South Africa

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.

A senior South African military law officer is to help the United Nations investigate allegations of sexual abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Commander Gordon Wardley has served for six months as legal adviser to the UN force commander in the DRC and for nine months as the UN force commander’s legal adviser in Liberia.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) on Monday released a document on draft licence conditions for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in which the regulator stated that it wants SABC stations to increase local programming while promoting indigenous languages.

The City of Johannesburg is treating complaints about faulty traffic lights, which have caused several accidents, with the ”utmost urgency”, it said on Monday. This follows threats by motorists that they may take the city to court if it does not ensure that Johannesburg’s many defective traffic lights are repaired.

Every year, thousands of Africans fleeing war and economic hardship journey towards the tip of the continent — their sights set on a better life in South Africa. Along with hope for the future, many also bring with them the Aids virus, and South Africa is already grappling with the challenge of providing anti-retroviral drugs to its own citizens.