Western Province ended a four-match losing streak in the Absa Currie Cup rugby competition by running out comfortable 47-18 winners in their match against the Valke at Newlands on Saturday. Province started off brightly and were up 17-0 after just 12 minutes, but their performance petered out and they carried only a 20-10 lead into halftime.
The Golden Lions beat the Wildeklawer Griquas 45-24 in an Absa Currie Cup match at the Ellis Park Stadium on Saturday, to stay in the running for a play-off berth. The Lions looked the better side throughout the 80 minutes as Griquas made schoolboy mistakes.
Paramedics from the KwaZulu-Natal provincial Emergency Medical Rescue Services and Netcare 911 on Saturday responded to reports of a collision between two trains at Dargle near the Midmar Dam in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. Netcare 911 spokesperson Chris Botha said that a goods train had collided with a locomotive.
Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood, and Allied Workers’ Union (Ceppwawu) and National Petroleum Employers’ Association negotiators were still locked behind closed doors at 9pm on Saturday. ”All I can say is that we are still talking,” said Ceppwawu spokesperson Keith Jacobs.
Convicted child-killer Christian Olivier has confessed to molesting at least 200 boys over a period of three years, a media report said on Friday. Olivier was found guilty on Tuesday of the murder, kidnapping and indecent assault of Steven Siebert in December 2005.
The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) will meet in Johannesburg on Saturday to consider what further action, if any, will be taken about complaints against Cape Judge President John Hlophe, said Chief Justice Pius Langa. Hlophe reportedly responded last month to questions put to him by the JSC about his relationship with the Oasis investment group.
A seven-year-old schoolboy and a 75-year-old taxi driver were killed when a bakkie ran over them outside a Johannesburg school on Friday, the city’s metro police said. Spokesperson Wayne Minnaar said the accident happened at 7.35am, in Roberts Avenue in front of Jeppe High School.
Malawian rights organisations say their government needs help monitoring Madonna’s planned adoption of a Malawian boy — and a child welfare official agrees that the Southern African country’s foreign adoption procedures need to be overhauled.
India and South Africa shared the challenge of a struggle against poverty, President Thabo Mbeki told businessmen in Johannesburg on Friday. Business was vital if this problem was to be effectively addressed, Mbeki told the Seventh India Calling Conference.
The Blue Bulls returned to their winning ways with a thorough 36-12 win over the Boland Cavaliers in their Currie Cup match at Loftus Versfeld on Friday evening. In securing their victory, the Bulls scored five tries, two in an uninspiring first half and three in the second.
Representatives from the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood, and Allied Workers’ Union (Ceppwawu) and the National Petroleum Employers’ Association resumed talks on Saturday in a bid to resolve a pay strike which led to countrywide fuel shortages and panic buying. Ceppwawu spokesperson Keith Jacobs said the union had repeatedly informed employers and the public about the strike.
Just days after allegedly raping three Durban women and robbing a Gauteng couple, a man gave his 16-year-old girlfriend a watch belonging to one of the victims, the Scottburgh High Court heard on Friday. Silindile Nyathi said her 26-year-old boyfriend, Wonder Mchunu, gave her the watch ”in those days just after we had celebrated the New Year”.
Moves are afoot for South Africa’s capital city to be renamed Tshwane, the Tshwane metro council confirmed on Friday. ”Pretoria is a suburb within Tshwane …. the city centre is Pretoria … the city is Tshwane,” said spokesperson Console Tleane. This lands in the middle of debate over the legal status of the name ”Tshwane”.
There have been ”significant breakthroughs” in several police investigations into organised crime, the Safety and Security Ministry said on Friday. The latest was the arrest of 13 members of a gang suspected of carrying out a spate of cash-in-transit heists in the Eastern Cape, it said in a statement following Thursday’s meeting of the Anti-Crime Leadership Forum.
The name ”Pretoria” will be changed to ”Tshwane” on all route and direction signs across South Africa, the Tshwane metro council said on Friday. Communication and marketing head Console Tleane confirmed that media reports about the name change were true.
As fuel shortages continued countrywide and panic buying set in, the Department of Minerals and Energy insisted on Friday it would not intervene in the strike by fuel workers. ”It is a huge problem and we are not happy with it, but our hands are tied. It is a very tough one … it is an in-house issue,” said spokesperson Sputnik Rantau.
Taxpayers will be able to file their tax returns online by Monday, the South African Revenue Service said on Friday. Commissioner Pravin Gordhan told reporters in Johannesburg that the new electronic filing system would enable taxpayers to have their assessments done easier and faster.
The tens of thousands of Zimbabwean refugees streaming south are a threat to South Africa’s stability, says Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Their numbers had increased from 4Â 000 a month in 2004 to 20Â 000 a month, he said in his weekly newsletter on Friday.
Bafana Bafana coach Carlos Alberto Parreira named 23 players — including six strikers — for a mini-camp that will give fringe players a chance to show that they have what it takes to represent the national team in 2010. Parreira is hoping he and his staff will be surprised when they put members of the mini-camp squad through their paces on Monday and Tuesday.
South Africa’s leading rugby players have been dealt a heavy blow after the country’s rugby bosses decided that players basing themselves abroad would no longer be eligible for the national rugby team. The decision on Thursday means some of the Springbok superstars will play their last matches for their country at this year’s World Cup in France.
President Thabo Mbeki should be commended for promoting the appointment of women to senior posts in his government, Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary leader Sandra Botha said on Friday. ”As we look forward to celebrating Women’s Day next Thursday, it is heartening to track the progress we have made in advancing gender rights in the last few years,” she said.
The Wits medical student who was raped at the Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital has laid a charge against her alleged assailant, police said on Friday. uperintendent Thembi Nkwashu said the student gave a statement to the police late on Thursday afternoon and laid a charge of rape.
The case against one of the men accused of being behind the African National Congress hoax email saga was postponed in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Friday. Muziwendoda Kunene, wearing a white suit, appeared briefly in court where his new lawyer asked for another postponement.
More than 200 HIV/Aids lay counsellors marched on the Gauteng health department offices in Johannesburg on Friday complaining that they had not been paid since April. The community-based counsellors also said they were unhappy with the amount of the monthly R1Â 000 stipend they were supposed to get from the department.
South African central bank chief Tito Mboweni warned on Friday inflationary pressures were ”more worrying”, hinting interest rates may have to rise again in Africa’s biggest economy. The Reserve Bank governor told Parliament’s finance committee that rates were the only way to rein in inflation.
Veteran journalist Joe Thloloe has been appointed the new press ombudsman. The announcement was made in Johannesburg on Friday at the first meeting of the Press Council, set up to administer the office of the ombudsman and appeal panel. Thloloe is a former editor-in-chief of the South African Broadcasting Corporation television news.
The once secret organisation that led South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority out of the political and economic doldrums into decades of oppressive rule is battling to find a niche for itself. Following its pursuit of exclusive white interests, the Afrikanerbond is finding it hard to justify its past or find a foothold in the present.
Underlying inflation pressures in South Africa’s economy, even after stripping out higher food and fuel costs, are strongly on the upside, central bank Governor Tito Mboweni said on Thursday. He also warned that if proposals for a sharp increase in electricity tariffs are approved, inflation could be pushed even higher.
The Fuel Retailers Association questioned why oil companies had not made alternate fuel delivery plans ahead of a nationwide chemical workers strike, as pumps continued to run dry on Friday. ”Why didn’t they arrange by Monday [the start of the strike] to have these drivers ready?” said association CEO Peter Morgan.
There is little that is new in government’s newly released industrial policy framework, says the Democratic Alliance (DA). ”The policy is low on measurable outcomes, and nowhere speaks to the important Millennium Development Goals of halving unemployment by 2014,” DA trade and industry spokesperson Pierre Rabie said in a statement on Friday.
Government’s bid to speedily provide affordable broadband services which could be drawn into a possible legal battle suggests its conceptualisation may have been bungled from the start. At the root of the legal mess is Public Enterprise minister Alec Erwin’s decision to from a state owned broadband company, Infraco.
One of three women raped last year in KwaZulu-Natal was so traumatised she had to be led away from an identification parade without identifying anyone, the Scottburgh High Court heard on Thursday. The report from the identification parade was submitted to the court after one of the three accused expressed dissatisfaction with the parade.