Constitutional Court Judge Richard Goldstone has mixed feelings about retiring from the court on Thursday. ”I have mixed feelings, but I love a new challenge,” he said after a ceremony at the court to mark his retirement. Goldstone is to spend the next year teaching at two New York universities.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has announced it is throwing its full weight behind the campaign to make sure that every eligible voter is registered to vote in next year’s national and provincial elections. Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal each have more than two million people that still need to register.
Two thousand seven hundred mineworkers will definitely be retrenched at Durban Roodepoort Deep operations in the North West, the gold mine has announced. A spokesperson said the retrenchment would go ahead irrespective of the outcome of talks between the firm and the National Union of Mineworkers.
President Thabo Mbeki has accepted Nigeria’s decision not to invite Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to this year’s Commonwealth summit. Reports that Mbeki had insisted on Mugabe’s presence at the summit in Abuja were unfounded, spokesperson Bheki Khumalo said.
South African banking group Absa chief economist Christo Luus is forecasting that the rand will move to R6,50 to the United States dollar in 2004. The South African rand remained below R7 per dollar in early trade on Wednesday, after breaking this level on Tuesday for the first time in three years.
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/ 30 September 2003
The country’s only independent website providing crime statistics nationally celebrates its one-month birthday on Wednesday — but critics wonder about its validity and accessibility to those most affected by crime. About 80% of the website’s respondents are from the Gauteng region.
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/ 30 September 2003
The Democratic Alliance has taken ”the strongest possible exception” to what it says is a sacrilegious poem in honour of Northern Province premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi. The poem, by a school pupil, was published on the front page of the September edition of the Limpopo government’s newspaper.
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/ 30 September 2003
In an upbeat address to the Interfaith Conference for Peace in Africa, Deputy President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday the successful resolution of conflicts such as Mozambique, Angola and South Africa is an indicator that peace on the African continent is an achievable goal.
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/ 30 September 2003
The mudslinging between Deputy President Jacob Zuma and National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka resembles a soap opera, says the New National Party. The NNP feels both parties should ”keep quiet” and allow the Hefer commission to investigate allegations that Ngcuka had been an apartheid spy.
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/ 30 September 2003
Distell, South Africa’s largest listed wine and spirits producer, has announced it is expanding the reach of its Nederburg wine brand into China and India, two of the world’s fastest-growing markets. Nederburg is the largest brand within Distell’s wine portfolio and the largest premium brand in South Africa.
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/ 29 September 2003
Multinational pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim has given a guarded response following threats by the Treatment Action Campaign and the Generic Anti-Retroviral Procurement Project to import generic nevirapine, which will be sold for about R70, opposed to Boehringer’s R410 for its nevirapine product.
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/ 29 September 2003
The days of fractious children causing mayhem in the back of the car on long, hot journeys may be over. A local company has signed contracts with with manufacturers and distributors to provide in-car DVD systems as optional equipment in Toyota SA’s full range of vehicles.
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/ 29 September 2003
The presidency has moved to limit damage arising from remarks made by President Thabo Mbeki about him not knowing anyone who has died from Aids. "His negative replies do not support any broader interpretation that some media have given them," said presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=21153">Call for ‘dishonest’ Mbeki to apologise</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=21135">Mbeki’s comments ‘highly insensitive'</a>
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/ 26 September 2003
Opposition political parties have lambasted President Thabo Mbeki for his statement in the United States that he personally does not know anyone who has died of Aids, and called for him to apologise immediately. Democratic Alliance spokesperson Mike Waters said Mbeki’s comments were highly insensitive.
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/ 26 September 2003
A report commissioned in the wake of ”vigilante” attacks at the University of Stellenbosch earlier this year has warned that it is a matter of urgency that campus culture be placed on a new footing. The report was compiled by a seven-member panel chaired by Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert.
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/ 25 September 2003
South Africa has welcomed the acquittal on Thursday of a Nigerian single mother who had faced death by stoning for having a child out of wedlock. The case had evoked wide condemnation from international rights groups, with the Nigerian government and several world leaders calling for Lawal to be spared.
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/ 25 September 2003
Two Correctional Services officials have testified that they had not received any complaints after the cells of three of the Boeremag treason trialists were searched and certain documents seized. The incident took place in October last year when the cells of Mike du Toit, his brother Andre and Koos du Plessis were searched.
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/ 25 September 2003
African National Congress stalwart Onnica Mashohlwane Mashigo was killed by a pack of dogs on Saturday. Mashigo was prominent in the fight against apartheid and her house was a meeting point for top ANC members, including Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu.
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/ 25 September 2003
South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel is to present his medium-term Budget policy statement — known as the mini-Budget — on November 11, according to a parliamentary schedule, followed by Manuel’s introduction of his Adjustments Appropriation Bill and the Revenue Laws Amendment Bill.
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/ 24 September 2003
South Africa’s traditional leaders and traditional communities have a critical role to play in the country and should not be allowed to slide into insignificance, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon. The DA believes that traditional leaders’ role in managing communal lands has to be respected.
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/ 24 September 2003
The way the government is implementing black economic empowerment seems like an exclusive club for card-carrying African National Congress members, United Democratic Movement president Bantu Holomisa said on Wednesday. He also called for greater government intervention in South Africa’s economy.
Letters in the latest issue of the journal Aids tell contrasting tales about HIV treatment in developing countries.
South Africa is perfecting cheaper and more effective HIV tests, according to reports on diagnostic tests presented at a conference.
A child counselling centre at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital is making a difference to HIV-positive and Aids-infected children.
It is ordinary people who are casualties of the government’s denialist Aids policy.
A range of politicians has crossed the floor to join or start new political homes. On radio talk shows and on the letters pages of newspapers, they are not floor-crossers, but double-crossers.
Cape plc will pay out only a third of the amount promised to the victims of its local asbestos-mining operations. The dramatic reduction will, Meeran warned, prevent any compensation for future victims of asbestos pollution or other exposure at Cape’s abandoned mines. However, South African investment holding company Gencor is supplementing the settlement
The charge that Iraeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ”ordered the death and destruction of an ethnic group within his nation-state domain” and ”continues to pursue a policy of ethnic cleansing against them” is a serious misrepresentation of Israel’s actions and intentions.
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Valli Moosa seems set to challenge black empowerment fat cats as he considers ways to put an end to perlemoen poaching. Black empowerment companies have acquired big quotas as part of transformation in the fishing industry.
Suspended Strategic Fuel Fund chief executive Dr Renosi Mokate has been found guilty on most charges flowing from disciplinary steps brought against her in August last year
Recent efforts to eliminate an alien invader between Pietermaritzburg and Durban have left residents and environmentalists in a froth. The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Water and Forestry Affairs has sprayed a broad-spectrum glysophate herbicide on Hammarsdale dam
In its 10-year existence about 7 000 complaints have been laid with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. The one on December 13 was the first about, essentially, censorship. Most of the rest have focused on offensive sex and bad language