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/ 6 February 2006
Host nation South Africa is to refurbish five existing stadiums and build five new venues for the 2010 Soccer World Cup, in terms of an agreement with international football association Fifa. Five new stadiums will be built, including ones in KwaZulu-Natal’s eThekweni metro and in Cape Town.
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/ 29 January 2006
The Democratic Alliance launched its election manifesto on Saturday promising to clean up the African National Congress’ service delivery mess and simplify local municipalities. ”Today local government is in a state of crisis. If we continue this way, South Africa will fail,” DA leader Tony Leon told party leaders and supporters in Johannesburg.
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/ 26 January 2006
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South Africa’s municipal election on March 1 will be a test of whether the African National Congress (ANC) will be able to retain municipalities which ”turned” to it during two floor-crossing periods since the last national municipal election in December 2000.
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/ 24 January 2006
The United States space agency Nasa may choose the Northern Cape as a site for an array of telescopes and antennae that communicate with spacecraft. Bernie Fanaroff, of South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology, said that a Nasa team had inspected several sites around Springbok and Upington in the Northern Cape.
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/ 18 January 2006
The ruling African National Congress should amend its municipal councillors’ oath to include a penalty for non-compliance, the opposition Democratic Alliance said on Wednesday. Failure to do so renders the ANC’s stated commitment to fighting corruption, maladministration and mismanagement mere rhetoric, chief whip Douglas Gibson told reporters in Cape Town.
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/ 16 January 2006
There’s a new name in the grape industry that does not conjure images of luscious vineyards, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Sunday. It is called Riemvasmaak — best known as South Africa’s first successful land claim — and now maybe as the Northern Cape’s grape capital.
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/ 15 January 2006
”The Inkatha Freedom Party is blowing the whistle to stop corruption, the party is prepared to govern and we seek victory in the upcoming local government elections,” IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi said in Durban on Sunday. Speaking at the launch of the party’s local government election campaign, Buthelezi said: ”Democracy empowers us with a right to change who governs.”
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/ 12 January 2006
The Phokwane local municipality in the Northern Cape has paid a salary of more than R1-million to a suspended municipal manager who has not been working for more than two years, the South African Broadcasting Corporation website reported on Wednesday. The official was suspended in July 2003.
The number of shack dwellings in South Africa rose from 1,45-million in 1996 to 2,14-million in 2003, according to Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu. That was 417 new shacks a day on average between 2001 and 2003 and 210 shacks per day on average in the five years between 1996 and 2001.
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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/ 23 December 2005
"Whenever I’m asked what I do for a living, I wait for the ‘ah, that’s so glamorous’ response, and I must agree. I especially love it around deadline time, when 120 pithy words on each of my 110 freshly checked restaurants have to be filed. I do this with all my stomach-calming potions close at hand," writes Gwynne Conlyn.
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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
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
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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/ 6 December 2005
The government’s "Reds" revolution to fundamentally alter electricity distribution is being changed again. Instead of six regional electricity distributors (Reds), there will now be seven, as the government admitted recently that there were "weaknesses" in its initial blueprint.
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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
It’s the economy, stupid Editor Ferial Haffajee makes some bold statements and assertions in her article ”Meaning of the Selebi saga” (December 21). She should have been more cautious and thoughtful; I found her arguments loosely constructed. High-personality crimes usually give rise to such outcries. While the government believes one murder is a murder too […]
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/ 25 November 2005
Enough of the crocodile tears I read with dismay Nomboniso Gasa’s open letter to Jacob Zuma (March 17), and cringed at her crocodile tears. I am not politically correct and shall nail my colours to the mast: I align myself with Zuma’s fight to be accorded respect and dignity, not least by the partisan character […]
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/ 23 November 2005
Eight of South Africa’s nine provinces are being been severely affected by drought, the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs said on Wednesday. Hardest hit are northern parts of KwaZulu-Natal, said the department’s senior manager of drought and risk management, Ikalafeng Kgakgatsi.
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/ 22 November 2005
A draft social plan to ease the effects of retrenching nearly 700 miners at De Beers’ underground operations in Kimberley has been formulated and presented for comment. This follows the decision in principle by De Beers Consolidated Mines to close its loss-making underground operations in Kimberley.
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/ 22 November 2005
More than a million South Africans registered to vote in next year’s municipal elections during the Independent Electoral Commission’s final registration drive over the weekend. This brings to 21-million the number of South Africans now on the voters’ roll. The country has a population of 43-million to 44-million.
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/ 20 November 2005
A majority of South Africans questioned in a Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) survey said they were registered to vote, the council said on Saturday. The survey of 4Â 930 people conducted by the HSRC on behalf of the Independent Electoral Commission found that 81,9% indicated they had registered to vote, said researcher Mbithi wa Kivilu.
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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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/ 13 November 2005
The winds of change are blowing across South Africa — 11 years after the apartheid regime was dismantled — and nowhere more so than at De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer. Nicky Oppenheimer, chairperson of the group, has agreed with the government to sell 26% of his company to a black empowerment group.