Two Cape Flats girls found murdered last week were laid to rest on Saturday, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported. Cape Town mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo said at the funeral of three-year-old Joey Joseph that the community of Delft will stand together to fight incidents of this nature.
The Eastern Province Cricket Board has been hit by a fresh crisis, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported on Saturday. Six clubs under the banner of the Black African Clubs Cricket Forum have announced their withdrawal from Eastern Province cricket activities with immediate effect.
Public hearings into whether the Scorpions should remain with the National Prosecuting Authority or become part of the South African Police Service will start on Monday as scheduled, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Saturday.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has conveyed condolences, shock and outrage to the government and people of Indonesia following a series of bombings in Bali on Saturday. Mbeki said the government and people of South Africa reiterate their conviction that no cause can ever justify acts of terrorism.
When it comes to problems piling up for Bafana Bafana, the old dictum that ”it never rains, but it pours” would not be inappropriate. On Friday, not long after the squad was named for the African Nations Cup qualifying game against the Democratic Republic in Congo, both Bradley Carnell and Dillon Sheppard withdrew from the squad.
The Blue Bulls secured their place in the semifinals of this year’s Currie Cup competition with a flawless 59-0 victory over Griqualand West at Loftus Versfeld on Friday night. The defending Currie Cup champions were ruthless in their execution and demolished a Griqua pack that almost upset the Lions a week ago in Kimberley.
The Pumas beat the Griffons 40-27 in a first-division Absa Currie Cup semifinal played at Witbank on Friday night. They will face either the Falcons or Elephants in the final. The half-time score was 16-13. The Pumas have only lost two games in their group but were made to fight for their points.
South Africa’s southpaw fighter Gabula Vabaza successfully defended his WBA super-bantam title when he outpointed his Ghanaian challenger Anyetei Laryea during their title contest at the Graceland Casino in Secunda in the early hours of Saturday. Vabaza had to chase his challenger in an attempt to connect him with some blows.
The frequency of infection-free blood and not race will be used as the prime risk indictor when collecting or issuing blood, the South African National Blood Service said on Friday. However, for ”sound medical reasons” donors will be asked — voluntarily — to indicate their ethnic group on donor questionnaires.
President Thabo Mbeki paid tribute on Friday to Transkei-born activist Wycliffe Mlungisi ”Wyckie” Tsotsi, who had died earlier this week. ”His death has robbed South Africa and the African continent of a hero of the struggle for liberation, non-racism, non-sexism and justice,” Mbeki said.
President Thabo Mbeki grilled Northern Cape mayors on Friday about underspending on their capital budgets. He also warned that local-level infighting in the African National Congress, which hampers municipal delivery, has to stop. His interventions came during a day-long local government meeting, in Kimberley, with municipal, national and provincial politicians and officials.
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/ 30 September 2005
Friday’s Constitutional Court judgement on medicine-pricing regulations should be interpreted as a victory for the Department of Health and citizens, Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said. ”The judgement cannot be interpreted to say the department was wrong,” she told reporters in Pretoria. The court, she said, merely identified ”a few minor defects” in the regulations.
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/ 30 September 2005
President Thabo Mbeki has rejected criticism that the African Peer-Review Mechanism (APRM) will be ineffective because of its voluntary nature. Writing in the African National Congress’s online publication, ANC Today, on Friday, he said the process enables each African country to assess the progress it is making towards achieving shared goals.
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/ 30 September 2005
Without institutional autonomy and bold leadership, diversity of language in higher education in South Africa will not survive, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon. Furthermore, the autonomy of universities is in itself important, he said in his weekly newsletter on the DA’s website on Friday.
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/ 30 September 2005
Friday’s Constitutional Court judgement on medicine pricing achieved nothing for the consumer and sowed more confusion, the Democratic Alliance said. The ”contentious matter” has been thrown ”back into the hands of the very people who were unable to find a solution to the problems in the first place”, the DA said.
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/ 30 September 2005
There were gasps in the public gallery as Mark Scott-Crossley, one of the men who threw farmworker Nelson Chisale to lions at Hoedspruit in January last year, was sentenced on Friday to life imprisonment. His co-accused, Simon Mathebula, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, three of them suspended for five years.
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/ 30 September 2005
The Constitutional Court on Friday ordered that the controversial medicine-dispensing fee be reviewed within 60 days. In what it called a ”partial victory for both sides” it set aside a Supreme Court of Appeal judgement declaring the new medicine-pricing regulations invalid. It said there is no need to scrap the law, but that changes within the law are needed.
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/ 30 September 2005
Convicted killer Mark Scott-Crossley was married in the Phalaborwa Magistrate’s Court on Friday ahead of his sentencing for the murder of farmworker Nelson Chisale. Meanwhile, the community of Phalaborwa wants for life sentences for Chisale’s killers, people said as they crowded the doors of the circuit court.
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/ 30 September 2005
Former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni’s appeal against a fraud conviction and four-year sentence is to be heard in the Pretoria High Court on Monday. Yengeni is to contest the verdict on the grounds that he was deceived into pleading guilty by former national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka.
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/ 30 September 2005
South Africa’s retail petrol price for all grades of petrol will increase by 12 cents a litre (c/l) from October 5 after a 29c/l rise on September 7, the Department of Minerals and Energy announced on Friday. The wholesale price of diesel 0,3% sulphur will rise by five c/l after September’s two c/l increase, while diesel 0,05% sulphur will cost six c/l more after a three c/l addition in September.
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/ 30 September 2005
Several organisations on Friday cautioned against reports indicating that mass circumcisions could help prevent the spread of HIV. ”HIV cannot be prevented by mass circumcisions,” read a statement from the National Organisation of Circumcision Information Resource Centres South Africa.
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/ 30 September 2005
The South African National Editors’ Forum on Friday applauded The Star newspaper for taking immediate action against a reporter who gave evidence for the state in a case he was covering. The newspaper’s lawyers will request the court to expunge Alameen Templeton’s evidence, editor Moegsien Williams said.
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/ 30 September 2005
Benoni residents have been warned not to drink water from the town’s rivers, especially the Blesbokspruit, or use it for irrigation purposes, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry said on Thursday. Spokesperson Marius Keet said the warning came after salmonella was found in effluent at Benoni Sewage Treatment.
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/ 30 September 2005
Within the next three years, motorists travelling alone should expect to pay a fee for doing so, the Department of Transport said on Thursday. The measure, called ”congestion pricing”, will be implemented to encourage the use of public transport, the deputy director general of transport said in Mabatu at the launch of National Transport Month.
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/ 30 September 2005
Central Gauteng on Thursday were all but celebrating the South African Interprovincial men’s golf tournament title after their fourth straight win with one match to play at the Benoni Country Club. After comfortably defeating current champions Western Province 7-5, the team from Johannesburg now face a showdown with Kwazulu-Natal on Friday.
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/ 30 September 2005
If the Currie Cup were an animal it would be on the endangered species list. A decade ago, it was regarded as the toughest domestic competition in the world, but in the wake of professionalism, a bunch of well-meaning administrators mucked it up.
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/ 30 September 2005
Imagine walking into an ancient Roman arena to find only a gladiator, a lion — and no one else. Soon the gladiator — and the lion, if it is reasonable — may come to the opinion that attempting to kill each other is a futile, even callous, exercise. This week’s historic lockout game between Kaizer Chiefs and Black Leopards at the FNB Stadium underscored the value of the fan.
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/ 30 September 2005
The future of investigations into Brett Kebble’s business and tax affairs by revenue authorities and the Scorpions is unclear following his murder on Tuesday night.
The National Prosecuting Authority announced on Thursday that it was dropping fraud charges against the mining magnate relating to the apparent Âdisappearance of R1,5-billion-worth of shares in Randgold Resources.
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/ 29 September 2005
Roger Kebble, father of slain mining magnate Brett Kebble, is not planning to step into his son’s shoes. ”I’m just a fairly simple miner. I will stick to my knitting. I don’t think I’m going to step into those shoes,” Kebble told a press conference at his son’s home in Inanda, Johannesburg, on Thursday.
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/ 29 September 2005
Minster of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is happy with the South African National Blood Service’s (SANBS) new race-free risk rating model, she said on Thursday. ”I am glad the SANBS has been able to implement the new risk model for blood donations that excludes race within timelines that we set,” she told reporters in Johannesburg.
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/ 29 September 2005
Mark Scott-Crossley, who threw a man to lions to die, was not a bad person, the Phalaborwa Circuit Court heard on Thursday. ”He [Scott-Crossley] has got good attributes,” his counsel Johann Engelbrecht SC told Justice George Maluleke.
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/ 29 September 2005
Work to uncover and eradicate corruption in the 2004/05 financial year has saved the government projected future losses of nearly R3,5-billion, the Special Investigating Unit said on Thursday. This was calculated on the premise that malpractices exposed during the year were likely to have continued on average for ten more years.