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/ 7 August 2007

Winter has one last blast before spring

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.

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/ 7 August 2007

Study: Limpopo is SA’s safest province

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.

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/ 2 August 2007

Manto upbeat over latest HIV figures

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.

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/ 27 July 2007

Boats used to evacuate residents in rain-hit Cape

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.

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/ 15 July 2007

Death toll rises as young girls go missing

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.

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/ 13 July 2007

Pedestrian cut in half by car

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.

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/ 28 June 2007

Richtersveld becomes a world heritage site

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.

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/ 27 June 2007

South Africa in grip of icy weather

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.

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/ 26 June 2007

Dress warmly for bitter weather

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.

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/ 26 June 2007

Gauteng monorail described as ‘not logical’

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.

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/ 24 June 2007

Cold weather looms for Gauteng

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.

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/ 19 June 2007

New national park proclaimed in Northern Cape

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.

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/ 13 June 2007

Labour seeks show of force in strike

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.

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/ 10 June 2007

Union to defend workers ‘at all costs’

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.

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/ 7 June 2007

Lie of the land

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.

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/ 31 May 2007

Eskom eyes more Koeberg-style stations

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.