Secunda

Municipal councils, ward councillors and committees must work together to ensure that problems experienced by the people of the Gert Sibande district municipality in Mpumalanga are addressed, President Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday. He addressed mayors from the district as well as ward-committee members.

Two men and a boy were due to appear in Mpumalanga courts on Monday on charges of raping two girls in separate incidents over the weekend, police said. In the first incident, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a 23-year-old man when she went to visit him with a friend on Saturday.

The four convicted murderers of the Van der Merwe family, two of whom were also convicted of rape, were sentenced to life imprisonment in the Circuit High Court in Secunda, Mpumalanga, on Tuesday. The men were also sentenced for other crimes, amounting to 240 years’ imprisonment — but the sentences will run concurrently.

Nine people were still not accounted for by Wednesday afternoon after a gas explosion that claimed six lives at Sasol’s Secunda plant, police said. A spokesperson for the petrochemical company, Johann van Rheede, told reporters on the scene that more than 100 people were injured in the blast in Sasol’s ethylene plant.