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/ 22 January 2008
South Africa’s government said on Tuesday it remained firmly under the control of President Thabo Mbeki, dismissing concerns that his defeat in the battle to lead the party had made him a lame duck. Mbeki lost control of the African National Congress last month when delegates chose Jacob Zuma as the party’s new leader.
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/ 22 January 2008
Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men, a gory meditation on moral decline, and There Will Be Blood, a gritty drama about a pioneering California oilman, led the nominations for the 80th annual Academy Awards on Tuesday, organisers said. Get the full list of nominations here.
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/ 22 January 2008
An electricity shortage that has led to frequent power disruptions in South Africa could chase away investors, denting growth and portfolio inflows and weakening the rand. Economists estimate the cost to the economy has run into hundreds of millions of rands, adding to the woes brought on by the falls in financial markets.
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/ 22 January 2008
A top Scorpions investigator is expected to appear in court on Wednesday morning on charges relating to driving under the influence of alcohol, Talk Radio 702 reported on Tuesday. Senior Scorpion Ivor Powell was apparently arrested with fugitive gang boss Igshaan Davids in Woodstock, on Tuesday evening.
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/ 22 January 2008
Scorpions investigator Ivor Powell was granted R1 000 bail in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday. His case was remanded to April 29 pending the outcome of his blood alcohol tests. He was arrested on Tuesday night, apparently in the company of alleged Americans gang boss Igshaan Davids.
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/ 22 January 2008
Strict action will be taken against those who ”manipulate” the price of bread, the government warned on Tuesday. It was gravely concerned about rising bread prices, which inevitably affected the poor, the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs said in a statement.
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/ 22 January 2008
The Cabinet has cracked down on departments that persistently receive poor audit reports and given them six weeks to sort out their problems. Briefing the media on Tuesday, government spokesperson Themba Maseko said the Cabinet had noted the Auditor General’s report on the audit outcomes of national and provincial government departments.
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/ 22 January 2008
A KwaZulu-Natal pilot project — proven to reduce court backlogs and overcrowding in prisons drastically — may be rolled out countrywide, if the government comes to the table with funding, the Justice and Constitutional Development Department said on Tuesday.
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/ 22 January 2008
African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma will be spending the rest of this week at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. ”He has been invited there in his capacity as president of the ANC,” party spokesperson Tiyani Rikhotso said on Tuesday.
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/ 22 January 2008
The savage gridlock that has characterised power failures in major centres recently could soon be a thing of the past if the Central Energy Fund’s (CEF) plan to install solar-powered traffic lights comes to fruition. Thousands of traffic lights have been earmarked for solar-power installations in a number of cities and towns.
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/ 22 January 2008
Glenn Agliotti, accused of the murder of mining magnate Brett Kebble, will have his trial date set when he reappears in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on July 2. Both prosecuttion and defence said a delay in the case was necessary because of other ”developments”. Prosecutor Thanda Mngwengwe said the Kebble case was ”interlinked” with other matters.
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/ 22 January 2008
South Africa’s neighbours are feeling the pinch of Eskom’s problems as they are plunged into darkness and face power failures of their own. Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe have all reported power failures and their governments have had to move quickly to clarify the reliability of future power supplies.
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/ 22 January 2008
Former Civil Cooperation Bureau operative and convicted apartheid assassin Ferdie Barnard is applying for a presidential pardon, say reports.
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/ 22 January 2008
The South African residential property market is poised for another year of slowing price growth — but the news is ”not all bad”, said Herschel Jawitz, chief executive of Jawitz Properties. ”With double-digit growth since 2000 and eight rate increases over the last 18 months, it is no surprise that the market is set to take a pause in 2008,” he said.
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/ 22 January 2008
Reducing software piracy over the next four years in South Africa could create a stronger local IT sector, generate new high-paying jobs and contribute to the country’s economy, according to a new study released on Tuesday by the Business Software Alliance.
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/ 22 January 2008
Researchers from the University of Cape Town have developed two test HIV vaccines — the first wholly South African-developed products to enter the human clinical-trials phase, the Herald Online reported on Tuesday. The vaccines are just months away from being assessed in human clinical trials, the report said.
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/ 22 January 2008
Embattled South African power utility Eskom warned on Tuesday that current electricity prices were unsustainable and South Africans should expect steeper price increases in the near future. Eskom’s statement comes as the country faces a crisis in the wake of national power cuts.
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/ 22 January 2008
The JSE was down only 0,83% at noon on Tuesday, as buying interest among banks helped it recover from sharp losses of over 4% in the morning session. By noon, the platinum mining index fell 2,27%, resources were down 1,72%, and the gold mining index pulled back 1,47%.
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/ 22 January 2008
About 500 people were trapped at the top of Table Mountain on Monday night for three-and-a-half hours after an Eskom power cut, the Times reported on Tuesday. Some of those stranded were in two cable cars suspended in mid-air. A spokesperson for the cableway said that the power cut jerked key equipment on the two cars out of alignment.
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/ 22 January 2008
An operational plan to deal with congestion at many road intersections resulting from power cuts has been devised, Johannesburg metro police said on Monday. ”The plan involves deploying officers at the off-ramps along the freeways,” said spokesperson Superintendent Wayne Minnaar.
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/ 21 January 2008
One of the Boeremag treason trial accused, Kobus Pretorius, on Monday told a Pretoria High Court judge he had had an epiphany in jail and wanted to be released on bail so that he could ”serve the community of South Africa”. He told Judge Khami Makhafola he was ”a new man” after accepting Jesus Christ as his saviour.
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/ 21 January 2008
The Krugersdorp Magistrate’s Court heard on Monday that one of the six people accused of murdering and robbing Muldersdrift conservationist Frans Richter stood to inherit R1-million from him, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported. Celiwe Mbokazi was Richter’s housekeeper and, according to the police, she was promised R1-million in his will.
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/ 21 January 2008
The state will on Thursday take possession of a Limpopo farm that was expropriated after it was liquidated. The liquidators refused to bring down the price at which they were willing to sell the farm to the government. The property is the second to be expropriated by the government as part of efforts to speed up the land-reform process.
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/ 21 January 2008
Theft of artifacts and ”heritage objects” from museums, galleries and churches is on the rise, said Minister of Arts and Culture Pallo Jordan on Monday. ”Unfortunately, many of these items have not been recovered,” he said in response to questions in Parliament.
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/ 21 January 2008
South African Civil Aviation Authority CEO Captain Colin Jordaan has denied reports that the airline, Nationwide, had neglected to properly maintain its fleet. In a statement issued on Monday, Jordaan rejected as incorrect media reports where he was quoted as saying: ”Nationwide had neglected maintenance and its records were not kept properly.”
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/ 21 January 2008
South African Civil Aviation Authority CEO Captain Colin Jordaan has denied reports that the airline, Nationwide, had neglected to properly maintain its fleet. In a statement issued on Monday, Jordaan rejected as incorrect media reports where he was quoted as saying: ”Nationwide had neglected maintenance and its records were not kept properly.”
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/ 21 January 2008
South Africa was set on Monday to ration electricity in a bid to stem a spiralling crisis that has dealt a severe blow to its status as the continent’s economic powerhouse. After mounting anger over daily power cuts that have cost business hundreds of millions of rands, the government said it was drawing up plans that could see consumers fined if they exceed set quotas.
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/ 21 January 2008
An application in the Cape High Court on Monday, concerning sequestration proceedings involving Fidentia’s J Arthur Brown and his wife, Susan, was ”an abuse of the judicial system”, Cape High Court Judge Dennis Davis said. In December last year, Judge Davis ordered the provisional sequestration of Brown and his wife’s joint estate.
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/ 21 January 2008
The case against the three men accused of killing British citizen Fred Picton-Turbervill was postponed in the Pretoria Regional Court on Monday. Petro Morkel and Rasel Thembe — both from Mozambique — as well as Thokozane Nhlapo made a brief court appearance and their case was postponed to January 28.
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/ 21 January 2008
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown on Monday made his first appearance in the Cape Town Regional Court, where he is to go on trial on two charges of fraud, one of theft and one of contravening the Companies Act. Brown had previously made several appearances in the lower district court.
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/ 21 January 2008
The decision to re-open an investigation into the Anton Lubowski murder has not yet been taken, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said on Monday. Lubowski, a Stellenbosch University-educated lawyer, a Namibian anti-apartheid activist and a prominent South West Africa People’s Organisation member, was assassinated 18 years ago.
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/ 21 January 2008
The African National Congress (ANC) is getting rid of the Scorpions in order to protect ANC members from corruption charges, according to the leader of the Democratic Alliance, Helen Zille. Zille said on Monday that besides the seven convicted criminals on the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC), six NEC members are currently the subject of investigations.