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/ 5 November 2004
A letter from an Italian judge, which is apparently strongly critical of the way a South African magistrate has been dealing with the Palazzolo hearings, was handed in to the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Friday. The court is overseeing the questioning of witnesses whose testimony will be used in alleged Mafioso’s Vito Palazzolo’s trial in absentia in Italy.
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/ 5 November 2004
The three levels of government should work together to ensure better coordination in the formulation and implementation of policies, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. The president was speaking in Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal at a sitting of the National Council of Provinces .
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/ 5 November 2004
Gauteng’s minister for community safety, Firoz Cachalia, expressed anger and shock at the killing of a police officer at a roadblock in Johannesburg on Thursday. ”It is very saddening to see these kinds of vicious attacks on members who are dedicated to serving their communities,” he said on Friday.
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/ 5 November 2004
There is no need to panic about drought — unless the rain stays away for another two months, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry said in Pretoria on Friday. The department is reviewing the state of the Vaal River system to see if water restrictions in Gauteng — now South Africa’s driest province — will be necessary.
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/ 5 November 2004
South Africa’s official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, says small and medium businesses should be excluded from costly — and bureaucratic — burdens imposed by the Employment Equity Act. Charges of alleged employment-equity violations against eight KwaZulu-Natal clothing companies will cost thousands of jobs, the DA said.
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/ 4 November 2004
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) has threatened festive-season prison disruptions unless 127 dismissed correctional officials are reinstated. ”We will be mobilising our members to fight these unlawful dismissals,” Popcru secretary general Abbey Witbooi said on Thursday.
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/ 4 November 2004
The minister of home affairs made an impassioned plea on Thursday for foreigners to apply for the necessary permits to be in the country legally. In a personal statement to the South African Human Rights Commission hearings on xenophobia, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said: ”There are many different permits they can apply for in South Africa.”
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/ 4 November 2004
The National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) on Wednesday issued a press statement regarding its declaration of a deadlock on the payment of educator backlogs. The matter arose out of the absence of any salary progression for educators from 1996 to 2002.
Dispute could affect matric exams
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/ 4 November 2004
Politicians and members of the judiciary, with the exception of magistrates, are to receive a maximum salary increase of 6% this year, the Presidency announced on Thursday. Mbeki’s decision comes after the recommendations of the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers.
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/ 4 November 2004
The long-delayed taxi recapitalisation programme will be implemented from the beginning of the 2005/06 financial year, Minister of Transport Jeff Radebe announced in Pretoria on Thursday. Costing the government an estimated R7,7-billion, the recapitalisation programme will replace the country’s ageing taxi fleet.
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/ 4 November 2004
A crowd of Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) activists marched to Parliament on Thursday as part of a national demonstration calling for the government to pay the TAC’s costs in recent litigation. The spirited protesters toyi-toyied and chanted their way down several blocks in the city centre, bringing traffic to a standstill.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=124964">Slow start in treating Aids kids</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=124826">TAC to challenge Dept of Health in court</a>
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/ 4 November 2004
Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, told a news conference in Johannesburg on Thursday he is eager to go to China — where he last visited 50 years ago — and stressed that Beijing has failed to understand that he has dropped demands for independence. The leader sidestepped questions on the United States elections.
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/ 4 November 2004
Matric results in mathematics, so poor they are a ”crisis of performance”, remain as a legacy of apartheid, a forthcoming publication has found. Focusing on maths, because of the range of career choices it provides, Professor Servaas van der Berg looked at an education system that by world and African standards is a poor performer.
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/ 4 November 2004
The South African government’s refusal to disclose the number of children receiving anti-retroviral drugs in KwaZulu-Natal has raised fears among Aids activists that children’s rights to health care and life are being violated. A survey at 13 of KwaZulu-Natal’s public hospitals found only 39 children were receiving anti-Aids medication.
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/ 3 November 2004
The judge in the Boeremag treason trial made assurances on Wednesday that he has not yet decided on the guilt of anyone after being accused of ”helping” a state witness. Alleged Boeremag leader Tom Vorster had complained that the judge was ”helping” state witness Deon Crous during cross-examination.
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/ 3 November 2004
A R10-million provincial cash injection for equipment at the East Rand’s ailing Natalspruit hospital could be too little, too late, Democratic Alliance health spokesperson Jack Bloom said on Wednesday. Blaming provincial inaction for the hospital’s woes, he said prevention would have been better than cure.
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/ 3 November 2004
Africans should make peace with colonialism and move on, the Angolan ambassador to South Africa, Isaac Dos Anjos, said in Pretoria on Wednesday. Emerging from 40 years of civil war and approaching its second democratic election in 2006, Dos Anjos said Angola is still a country of extremes with little infrastructure.
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/ 3 November 2004
Speaker Baleka Mbete has barred parliamentary questions relating to the business relationship between Deputy President Jacob Zuma and his adviser Schabir Shaik, which was to be debated on Wednesday. Mbete gave the official opposition Democratic Alliance notice of this earlier on Wednesday, chief whip Douglas Gibson said.
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/ 3 November 2004
Mike Mabuyakhulu, who acted for KwaZulu-Natal’s late local government minister Dumisane Makhaye when he was ill, has been appointed to the post, the province said on Wednesday. Mabuyakhulu was formerly the province’s minister of finance.
Makhaye died last month and was buried last weekend.
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/ 3 November 2004
It is a myth that South Africa is being flooded by refugees and economic migrants, the South African Human Rights Commission heard on Wednesday. The research director of the University of the Witwatersrand’s forced migration project said people should be wary of accepting claims that two to three million people are coming from Zimbabwe.
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/ 3 November 2004
Zimbabwe’s silos ”are full”, and the country has enjoyed ”a wonderful harvest” in the last year, the country’s ambassador to South Africa, Simon Khaya Moyo, told the National Assembly’s foreign affairs portfolio committee on Wednesday. Moyo would not comment on the jail sentence of opposition MP Roy Bennett.
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/ 3 November 2004
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/140506/shaik_icon_new.gif" align=left>An employee of the company that invented the scanner that reads barcodes was the first foreign witness in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial when he testified on Wednesday. John Dover, from the United Kingdom, said he met Shaik when he was based in South Africa for Symbol Technologies.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=124909">Speaker bars questions on Zuma</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=124839">’One more charge, no problem'</a>
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/ 3 November 2004
A top police officer said on Wednesday he stands by a document in which he listed Cape Town attorney Harry Snitcher as part of the Mafia’s organisation in the Western Cape. Captain Piet Viljoen was testifying in proceedings in which Italian prosecutors are questioning witnesses on the affairs of alleged Mafioso Vito Palazzolo.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=124881">Palazzolo linked to Staggie</a>
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/ 2 November 2004
An expected 140 Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) employees are to down tools this month following a break-down in salary talks, the Public Servants’ Association said on Tuesday. The strike is expected to disrupt valuable research projects nearing critical deadlines.
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/ 2 November 2004
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The race between George Bush and John Kerry is not only a race that concerns the United States. The US president influences politics and economics all over the world. So, who do we prefer — and why? Who will be the best candidate for Africa? The Mail & Guardian Online asked South Africa’s political pros who they prefer.
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/ 2 November 2004
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Charges of crimen injuria and intimidation were laid on Tuesday against fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik. A police officer stationed at the Durban High Court claimed he was ”verbally and racially assaulted” before the resumption of Shaik’s trial on Tuesday morning.
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/ 2 November 2004
Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour and MPs experienced the toxic smoke and flammability of mattresses at Pollsmoor prison on Wednesday, where three inmates died in a fire last week. ”Honestly, we must check to change this,” said Dennis Bloem, chairperson of Parliament’s portfolio committee on correctional services.
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/ 2 November 2004
The National Council of Provinces (NCOP) was to meet later on Tuesday to pass a resolution that backtracks on one passed by the chamber last week — "which regrets the refusal of the president to address the serious crime of rape in our country and to acknowledge the suffering of women and children who are attacked on a daily basis".
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/ 2 November 2004
Privatisation came under fire on Tuesday afternoon in a debate in the National Assembly on the planned retrenchment of 7 600 workers at South Africa’s semi-privatised fixed-line telephone monopoly Telkom. Leading the debate was Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder.
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/ 2 November 2004
Aids lobby group the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is to take the Department of Health to court on Thursday for allegedly obstructing its attempts to obtain information on government targets for the roll-out of anti-retroviral drugs. It says the department compiled a document setting out targets and timetables for the roll-out.
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/ 2 November 2004
Friday November 5 marks the last day of trading of shares in Metro Cash & Carry (Metcash) as such on the JSE Securities Exchange (JSE), following the buyout of the company’s African and South African operations by a consortium of Metcash management, a black empowerment consortium and associates.