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/ 12 November 2005
The violent train protests and torching of municipal offices in Gauteng this week were the ”ugly face of our reality”, President Thabo Mbeki wrote in his weekly online letter on Friday. ”It is the task of our movement to mobilise the people to protect public property, which is held in trust by the state for the people,” he wrote.
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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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/ 10 November 2005
Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota has been admitted to hospital in Cape Town after a medical emergency, his office confirmed on Thursday. Lekota is thought to have suffered a heart attack, but his spokesperson Sam Mkhwanazi could not confirm this. Lekota is also the national chairperson of the African National Congress.
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/ 10 November 2005
The Southern African Large Telescope (Salt) at the South African Astronomical Observatory outside Sutherland is powerful enough to discern the detail on a R2 coin at a distance of 5km. Salt will enable the country to remain among the front ranks of those involved in astronomy, President Thabo Mbeki said at its inauguration on Thursday.
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/ 9 November 2005
There are competing claims to some of the land to which the Constitutional Court has already ruled that the Richtersveld community has a restoration right, it emerged on Wednesday. The announcement was made in the Land Claims Court in Cape Town by the state’s lead counsel in the Richtersveld land hearing.
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/ 28 October 2005
The Railway Safety Regulator (RSR) has appointed a eight technical experts to probe the crash between the Blue Train and the Shosholoza Meyl in the Northern Cape on Wednesday night. Herman Bruwer, the regulatory body’s general manager for safety assurance, said on Friday the RSR was finalising the terms of reference of an independent board of inquiry.
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/ 27 October 2005
”Problems” with an electronic signalling system could have caused Wednesday night’s head-on collision between the Blue Train and a Shosholoza Meyl passenger train, Spoornet’s chief executive said. The Northern Cape health department said five people were critically injured in the collision.
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/ 24 October 2005
The Northern Cape High Court ruled in favour of the Northern Cape education department on Monday that three Afrikaans-medium schools become dual-medium. The Kalahari High School and Seodin Primary School in Kuruman and the Noord-Kaapland Agricultural High School in Jan Kempdorp took the department to court.
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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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/ 22 October 2005
Efforts at self-determination by groups of South Africans still face various obstacles, Rhodes University chancellor Jakes Gerwel said on Friday. ”Though there is room to move forward in terms of Article 235 [in the Constitution] it should not be accompanied by the perception of crude ethnic diversity,” Gerwel told delegates at a conference on self-determination.
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/ 17 October 2005
There were conflicting reports of the success of a Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) call for a worker stayaway in Mpumalanga, the Free State and Northern Cape on Monday. Cosatu said the protest was a ”magnificent” success, while the South African Chamber of Business said its impact on businesses was hardly felt.
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/ 14 October 2005
Mike van Graan asks if we can move on to real transformation, now that we have generally replaced white people with black people at the trough of public funds.
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/ 13 October 2005
The JSE remained in the red at midday on Thursday, but platinum mining stocks bucked the trend, reflecting a strong platinum price. The JSE’s softer tone was on the back of weaker world markets and came despite the rand moving above the 6,60 per dollar level.
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/ 13 October 2005
South African resources companies Anglo American and Kumba Resources on Thursday announced a major black economic empowerment (BEE) transaction that will result in the establishment of the country’s largest black-owned, -controlled and -managed company with an enterprise value of about R16-billion.
Recently the Pension Funds Adjudicator (PFA), Vuyani Ngalwana issued rulings on a further 22 retirement annuities (RAs). Life companies have chosen to settle 15 of these rather than face the negative publicity. This brings to 54 the total number of RA rulings since March. The life companies are appealing seven of these in the High Court.
Stories to do with fishing rights seem to attract clichés like a vrot snoek draws flies, as Krisjan Lemmer might say. In the past few weeks, the Mail & Guardian has run several stories about the goings-on in this highly profitable industry, and headlines have been full of references to ”fishy deals”, people ”fishing in troubled waters” or ”trawling for politicians”.
About 50 Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) members on Sunday shackled themselves to railings at Parliament in Cape Town to highlight their jobs and poverty campaign. Cosatu’s Eastern Cape provincial secretary said marches would start at 10am on Monday in East London, Port Elizabeth, Mthatha and Queenstown.
President Thabo Mbeki grilled Northern Cape mayors on Friday about underspending on their capital budgets. He also warned that local-level infighting in the African National Congress, which hampers municipal delivery, has to stop. His interventions came during a day-long local government meeting, in Kimberley, with municipal, national and provincial politicians and officials.
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/ 29 September 2005
Johannesburg’s City Power chief executive, Mogwailane Mohlala, will leave the utility in January, a spokesperson confirmed on Thursday. The announcement comes shortly after the National Electricity Regulator released a report critical of the company and repeated power outages in the city.
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/ 28 September 2005
More haste … and snail-mail speed. That’s the story of the government’s attempt to rush a law for the fast-happening integration of online media, broadcasting and telephony. Twenty-six months of public representations and parliamentary deliberations have finally concluded a Convergence Bill that is now almost ready for adoption in the House of Assembly.
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/ 22 September 2005
The ACDP has withdrawn from all planned Heritage Day activities at the Northern Cape legislature.
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/ 13 September 2005
The Democratic Alliance has urged the Independent Democrats to sack ID Northern Cape MPL John Gunda, who was sentenced in the Upington Regional Court on Monday to 10 years’ imprisonment for rape. ”The ID must do the honourable thing and dismiss … Gunda,” the DA said.
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/ 2 September 2005
A Cape High Court matter about Independent Democrats deputy leader Themba Sono’s cessation of party membership because of failure to pay a R10 membership fee was on Friday postponed to next Wednesday. Friday’s court proceedings against Sono follow a gruelling legal battle with ID dissident Lennit Max.
A 50-year-old tree tumbled across a road in Newlands, Cape Town, on Friday as gale-force winds, driving rain and bitter cold hit the city in the early hours of the morning. The Elsieskraal River flowing through Pinelands had apparently burst its banks, but there was no major flooding reported so far, said senior traffic officer Lyndon Herbert.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) says it remains committed to pursue its rolling mass action in support of the jobs and poverty campaign, which runs until February next year and includes periodic national stayaways as well as sectoral action.
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has blasted the government over its claim that the crime rate is stabilising. He repeated his party’s assertion that the murder rate is roughly the same as the death rate from terror attacks on civilians in Iraq, and further accused the government of failing to make crime a priority issue.
The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and the Namibian government are studying the possibility of building a dam on the lower Orange River. Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Buyelwa Sonjica said that the proposed dam would ensure a stable supply of water to the Northern Cape in the future.
South Africa’s municipal debt jumped about R4-billion from R31,8-billion in 2002 to R35,9-billion in 2003, while figures for 2004 are not yet available, said Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi. The figures show that Durban/eThekwini — once a shining light of budgetary prudence — has grown its debt from R2,8-billion to R3,2-billion.
As the Aids pandemic cuts a deadly swathe across Southern Africa, a multidisciplinary research team is looking at developing intervention strategies to care for affected children and orphans. The five-year, donor-funded project is concentrating its work on Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe at first.
A Northern Cape man lost part of his tongue when he tried to grab and kiss a woman in Galeshewe in Kimberley, Northern Cape police said on Tuesday. A police spokesperson said the incident happened on Sunday when the man tried to overpower a woman at her house in Tidimalo Street in Club 2000 in Galeshewe.
The Industrial Development Corporation can reflect on its results in one of two ways. It can bask in the glory of a robust nine-month period, as it did recently. The other view is to say that the stock market boom has given it considerable but artificial strength. The funder unveiled its results for the nine months to March as it prepares to move up a gear in its big project investments.
An estimated R4-million land claim settlement agreement has been signed between the Northern Cape provincial agriculture department and the community of Smauswane outside Kuruman, SABC news reported on Saturday. According to the report, the community was forcibly removed from the land in 1942.