South Africa

The Democratic Alliance on Monday questioned whether there was not military involvement — by past or present soldiers — in the recent spate of heists. Many armed robberies, heists and attacks on the police were carried out with military precision using military arms and ammunition, he said.

President Thabo Mbeki has appointed advocate Dumisane Ntsebeza as senior counsel, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Sunday. Ntsebeza is the first African in the entire history of the Cape Bar to be appointed senior counsel, which is the highest recognition in the legal profession.

People against elephant culling in the Kruger National Park will demonstrate that there are non-violent and non-lethal alternatives when they meet Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk on Monday. The Elephants Alive Coalition said it would also argue that the plan to cull elephants in the park was ”deeply flawed, ecologically and ethically”.

The government is looking for skilled white South Africans at home and abroad to help implement its accelerated growth plan, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday. Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told the newspaper that the government has ”messed up” communicating its affirmative-action policy.

Golfer Ernie Els’s former manager Nic Frangos called on the police on Saturday to speed up their probe into businessman David Rosen, who fell to his death at Sandton’s Michelangelo hotel earlier this month. He denied a Saturday newspaper report that police had questioned him in connection with the incident.

The remains of three Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) cadres executed in the apartheid era have been located at Mamelodi cemetery in Pretoria and exhumed, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Saturday. Sipho Xulu, Andrew Zondo and Lucky Payi were hanged in 1986.

South Africans have a growing appetite for newspapers, but the vast menu of magazines is not as palatable, according to the newly released Amps 2005 readership figures. However, the print industry, ”as well as its brothers and cousins in neighbouring media, is alive and well”, Starcom MD Gordon Patterson said on Friday.

An urgent application by arms maker Denel seeking relief from paying a guarantee of R25-million to the State Bank of India was struck off the roll by the Johannesburg High Court, media reports said on Friday. The guarantee is part of a multimillion-rand arms deal between Denel and the Indian government.

Daylight saving time (DST) is a reality in more than 70 countries worldwide — but not in South Africa. Budget airline kulula.com, which started its ”Fight for Light” DST campaign on September 1 this year, now claims President Thabo Mbeki has asked one of his ministers to investigate whether South Africa can adopt DST.

Four men who shot a police officer dead and injured two others in Rosebank, Johannesburg, on Friday struck again later in Fourways, police said. A spokesperson said the gunmen picked up the trail of a man who had collected money at an American Express outlet in Rosebank and followed him all the way to Fourways.