Winter had one last blast before making way for spring as snow fell in parts of South Africa on Tuesday. Snow had fallen near the Hex River in the Western Cape, in Sutherland in the Northern Cape, near Tiffendell in the Eastern Cape and in parts of Lesotho and the Drakensberg, according to South African Weather Service forecaster Elke Brouwers.
Limpopo is the country’s safest province, the South African Institute of Race Relations said on Tuesday. It had the lowest rate of murders, rapes and armed robberies, according to a study based on police statistics released in Polokwane. Limpopo is also one of South Africa’s poorest provinces with a very high rate of unemployment.
The latest HIV-infection figures of 29% among pregnant women suggest a first-time decline may be starting for the pandemic, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Thursday. ”The overall picture suggests that HIV-prevalence in South Africa may be at a point where we should begin to witness a downward trend,” Tshabalala-Msimang said.
Frances Beatrice Marshoff, Edna Molewa and Dipuo Peters.
Celia-Sandra Botha, Patricia de Lille, Peggy Maud Hollander, Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde, Baleka Mbete and more …
Eight community halls have been opened for people forced out of their homes by flood waters after a massive cold front brought heavy rain to Cape Town and surrounding areas on Thursday night. About 15 000 people have been displaced by heavy rains in the Cape peninsula, reports said on Saturday.
Rescue services are using boats to evacuate residents of a flooded settlement near Philippi outside Cape Town in the wake of a massive cold front that has brought heavy rain to the Western Cape. ”Metro [rescue services] and the police are using rescue boats to evacuate people,” Disaster Risk Management Centre manager Walter Solomons said.
Nelson Mandela once took out his wallet at his annual childrens’ party so that a child could buy his grandmother some cake. The story goes that at his 85th birthday celebrations Mandela met a 12-year-old boy who looked after his sick and elderly grandmother, and asked the boy what he would do with 20 shillings.
Nine young girls have been found dead around South Africa in the past seven months after they had been reported missing. The nine comprise the most widely publicised cases. The most recent find was the decomposed body of Elizabeth Martin (13), found in a water tank at a farm in Leeu-Gamka in the Western Cape.
A pedestrian was cut in half when a car, allegedly travelling over 200km/h, hit him on the N8 near Kimberley in the Northern Cape, paramedics said on Friday. ”One half of the body was found inside the car that hit him, and the other half was lying in the bushes some distance away,” said ER24 spokesperson Ben Johnson.
Orania chairperson Carel Boshoff’s wife, Anna, died on July 10 at the age of 75, the family said. "Tannie Anna, as she was known, was a community person par excellence, and will be remembered for the countless initiatives aimed at maintaining and reclaiming the Afrikaner’s freedom," the family said in a statement.
There are no major safety concerns about nuclear waste management in South Africa, the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) said in Cape Town on Wednesday. NNR Nuclear Technology and waste programme manager Thiagan Pather was speaking at a public participation forum.
The Afrikaner enclave of Orania and the Northern Cape government have agreed that Orania’s quest for self-determination should be discussed at all government levels. Chairperson of the Orania representative council Prinsloo Potgieter said this was the outcome of a meeting between the council and premier Dipuo Peters.
The Richtersveld in the Northern Cape has been awarded world heritage status, becoming the eighth such site in the country, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Thursday. The ”dramatic mountainous desert” featured harmonious interaction between humans and nature, said the World Heritage Committee.
Freezing weather and snowfalls in parts of South Africa have seen the death of a homeless man in Johannesburg, the delay of airline flights and the closure of mountain passes. Snowfalls left more than 300 bus passengers and 20 truck drivers trapped between Harding and Kokstad in KwaZulu-Natal.
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.
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.
Severe cold is to hit large parts of the country later on Tuesday and Wednesday, the South African Weather Service has warned. It said temperatures would 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.
The proposed monorail link between Soweto and Johannesburg was ”not logical” and needed a concrete submission, the Transport Department’s director general said on Tuesday. ”What has been in the press doesn’t present itself as logical. We are not adverse to any innovative proposal but it needs to be dealt with properly,” Mpumi Mpofu said.
Gauteng residents should brace themselves for a strong cold front and isolated showers accompanied by wind in the coming week, the National Forecast Centre said on Sunday. Forecasters said the chilly weather should be expected in the middle of the week, with chances of light isolated showers on Tuesday.
Kimberley will soon get its sparkle back when the State Diamond Trader (SDT) is established in the Northern Cape city. PW Saaiman, provincial minister for economic affairs, said on Wednesday the establishment of the SDT should have many developmental spin-offs for the city.
The long-awaited new Mokala National Park in the Northern Cape was officially proclaimed by Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk on Tuesday. The establishment of this new park near Plooysberg, south-west of Kimberley, came as a result of a successful land claim made on a section of the old Vaalbos National Park.
Deaths in South Africa are on the increase, with 590 000 in 2005 — 3,3% up on the previous year, according to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) figures on mortality and causes of death. ”The overall number of deaths shows a continuous increase from 1997 to 2005,” Stats SA said in a statement on Thursday.
South Africa’s civil-service strike broadened on Wednesday as other union workers walked out, piling more pressure on the government in a dispute stoking political tensions in Africa’s largest economy. Union leaders have vowed to shut the country down in sympathy with civil servants, whose two-week-old strike has already caused chaos in hospitals, schools and public offices.
Threats to dismiss striking health workers could only provoke workers’ anger and undermine current ”sensitive” negotiations, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) said. ”Dismissing workers would not work towards addressing the current public-service crisis. [The] root-cause of which is total disregard of workers demands by government,” the union said in a statement.
Four years ago the National Association of Conservancies of South Africa (Nacsa) did not exist. Now it operates in seven provinces, with 750 conservancies, protecting about 30-million hectares of land. "That is five times more than SANParks and the provinces control, and we do it on no budget at all," says Nacsa chairperson Anthony Duigan.
As the Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) began three days of public hearings on health services, based on a nine-province review, one of its most shocking findings is that poor patients are effectively being excluded from healthcare if they can’t afford to pay for transport.
South Africa could have at least ten more nuclear power stations within two decades if Eskom has its way, according to the utility’s chief executive, Jacob Maroga. He told journalists at a briefing in Cape Town on Thursday that in the face of global warming, nuclear power was the ”next big viable alternative” to coal.
The National Treasury has gazetted the details of municipalities whose 2006/07 municipal infrastructure grant allocations have been stopped — because of non-compliance with the 2006 Division of Revenue Act. It amounts to R503-million. The main reason for the funds being stopped is "significant under-expenditure".
Billiton has slammed as ”untrue and irresponsible” the National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) claims of racism at its manganese mine in the Northern Cape. The NUM has charged that black workers had to walk 2km to the nearest bus stop, while employees of other races were collected at their homes.
Much of South Africa can expect another freezing night on Wednesday, the South African Weather Service said as the costs of this week’s cold spell mounted. At least 22 people have died of cold in different parts of the country this week, 15 of them in the Eastern Cape.