South Africa

SA Rugby on Thursday announced the final squads of its four franchises that will participate in the 2005 Vodacom Rugby Super 12 competition. The competition kicks off next weekend. This year, each of the four local regional teams will have eight black players in their final squads of 30.

The 2010 Soccer World Cup will give a central role to the country’s youth, South African Football Association chief executive Danny Jordaan said after meeting with the African National Congress Youth League on Thursday. ”The 2010 World Cup is to a large extent youth-focused,” Jordaan said after the meeting.

Kidnapped student Leigh Matthews was alive and bound up in a car, metres away from her father when he dropped off her ransom money, court documents stated on Thursday. That same night she was taken by her kidnapper and shot at point-blank range in the bushes near Walkerville, south of Johannesburg.

Moroka Swallows squandered an excellent opportunity to move up the table when they drew 1-1 with Santos in a Premier Soccer League match played at Rand Stadium on Wednesday afternoon. Swallows are now a point behind third-place Kaizer Chiefs with 32 points, while Santos have just 18 points and languish near the bottom of the log.

Orlando Pirates’ Benedict Vilakazi, who was this week charged with the alleged rape of a minor, put his problems off the field behind him as he helped steer the Bucs to a 3-1 victory over Manning Rangers and a nine-point lead at the top of the Castle Premiership. Vilakazi — who has denied the allegations — scored the opening goal.

Protesters gathered outside the United States consulate in Johannesburg on Wednesday, the day the international climate treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol came into force. The US has not signed the treaty. Demonstrators waved banners saying ”Stop US climate crime” and ”Beat the heat, beat the Bush”.

The commander of the North East Rand dog unit appeared in the Benoni Regional Court on Wednesday following his arrest on charges of corruption. Superintendent Krishna Naidoo and his 29-year-old brother-in-law Keegan Ragavan allegedly approached a suspected drug dealer and asked for a bribe to make ‘surveillance’ of the man disappear.

The Johannesburg Labour Court has granted the country’s oldest journalists’ union, the South African Union of Journalists, an order allowing its provisional liquidation. The union, first founded in the 1920s, has in recent years become dysfunctional, although it still has trust funds with considerable assets.

Two men were arrested late on Tuesday after chemicals used for drug manufacture were found in a Joubert Park church, Johannesburg police said. Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht said on Wednesday the members of the organised crime unit raided the Cathedral of Christ the King church after receiving information.

Lions captain Wikus van Heerden became the first Lions player to win the coveted player of the year award for the second consecutive year at the Golden Lions Rugby Union’s annual awards dinner held at Ellis Park Stadium on Tuesday night. The award for most promising player went to Bryan Habana.

For long, it epitomised the brutality of the apartheid state but Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent much of his life in prison, is now a lovers’ rendezvous. Fifteen couples from South Africa, Germany, Britain and the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday said their ”I dos” in a church on the island.

Dagga and a knife were found hidden in a grade eight classroom at a Diepsloot school on Tuesday in a raid by more than 100 police officers using sniffer dogs. Four youths were also arrested, but not in class. They were caught smoking dagga at a shebeen about 500m from Itirele-Senzele High School, said a Pretoria police spokesperson.