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/ 22 September 2004
The drop in matric passes at higher-grade level poses a serious dilemma for the Department of Education, the Democratic Alliance said on Wednesday. The department has announced its intention to introduce a single senior-certificate examination and scrap the current distinction between the standard and higher grade.
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/ 22 September 2004
An overwhelming number of South African teenagers are confident about the future of the country, according to preliminary results of a study conducted by the University of Witwatersrand released on Wednesday. The study sought to establish how teenagers view South Africa. More than 2 000 children took part in the study.
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/ 21 September 2004
Just more than a million people — about 2,2% of the population — were arrested in South Africa in the past financial year, 445Â 779 of them for serious and violent crimes, according to the South African Police Service’s annual report released this week. More than 2,1-million kilograms of dagga were seized.
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/ 21 September 2004
Rabbit meat could be the food of the future for poor South Africans, according to a team of researchers from the University of the Free State. In a paper released at a Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa conference, they said the animals are a cheap and easy-to-raise form of low-cholesterol protein.
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/ 21 September 2004
South African anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela was reunited on Tuesday with two notebooks that were confiscated from him while in prison.
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/ 21 September 2004
The madness of the floor-crossing period for municipal government councillors is over and once again the ruling African National Congress has snatched up swathes of support from the opposition. In the period of September 1 to 15, it reaped 326 councillors and only lost four to the opposition — two of them to Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats.
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/ 21 September 2004
Security has been stepped up at Johannesburg International airport following an attempted robbery of cargo last week, police said on Tuesday. ”Stringent command and control measures have been instituted to ensure efficient service delivery with the ultimate goal of making the airport a safe and secure environment,” a police spokesperson said.
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/ 21 September 2004
After a year of research and consultations with the local aerospace industry, the South African government has decided to help support growth in the industry through the creation of a joint institution, called the Aerospace Industry Support Initiative, according to Minister of Trade and Industry Mandisi Mpahlwa.
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/ 21 September 2004
A total of 347 police members were suspended between April 1 last year and March 31 this year for their alleged involvement in corruption-related activities, according to the police’s annual report released this week. The report says considerable effort was put into detecting corruption.
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/ 21 September 2004
The government will spend R1-billion in allowances to ensure health professionals are available in rural areas and the public health sector, Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Tuesday. The strategy will ”address the broader challenge of migration of health personnel from rural to urban areas”, she said.
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/ 21 September 2004
Closing off public spaces with boom gates is putting up a laager and reinstating apartheid — and it is also illegal, the South African Human Rights Commission heard on Tuesday. The commission is hearing submissions on whether communities should be allowed to restrict access to public areas to feel safer.
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/ 20 September 2004
Face paintings, wigs and men wearing dresses will be allowed at Saturday’s 14th annual Gay Pride march in Johannesburg, as long as it is ”decent”, city police said on Monday. Spokesperson Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said: ”People will be able to wear masks, but the mask must be of such a nature that the wearer is identifiable.”
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/ 20 September 2004
National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) president Mtutuzeli Tom has reproached members who, he said, use the media to discredit the union.
”It is our revolutionary duty to defend and protect the integrity of the union from reckless and careless negative media publicity,” he told Numsa’s congress in Midrand.
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/ 20 September 2004
Nine miners died at the Northam Platinum mine near Thabazimbi after a fire broke out underground early on Monday, the company said. A spokesperson said 46 workers, who were working on the 13th level of the mine about 2 100m underground, were safely evacuated after the blaze was detected.
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/ 20 September 2004
South Africa has launched an ambitious policy for biotechnology, according to the Science and Development Network. The Department of Science and Technology document has identified the main beneficiaries as health services, agriculture, industry, mining and the environment.
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/ 20 September 2004
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has called for an end to the management failures and ”lunacy” in the country’s public sector, saying the finances channelled to government have to be translated into concrete improvements in poverty, education and services.
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/ 20 September 2004
About 500 residents of Zamani in Memel were blocking the access road to the township in protest over service delivery, eastern Free State police said on Monday morning. Captain Veronica Ntepe said schoolchildren were among the protesters. The group were using old car wrecks and dustbins to block the road.
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/ 20 September 2004
In the Nguni languages, an indlavini is a violent and reckless man who disrespects elders and tradition. The tough cities also produced the utsotsi, a street-wise petty criminal who asserts his masculinity through violence. Amplified by the media, such notions have now become entrenched. With the introduction of HIV into the social equation, their consequences are also deadlier than ever before.
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/ 20 September 2004
"Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man," goes the old Jesuit saying — an advertisement, if ever there were one, for the virtues of preprimary education. Yet, a decade after the advent of democracy, South Africa appears to spend more on keeping convicted criminals in their cells than on keeping children off the streets and in preschool.
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/ 19 September 2004
The Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council will meet on Sunday to consider a draft agreement drawn up on Friday evening in an attempt to resolve the public-service pay-rise impasse. The working group was set up by the government and labour unions on Friday morning to explore ”all possible options” for a resolution.
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/ 19 September 2004
Thousands of mourners, of all races and creeds, packed the Aasvoëlkop Dutch Reformed Church in Northcliff on Saturday to pay their final respects to Afrikaans anti-apartheid activist Beyers Naude in a moving ceremony. ”Oom Bey” — once rejected by his own people for rejecting his church’s justification of apartheid — died on September 7 at the age of 89. President Thabo Mbeki said it was because of Naude that black and white South Africans could walk together.
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/ 19 September 2004
The former African National Congress Youth League secretary in Mpumalanga who linked three prominent ANC members to a plot to topple President Thabo Mbeki, has admitted to lying, the Sunday Times reported on Saturday evening. James Nkambule sparked a top-level police investigation in 2001 with his claims.
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/ 18 September 2004
Dutch airline KLM is concerned about the security situation at Johannesburg International airport following Thursday’s attempted robbery near one of its aircraft. On Thursday night, a gang of armed men tried to intercept a cargo as it was being loaded on board with a police escort.
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/ 18 September 2004
The mutilated body of a newborn baby boy apparently eaten by a dog was found near an informal settlement on the farm Rietvlei near Sundra, Mpumalanga police reported on Friday. Inspector Leonard Hlathi said farm residents spotted the baby’s body and informed police on Thursday.
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/ 18 September 2004
South African students at a high school in a township outside Durban were treated to a special science lesson on Friday, delivered by Indian President Abdul Kalam. The Indian statesman later wrapped up his visit — the first ever by a head of state from the subcontinent — by travelling to Chatsworth.
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/ 17 September 2004
A working group set up by the government and labour unions on Friday morning to explore ”all possible options” for a resolution to the public-service pay rise impasse had compiled a document by late afternoon. The document was due to be tabled in the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council urgently.
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/ 17 September 2004
Work stopped at the South African Reserve Bank in Pretoria and a nearby branch of Absa bank for about an hour on Friday as police searched both buildings for bombs. The police’s dog unit and bomb disposal unit were sent to both scenes shortly after midday, said spokesperson Inspector Percy Morokane.
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/ 17 September 2004
South Africa’s trade negotiations with China should be suspended until their effect on the local economy had been studied, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Friday. Cosatu president Zwelinzima Vavi was addressing the Southern African Textile and Clothing Workers’ Union in Cape Town.
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/ 17 September 2004
A Randburg engineer charged under weapons of mass destruction and nuclear energy laws has already told international authorities that he had no business dealings with Libya, the Vanderbijlpark Regional Court heard on Friday. Gerhard Wisser was questioned by German authorities last month.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=122333">’Death threats’ in WMD case</a>
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/ 17 September 2004
The African National Congress is scaring away prospective investors from South Africa with ”outlandish tirades” against so-called white capital, not seeming to realise that money knows no colour, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday in his weekly newsletter on the DA’s website.
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/ 17 September 2004
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) on Thursday presented an application to split its radio and television services into public and commercial broadcasting. The split would see three radio stations (Metro FM, 5fm and Good Hope FM) and television channel SABC3 broadcasting commercially.
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/ 16 September 2004
Jazz legend Dolly Rathebe (74) died at the Ga-Rankuwa hospital outside Pretoria on Thursday. Rathebe was admitted to hospital on Sunday after suffering a mild stroke and is survived by two daughters and a son. Former president Nelson Mandela was among many who paid tribute to Rathebe on Thursday.