside, fanned by heavy winds. A six-year-old girl, Bonakele Ngema, burnt to death in a house where she was trapped while seeking refuge from a roaring blaze that bore down on her in Mntanenkosi reserve, KwaZulu-Natal.
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/ 22 September 2005
The owner of the first South African commercial farm to be earmarked for expropriation said on Thursday he intends contesting the move. ”I do not recognise the [restitution] claim on my land and cannot be forced to sell at the government’s price,” farmer Hannes Visser said.
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/ 16 September 2005
A prisoner serving 10 years for fraud wrote to a bank from his jail cell in South Africa’s North West province, requesting R10-million be transferred into an investment account he wished to open. He included a cheque dated 1995 from a company in his correspondence with a branch of a bank in Magopane.
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/ 8 September 2005
Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats has won its first municipal by-election since the party was established two years ago. The ID snatched the seat in Vryburg in the North West province from the African National Congress, which won it in the general municipal election in 2000.
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/ 6 September 2005
Since the advent of democracy a decade ago in South Africa, efforts have been made to give the country’s majority black population opportunities in the farming sector. During the colonial era and under apartheid, blacks were dispossessed of land — and often prevented from buying it.
Junior platinum-miner Barplats on Monday reported a headline loss per share for the year to June 2005 of 14 cents, from an 18,9 cent loss for the 2004 year. Revenue for the year declined to R40,177-million from R112,893-million in 2004. Gross profit for the year totalled R3,454-million from a loss of R5,675-million.
The government is being asked to consider a new deal for South Africa’s 1Â 240 public libraries, currently floundering in the no-man’s-land of an ”unfunded mandate”, meaning provinces do not get money from the national government to meet this responsibility, according to the head of the Centre for the Book.
South Africa’s application to have the world heritage status of Sterkfontein’s fossil hominid sites extended to include the Taung Skull fossil site in North West province and the Mokopane Valley in Limpopo province was accepted on Friday. The Department of Arts and Culture said the Taung Skull site exhibited the same characteristics as hominid sites such as Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Kromdraai.
The Vredefort Dome, spanning the Free State and the North West provinces, has been declared a World Heritage Site, the Department of Arts and Culture said on Thursday, making it the country’s seventh such site. This decision was made earlier in the day at the 29th World Heritage Committee meeting being held in Durban.
Thousands of workers protested against unemployment and poverty around South Africa on Monday in a nationwide strike that business says was poorly attended and unnecessary. The SA Chamber of Business said that only 10% of workers took part in the strike, which cost the economy an estimated R500-million.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) says junior miner Simmer & Jack Mines is "ready" and has resources and skills to take over DRDGold’s mining operations in the North West province. An NUM spokesperson said labour is convinced that thousands of mineworkers left without jobs in the North West might soon be redeployed.
People in Pomfret are tired of talking about the mercenaries. ”We only know they went to get bread, that’s all we know,” says Maria Dala. The men who ”went to get bread” had not just gone round to the corner café. Hidden among thorn trees in the remoter reaches of North West province, Pomfret doesn’t have a café; the fruit and veg stall where Dala stands is the only retail business to be seen.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has told African transport ministers that he is "concerned" about the high concentration of air-traffic accidents on the continent. He was speaking at the opening ceremony on Wednesday of a summit of African Union ministers responsible for air transport and aviation being held in South Africa.
South African nurses have been showing up at work in pyjamas in recent weeks to press demands for uniform allowances — the latest sign of malaise in the health care system wracked by an exodus of medical staff. The pyjama protest comes amid unease in the health care profession as it grapples with a ”brain drain”.
Protesting nurses in the North West province will not stop their campaign for uniform allowances until they see concrete proof that it will be increased, union officials said on Wednesday. Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said ”processes are under way to significantly raise the current uniform allowance”.