Pretoria

Britain, one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, said on Tuesday it was looking forward to working with South Africa on the council. Congratulating South Africa on its election to the council on Monday, Britain’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Paul Boateng, said the election was ”well-deserved” in light of the country’s efforts to bring peace to Africa.

Without special efforts to test multi-drug resistant patients for resistance to other drugs, government will be unaware of the presence of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) among TB patients, the director general of health said on Tuesday. Thami Mseleku was speaking at a TB workshop in Pretoria attended by World Health Organisation officials.

With South Africa set to take up its first-ever seat on the United Nations Security Council in New York on Monday night, officials in Pretoria labelled this ”the opportunity of a lifetime”. They said they had been busy for months, analysing international hotspots and sharpening diplomatic pencils in readiness for South Africa’s role at the world body’s most powerful organ.

Discipline problems in many schools cannot be solved by departments of education or by teachers working on their own, the president of a teachers’ association on Monday. ”It is, however, essential that the Department of Education should take the lead in beginning to find solutions,” said Dave Balt, president of the Professional Teachers’ Association of South Africa.

Pay-channel M-Net is inviting people to enter for Culture Shock, a new reality television show which will see families from two different cultures swapping homes and lives for two weeks. Carl Fischer, head of M-Net original productions, said on Wednesday the show would not seek to pit stereotypes against each other.

A senior South African diplomat has been transferred back home from South Africa House in London following allegations of misdemeanour by his son, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Monday. According to the Sunday Independent, the official’s 12-year-old son was under investigation by British police for taking a ”spray gun” to school.

A new team from Britain’s Royal Navy is due in South Africa next month to help train South African Navy officers to work in new ships and submarines, the Chief of the South African Navy, Vice-Admiral Johannes Mudimu, said on Monday. The United Kingdom’s First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, is currently on a week-long official visit in South Africa.

Protesters gathered outside the United States embassy in Pretoria and its consulate in Cape Town on Friday to demand the release of the so-called Cuban Five. The protesters — about 200 in Pretoria and what one participant said were about 80 in Cape Town — included representatives of the African National Congress and its alliance partners.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu received an original Zapiro cartoon as a present for his 75th birthday at the University of South Africa on Friday. Upon receiving the gift, Tutu said: ”I am always intrigued because, if you will notice, Zapiro always draws my nose peeping into my mouth. A very big thank you … I am deeply touched and lack words to express my appreciation.”

For the African National Congress to remain a national movement it must ensure that both socialists and nationalists have a place in the party, President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday. He was speaking at the launch at the presidential guesthouse in Pretoria of the second of five volumes of The Road to Democracy in South Africa.

Corruption will remain a problem in South Africa, Special Investigation Unit (SIU) head Willie Hofmeyr said on Thursday. Giving an overview of the growth of the SIU over the past few years, Hofmeyr said it was difficult to determine just how much corruption there was in government. ”There are some areas which are just naturally vulnerable to corruption,” he said.

About 11 white students painted their faces black in a bid to be classified as Africans at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Thursday. The group, led by AfriForum CEO Callie Kriel, handed a memorandum to a representative of the President’s office, Elisa Ndlovu. Kriel said the students’ tongue-in-cheek action carried a very serious message.

Voluntary testing among prison inmates and correctional services employees was encouraged at the launch of the Department of Correctional Services’ HIV/syphilis-prevalence survey in Pretoria on Monday. Offenders and officials need to know their status because the current 5% of known HIV cases among inmates is most probably incorrect, considering the country’s HIV rate, the department said.

Land reform, and especially land restitution, were proceeding according to plan, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs said in Pretoria on Thursday. ”There’s this wrong impression that most of these projects, especially restitution, are failing. That is not true, they are working,” Dirk du Toit told a press briefing at the Union Buildings.

Special courts are planned for the 2010 Fifa World Cup to deal with offences related to the event, national police said on Wednesday. ”In the case of offences committed by visitors, these special courts will speedily resolve cases before their departure,” police Assistant Commissioner Peter Mathogwame told a media briefing in Pretoria.

Cash-in-transit heists have increased by 74,1% in the past year, the South African Police Service revealed on Wednesday in releasing the country’s annual crime statistics. Car-hijackings were also up by 3,1%, the police said in a statement ahead of the official release of the statistics at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang denied on Tuesday ever claiming that the use of certain fruits and vegetables by HIV/Aids patients could be an alternative to medical treatment. ”I challenge you to read all my statements and show me where this minister ever said it was an alternative. It is not,” Tshabalala-Msimang told reporters at media briefing.

Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel is not interested in becoming South Africa’s next president or deputy president. In the October edition of Afrikaans niche magazine Insig (Insight), Manuel said he loved his freedom too much to take up the country’s top post. ”I’m not interested in the position as president or deputy president,” he told the magazine.

A senior control prosecutor was attacked and stabbed in her office in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Monday. Inspector Anton Breedt said the woman was working in her office when a man came in and stabbed her with a knife, before fleeing with her cellphone.