The plight of the San indigenous community in South Africa was placed in the spotlight last week with the launch of a report by the South African Human Rights Commission. According to the Working Group for Indigenous Minorities of Southern Africa, there are currently about 100 000 San — the majority of whom live in Botswana.
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Prosecutor Billy Downer completed his cross-examination of fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik in the Durban High Court shortly before lunch on Wednesday. Shaik, who has been charged with one count of fraud and two of corruption, has been under cross-examination since Monday last week.
The Zimbabwean ambassador to South Africa was scathing about a protest by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) outside his embassy in Pretoria on Wednesday, saying he pities the protesters. ”I hesitate to give an iota of dignity to these misguided malcontents,” Simon Khaya Moyo said.
The Constitutional Court will consider on Thursday how a death sentence should be replaced by a more appropriate one since the death penalty was abolished. The Constitutional Court in 1995 declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Since then, it has been unclear how to deal with the sentences of those prisoners given the death penalty prior to the 1995 decision.
The upcoming Zimbabwean elections should be postponed, a leader of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said at a picket outside the Zimbabwe embassy in Pretoria on Wednesday. Meanwhile, South Africa’s ambassador to Zimbabwe has not been advised of the appeal of Zimbabwe’s attorney general against the early release of 62 suspected mercenaries.
A number of buildings had to be evacuated in Stilfontein, near Klerksdorp in the North West, on Wednesday after an earth tremor preliminarily measuring five on the Richter scale. About 3Â 200 miners at DRDGold’s operations near Stilfontein were being evacuated after the tremor. Thirteen miners were injured in the tremor.
Looking at the final results posted by Metropolitan Holdings on Wednesday, the group’s strong new life-business growth in most segments shows that it is continuing to gain market share from most of its competitors, particularly in the area of employee benefits, according to Metropolitan CEO Peter Doyle.
Josh Cunliffe of Dainfern Country Club in Johannesburg won the men’s Sanlam South African Amateur Stroke-Play Golf Championship at Wingate Park Country Club on Tuesday. The 21-year-old closed with a 70 in the afternoon’s fourth round for a 10-under-par 278.
The South African government is to review finance allocations to public tertiary institutions across the country, with specific attention to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, according to the state news agency BuaNews. It said this is to provide opportunities for higher learning for poor young people.
Truck drivers ended their six-day strike on Tuesday with the signing of a wage agreement. Supermarket shelves were without many product lines and some petrol stations in Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal were out of fuel by the time the truck drivers’ sometimes violence-marred strike entered its sixth day on Tuesday.
President Thabo Mbeki and Anglo American’s top executives met behind close doors at Mbeki’s home in Cape Town on Tuesday. Anglo American chief executive Tony Trahar, accompanied by Anglo American South Africa’s newly appointed CE, Lazarus Zim, and chairperson Mark Moody-Stuart, requested the meeting to discuss the company’s financial results.
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Fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik backdated two documents to gain financial benefits from French arms company Thomson CSF, the Durban High Court heard on Tuesday. The documents related to a service-provider agreement between Shaik and Thomson, which the state alleges was part of a bribe Shaik solicited for Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
Municipal pay talks began on Tuesday, described by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union as a ”showdown” between the government’s macro-economic policy and workers’ pockets. The union said the effects of fiscal austerity measures have been severely felt by municipal workers, with increases barely keeping up with inflation.
The Eastern Cape health department on Tuesday began immunising young people to combat a measles outbreak in villages in the Elliotdale area of Transkei. Departmental spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said 35 nurses and 6 000 doses of vaccine have been moved into the area, where about seven villages are seen as under threat.
T-shirt company Laugh It Off argued on Tuesday in the Constitutional Court that its caricature of the Carling Black Label trademark caused no economic harm to Sabmark International, which holds the trademark and licenses it to South African Breweries. The Supreme Court of Appeal found last year that it was illegal to use a caricature of an SAB trademark.
Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota and his counterparts from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region had an unscheduled meeting in Cape Town on Tuesday to discuss growing tensions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). ”It is a short agenda with momentous consequences,” Lekota said.
The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) on Monday criticised the South African government for not being vocal enough about the Zimbabwe government’s clampdown on the independent media, warning that the country’s upcoming elections won’t be free.
Josh Cunliffe (21) eagled Wingate Park Country Club’s par-five 18th hole on Monday to take a one-stroke lead at the halfway mark in the men’s Sanlam South African Stroke-Play Championship. Cunliffe, from Dainfern, carded a 71 for the day and is on 139, five under par, with the third and fourth rounds to be completed on Tuesday.
Bafana Bafana defender Mbulelo Mabizela joined Norwegian side Valerenga on Monday after being without a club for almost six months. The big Mabizela has been without a club after English Premiership side Tottenham Hotspur terminated his contract last October. He tried his luck at various clubs in Europe and Scandinavia without any joy.
Niche banking group Investec will open an office in Knysna this week, to provide specialised services in the Garden Route area, announced Andy Vogel, Investec regional manager for the Eastern Cape. The specialist investment banking group will offer a number of services from its private client division.
With five leaders killed since November last year, the Inkatha Freedom Party is calling for action on political violence in KwaZulu-Natal, but some think it might be opening a can of worms. KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sibusiso Ndebele announced a commission of inquiry into violence in the province this week.
The dissolution of the former ruling apartheid New National Party and its inclusion into the African National Congress will send ”a very powerful message about the extraordinary ability of our people to give real meaning to the goals of national reconciliation”, said President Thabo Mbeki on Friday in his regular internet column, ANC Today.
Trade unions on Friday said they will protect Durban Roodepoort Deep (DRD) miners in the North West from retrenchment following DRD’s warning that production must go up or they will lose their jobs. The National Union of Mineworkers believes DRD does not really want to mine in South Africa and wants to shift focus to Australasia.
The widow of a former body guard of South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni has instituted a claim for more than R2,9-million from a former Pretoria traffic officer and the Tshwane city council. Myra Smith’s husband, Davis Smith, was 29 when he was shot dead on the N1 highway near Rooihuiskraal on May 26 2000.
About 350 students of the University of the Free State handed over a memorandum on Friday demanding an end to the promotion of Afrikaans as a compulsory medium of instruction at the main campus. The students marched peacefully to the main campus entrance, before the memorandum was handed to university rector Frederick Fourie.
Sport in South Africa has fallen victim to African National Congress ”doublethink”, and the contradictions are crippling it, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon. ”Winning is losing, the ANC seems to believe. Or, as [the minister of sport] so bluntly put it … we should be willing to ‘sacrifice winning in the name of transformation’,” Leon says in his weekly newsletter.
The author Breyten Breytenbach said Senegalese police moved in on Friday morning to evict the Gorée Institute, of which he is director, from its offices on the former slave island of the same name. Though he said he does not know the reason for the eviction, it comes amid privatisation of state properties in Senegal.
The first morning of the first Castle Lager/MTN Test between South Africa and Zimbabwe at Sahara Park, Newlands, saw two South African players reach significant career milestones on Friday. Makhaya Ntini took his 200th Test wicket, and Mark Boucher reached 300 Test dismissals. Ntini is the 11th current Test player to take more than 200 wickets.
South African company directors spend more time on board matters than their global counterparts, according to results of a survey released on Friday. ”At an average of 20 hours per month, South African directors devote 17% more time to their efforts than the global average…” said Korn/Ferry International, a management consultancy which released the results.
Telkom chief executive Sizwe Nxasana told MPs on Friday that his company "is constantly responding" to the demands for the lowering of the costs of doing business — and further announcements can be expected "in the future". Nxasana was briefing the National Assembly communications portfolio committee.
Talk is cheap, but carrying out the promises you make less so. That being the case, has all the talk about ensuring equality between men and women in South Africa resulted in action where it counts most: the allocation of funds along gender lines in the national budget? Nearly a decade ago, the Ministry of Finance promised to provide a breakdown of ways in which the budget promoted gender equality.
South African troops played just a small role in an attack on a Congolese militia camp this week, the South African Department of Defence said on Thursday. Two platoons of South African infantry were initially in reserve with some Nepalese troops while two companies of Pakistani troops attacked.