Northern Cape Premier Dipuo Peters has undergone major abdominal surgery at the city’s Kimberley Hospital Complex, a provincial health official said on Monday. ”The procedure was successful and she is recuperating satisfactorily,” Dr Dion Theys, medical director at the Kimberley hospital, said on Monday afternoon.
Invalid decisions by the Free State premier, unlawful payments by two Northern Cape municipalities and problems at the Commission on Gender Equality were the major focus of reports released by Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana on Tuesday. He has also completed his probe into Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s controversial trip to the United Arab Emirates.
President Thabo Mbeki has reached new heights of public popularity, with current job-approval ratings matching the best ratings given to Nelson Mandela, the Afrobarometer survey said on Wednesday. According to the survey, conducted in January and February, nearly eight in 10 South Africans approved of the job Mbeki was doing as president. When asked about the way Mbeki had performed his job over the past year, 77% said they approved, with 28% strongly approving.
The Northern Cape provincial minister for finance and economic affairs, Pakes Dikgetsi, appeared in court on Friday on domestic violence-related charges, police confirmed. Spokesperson Superintendent Mashay Gamieldien confirmed his arrest, also on Friday, and court appearance in Kimberley.
The eldest of the 15 South Africans who are being held in the Democratic Republic of Congo was barely in the country for 24 hours before being arrested, News24 reported on Friday. It said the project manager of the group, Eric Rademeyer, dodged arrest by being on a few days leave in Malawi.
South Africa’s road network, conservatively estimated to be worth R550-billion, is deteriorating at an alarming rate according to the South African Road Federation (Sarf). Sarf says that the under-funding of road maintenance over the past 25 years is the prime cause of the problem.
Lonrho Africa announced on Friday that Nare Diamonds had discovered a very rare 235-carat diamond from its Schmidtsdrift diamond mine in South Africa. The large-sized gemstone is octahedron in shape and of very good quality said a third-party assessor, according to Lonrho. "This is a substantial find as diamonds of this size are a very rare occurrence," Nare’s CEO Charles Mostert said.
Life insurers saved R347-million in 2005 by preventing dishonest policy holders and financial advisers, as well as crime syndicates, from making fraudulent claims. This was an increase of nearly 40% on the previous year, Gerhard Joubert, chief executive of the Life Offices’ Association said on Thursday.
A rural security company established to create jobs in the San community in the Northern Cape has already secured contracts in three provinces. Gert Schoombie, managing director of Sanda Security, said the first group of security guards consisting of members of the !Xun and Khwe community had received their certificates.
Athens Paralympics gold medallist Oscar Pistorius and Commonwealth Games stars Hilton Langenhoven and David Roos were among a host of disabled sport stars banking on success as the 2006 Nedbank South African Sport Association for the Physically Disabled Games opened in Bloemfontein on Monday.
Northern Cape farmers beneath the Spitskop dam want the region to be declared a disaster area due to flood conditions that have stopped all production for almost a month, a representative said on Thursday. The Taung area in the North West province — upstream from the dam — has already been declared a disaster area.
Thirteen security guard unions will embark on a two-day strike in six provinces on Thursday and Friday, in support of higher wages and better working conditions — including the right to lunch breaks and using a toilet without being charged for deserting a position of duty.
The environment will benefit from a government decision to allow Holcim to use alternative fuels at its cement plant outside Kimberley, the company said on Wednesday. Traditional fossil fuels will be replaced with waste materials such as tyres, rubber, paper sludge, plastics, solvents, industrial tars and sludge.
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South Africa has taken a giant step towards the goal of gender equality and the emancipation of women in the recent municipal election, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. The election results show the success the African National Congress has achieved to increase the numbers of women in the municipal system, he said.
The SA Transport and Allied Workers’ Union has threatened to make its national strike on Monday next week the launching pad of a second round of downing tools. This follows the union’s claim that Transnet, at the weekend, went ”behind labour’s backs” and signed an agreement to transfer Metrorail to the SA Rail Commuter Corporation by the end of this month.
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The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) has called for a multi-party governance system in the Western Cape after Wednesday’s local government elections. The party’s leadership made the call on Friday after no single party won an absolute majority in Cape Town, paving the way for political parties to form coalitions.
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The Democratic Alliance has emerged the victor in the election in the Cape Town metropole taking 41,85% of the vote and with it 90 of the 210 seats on the city council. The DA won 61 of the 105 wards and 29 proportional representation seats.
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Provisional results show a 46,72% poll with just more than 14-million votes cast from a pool of 21Â 054Â 957 registered voters. The African National Congress had swept the board in the Northern Cape by 9.45am on Thursday, and the DA’s worst fear seemed to have come true in the Western Cape.
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South Africa’s third local government election since the advent of democracy in 1994 took place in a low key and peaceful manner on Wednesday. ”The voting process has proceeded smoothly throughout the country,” the Independent Electoral Commission said in a brief statement.
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South Africans have become used to voting, a political analyst said about Wednesday’s quiet and uneventful local government elections. ”We are used to voting by now and local elections have always been ‘lower temperature’ elections than national elections,” political analyst Hennie Kotze said on Wednesday.
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A holiday atmosphere took hold of strife-torn Khutsong early on Wednesday afternoon as residents opted for soccer instead of voting. However, Khutsong voters make up only a fraction of 1% of the country’s 21-million voters and should not be concentrated on to the detriment of the others, President Thabo Mbeki said.
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Voting got off to a good start despite a few problems, including flooding, at some voting stations, the Independent Electoral Commission said on Wednesday. By 9am, 99% of voting stations were open. Police used rubber bullets to disperse youths in Khutsong and extinguished burning tyres with a water cannon.
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South Africa’s third post-1994 local government election got under way without obvious hitches at 7am on Wednesday. President Thabo Mbeki was the first voter to cast his ballot at the Colbyn voting station in Pretoria. He was welcomed by Independent Electoral Commission chairperson Brigalia Bam and chief electoral officer Pansy Tlakula.
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/ 28 February 2006
The damage to the Koeberg nuclear plant was done deliberately and was not an accident, Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin said on Tuesday. One of the two generators at Koeberg was damaged in December in what Erwin now described as sabotage, causing severe outages in the Western Cape over the past month.
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/ 28 February 2006
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Feeling abandoned by the party they helped bring into power and angered by conditions in townships, the Northern Cape’s Independent Party is ”praying” for the African National Congress to lose Wednesday’s local government election. ”I pray that the ANC will lose,” one of the party’s two candidates said on Monday.
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/ 28 February 2006
There will again be rolling blackouts in the Western Cape on Tuesday, Eskom announced in a news release. This was necessitated by multiple line faults that occurred at 2.13am that interrupted power to the province. Metrorail appealed to commuters to find alternative forms of transport as power outages disrupted train services.
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/ 27 February 2006
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Traditional leaders would be given powers at local government level under African Christian Democratic Party rule, party leader Kenneth Meshoe said on Sunday. He was speaking in a church at Barcelona informal settlement in Daveyton, Ekurhuleni, on the East Rand.
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/ 27 February 2006
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Criss-crossing the country’s oldest municipality, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on Sunday went on a charm offensive to galvanise support in what was expected to be a tight municipal election in Beaufort West. She visited three wards — Hospitaal Heuwel, Nieuveld Park and Prince Valley — before addressing a rally in Mandlenkosi.
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/ 23 February 2006
The South African wine industry, represented by the South African Wine & Brandy Company, has officially asked the government for support in regaining a competitive advantage internationally following nine years of deregulation. The call for intervention comes as the industry faces extremely difficult market conditions both locally and internationally.
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/ 15 February 2006
A Transnet strike in the Western Cape and Northern Cape kicked off on Wednesday with rail services in the Cape Town area severely affected. The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union said more than 5 000 employees downed tools to protest ”management’s unilateral decisions about restructuring the company”.
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/ 15 February 2006
A bold cut in the corporate tax rate and the secondary tax on companies is necessary to unleash South Africa’s growth potential, but Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has not taken these steps, says the official opposition Democratic Alliance. Other parties have also responded.
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/ 13 February 2006
Trade unions locked in a dispute with state-owned Transnet over restructuring have postponed their strike in the Eastern Cape until Friday to give the labour structures in the province enough time to finalise logistics and other outstanding issues, it emerged on Monday.