About 500 striking municipal workers, many of them fired up by cheap wine and brandy, threw rocks, lumps of concrete and bottles at police and dumped mounds of rubbish in Cape Town’s Adderley Street during a march on Wednesday. Police threw a stun grenade as the stone-throwing continued.
South Africa is rolling out a new lightning detection system to track the atmospheric phenomenon across the country. ”The need for real-time lightning information to supplement the advanced high spatial and temporal weather radar and satellite systems in a lightning-prone country is regarded as an essential component to the services required by the South African community,” said South African Weather Services spokesperson Bheki Zwane.
Sixty-eight striking municipal workers were arrested in Knysna on Wednesday and at least 27 more in Cape Town as violence surrounding a countrywide pay protest continued. The incidents come as the South African Municipal Workers’ Union considers legal action against police who have intervened in its protests.
He has been found guilty of a crime he did not commit, Simon Mathebula told the Phalaborwa Circuit Court on Wednesday during deliberations on the sentence he should receive for tossing farmworker Nelson Chisale to lions in Hoedspruit last year. ”I did not even see the corpse … of the deceased,” Mathebula said.
The United Nations Security Council has established a monitoring and reporting mechanism that will ensure the protection of children exposed to armed conflict, a UN statement said on Wednesday. In the past decade, two million children have been killed in situations of armed conflict, while six million children have been disabled or injured.
The National Union of Mineworkers on Wednesday confirmed that both gold producers Harmony Gold and Gold Fields have made individual offers to the unions. Meanwhile, a Solidarity spokesperson said the Chamber of Mines ”has disintegrated with the strike. Every individual company is making its own informal offer.”
More than 600 children were raped in two years by previously convicted rapists, the Democratic Alliance said on Tuesday. ”In 2002, 277 children were raped by persons previously convicted of rape, while in 2003 this figure has increased by 15% to 320, said DA Member of Parliament Mike Waters.
Mark Scott-Crossley has a previous conviction for theft, the Phalaborwa Circuit Court heard on Tuesday while considering his sentence for throwing farmworker Nelson Chisale to lions last year. Accomplice Simon Mathebula has a clean record, prosecutor Ivy Thenga told the court.
President Thabo Mbeki is ”trying his best” to resolve the situation in Zimbabwe, Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane said in Cape Town on Wednesday after a two-and-a-half-hour meeting in Pretoria on Tuesday night between Mbeki and a South African Council of Churches delegation.
William Nkuna, accused of murdering missing police constable Frances Rasuge, handed himself over on Wednesday, police said. North West police spokesperson senior superintendent Pieter du Plessis said Nkuna had handed himself over at the Pretoria North police station.
Sanlam on Wednesday announced its intention to acquire all of the issued ordinary shares of African Life Assurance. African Life will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sanlam and the listing of its ordinary shares on the JSE will be terminated.
A South African man has lost an eye after being attacked by a gang of ten youths in London, media reports said on Wednesday. Grant Nock (26) who has been living in London for over a year, underwent eye surgery in the British capital on Monday where his right eye was removed.
The South African Local Government Association has made a ”certain improvement” to its previous wage offer to striking municipal workers, their union said on Tuesday. The nationwide municipal workers’ strike will continue while the South African Municipal Workers’ Union considers the offer.
President Thabo Mbeki has called on the private sector to accelerate the empowerment and emancipation of women. The president was addressing a National Women’s Day rally at the Hlogotlou Stadium in Sekhukhune, Limpopo, on Tuesday afternoon.
Appointing more women to positions of power is not enough to bring more attention to the problems they face, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Tuesday, National Women’s Day. Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder said women still face discrimination and glass ceilings in society.
There is no end in sight to the strike by about 75% of South Africa’s gold-miners, the Chamber of Mines said on the third day of the strike on Tuesday. ”It doesn’t seem as if we’re making progress. The parties seem to be very far apart,” the chamber’s chief negotiator, Frans Barker, said. Trade union Solidarity’s 10 000 members joined the strike at midnight on Monday.
South African Rugby’s vice-president, Mike Stofile, is considering resignation, he told the Daily Dispatch newspaper on Monday. The revelation follows the resignation of Andre Markgraaff, who quit as deputy president after accusing SA Rugby president Brian van Rooyen of side-lining him from his duties.
Messages on a telephone answering machine told of a Durbanville woman’s desperate attempts to warn her neighbour that intruders had entered his home, the Cape High court heard on Monday. Durbanville resident Pieter Theron told Judge Siraj Desai he found two messages on his answering machine, from the widow of retired Dutch Reformed Church pastor, Pietie Victor.
Ten protesters were injured, two seriously, in Germiston and over 40 arrested in Pinetown in clashes between police and protesting municipal workers on Monday. Ekhurhuleni metro police spokesperson Vusi Mabanga said that protesters marching in central Germiston started breaking traffic lights and littering.
On Tuesday, South Africans can celebrate National Women’s Day for the 11th time, in remembrance of the 20Â 000 women of all races who marched on August 9 1956 to the Union Buildings, to protest the extension of pass laws for African women. The Mail & Guardian Online asked some South Africans about the meaning of Women’s Day.
While a strike by 75% of South Africa’s gold miners continues, gold miner AngloGold Ashanti on Monday announced a higher wage increase for its employees. About 80Â 000 mineworkers belonging to the National Union of Mineworkers walked off the job on Sunday, the first strike in the industry since 1987.
Cape Town mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo has fired her media adviser Blackman Ngoro over his controversial website remarks about coloureds. Mfeketo made the announcement on Monday after receiving the report of an internal council inquiry, saying the affair has ”really created racial disharmony” in the city.
A meeting between striking municipal workers’ unions and the South African Local Government Association continued on Monday afternoon with no new developments, a union spokesperson said. In KwaZulu-Natal, police arrested 43 striking municipal employees on Monday, as striking Samwu members took to the streets.
Wearing grey gloves, Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu spent time on Monday morning laying bricks for 15 houses as part of Women’s Build 2005. ”I’m happy and proud of the beneficiaries and the women volunteers who have given up time to come and help build these houses,” Sisulu said at the official opening of the project in Soweto.
Despite meetings this weekend requesting him to stay on, Andre Markgraaff confirmed on Monday that his tempestuous relationship with South African rugby is finally over. ”My phone has been ringing non-stop … trying to get me to change my mind, but my mind is made up,” Markgraaff said.
Intensive security measures were in place in KwaDukuza on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast on Monday after taxis were forced to stop all operations at midnight on Sunday. This comes after a tribunal was set up to look into the violence between rival taxi associations in which 14 people have died in the past two months.
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.
Cape Town’s central business district, which has already been the recipient of about 1 100 new hotel rooms in the past five years will be the site of at least nine more new hotels in the next two years, according to the Cape Town Partnership.
A planned civil-society coalition — likened to the United Democratic Front (UDF) of the 1980s — will not become a political party to challenge the African National Congress, organisers said on Sunday. ”Cosatu [the Congress of South African Trade Unions] is not creating an organisation called the United Democratic Front,” a Cosatu spokesperson said.
Three trucks filled with food and blankets for Zimbabweans are still in Johannesburg waiting for clearance from Harare, the South African Council of Churches said on Monday. The trucks were due to leave last week but have been stuck in Johannesburg while paperwork is sorted out.
Braziers used for heating are being blamed for the deaths of three people burnt to death and another two suffocated in shacks in Ivory Park, on the North Rand, this weekend. A woman and her two sons burnt to death when their shack caught fire on Saturday night.
Municipal workers’ unions and the South African Local Government Association (Salga) met on Monday in another attempt to resolve a wage dispute that has seen a countrywide resumption of a pay strike. The meeting was taking place even though Salga had already imposed a 6% wage increase against the unions’ demands.