Seven people were killed in a collision between a bus and a fire engine in Port Shepstone in KwaZulu-Natal on Monday. The crash claimed the lives of three firemen and four bus passengers, six of whom died on the scene. Police spokesperson Zandra Hechter said the seventh accident victim died in the Port Shepstone Provincial Hospital.
Human remains believed to be those of the ”Pebco Three”, who were murdered by apartheid-era police, were found on a farm near Cradock, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said on Monday. Spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi said NPA investigators followed up several leads and discovered the remains during a dig on the Cradock farm known as Post Chalmers.
Apartheid-era minister of law and order Adriaan Vlok and former police chief Johann van der Merwe will be charged with attempted murder next month. National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi said on Monday that the matter will be heard on August 17.
Six people were stabbed to death during initiation ceremonies over the weekend, Eastern Cape police said on Monday. Captain Jackson Manatha said the initiates were stabbed by people while attending three different ceremonies. Five people were arrested in connection with the incidents.
Progress was made in talks on Monday to avert a strike at oil refineries and fuel producers, trade union Solidarity said. Spokesperson Marius Croucamp said the unions met employers, who made an official offer of a 7,5% wage increase. Negotiators indicated they would increase the offer to 8% provided the employer agreed.
Taxpayers will start receiving the new, simplified tax return forms from Monday, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) has announced. By the end of July, almost four million IT12S and IT12C returns will have been mailed. Tax returns in Adobe PDF could also be downloaded from the internet, printed out, completed and submitted manually.
Matric pupils at about 50 schools in the Western Cape are yet to write their mid-year exams because of the recent teachers’ strike, provincial education minister Cameron Dugmore said on Monday. ”Although various schools have been affected differently by the recent public-service strike, I am most concerned about matric learners,” he said.
South African and Zimbabwean trade unions on Monday called on the Zimbabwean government to admit to the crisis in Zimbabwe. They urged the Zimbabwean government to call off its ”short-term populist actions” and actively cooperate with the Southern African Development Community process.
Soccer’s ruling body, Fifa, is preparing to send out a powerful message against racism this week through a string of events to mark the 89th birthday of South Africa’s anti-apartheid icon and former president Nelson Mandela. A star-studded line-up of football greats will tog out for a match in Cape Town on Mandela’s birthday.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Monday once again came out in favour of a basic income grant. ”I hope our government can rethink the need for a basic income grant,” said Tutu, addressing the South African Council of Churches triennial conference in Johannesburg.
Ernie Els believes he has eventually found some form going into the Open Championship on Thursday at Carnoustie in Scotland. Els, who has had a disappointing last 18 months by his standards, fired a closing-round 65 to finish third at the Scottish Open at Loch Lomond on the weekend.
Residents of state-subsidised housing in Cape Town are to march to Parliament on Tuesday, protesting against the poor quality of their homes, the Anti-Eviction Campaign said. Residents have nicknamed the N2 Gateway housing project the ”gateway to hell” and were planning to march to Parliament to protest directly to Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu.
The way affirmative action is being implemented in South Africa is to be discussed between President Thabo Mbeki and the main opposition party in Parliament, the Democratic Alliance (DA). Anchen Dreyer, who speaks for the DA on labour issues, said on Monday that when the president answered a parliamentary question last month, he agreed to meet them for such discussions.
Refugee camps should be set up near the border to house and feed Zimbabweans fleeing their country, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Monday. ”If government takes its humanitarian duties seriously, [the Department of] Home Affairs will immediately begin to investigate setting up refugee camps,” the DA’s Mark Lowe said.
Africa’s top banking group by assets, Standard Bank, has received approval to merge its Stanbic Nigeria unit with IBTC Chartered Bank, the firm said on Monday. Standard Bank said it had increased its offer price to 16 naira per share from 11,74 naira per IBTC share, valuing the offer at -million.
Hiring security firms to guard certain police stations was proof that the police had failed to combat crime, Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) KwaZulu-Natal leader Lionel Mtshali said on Monday. Mtshali said: ”Presumably, the idea is to free fully-trained police officers to perform their core function of preventing and combating crime”.
The case of Annanias Mathe, the Mozambican national charged with escaping from Pretoria’s C-Max prison, was postponed yet again in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Monday. The case was postponed to October 5 in order to centralise all the charges against Mathe.
The South African government has dismissed as untrue a weekend report on the collapse of Southern African Development Community-led talks on Zimbabwe. ”Nothing is further from the truth,” Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said in a statement issued from India.
The South African Communist Party (SACP) is to investigate a number of ways of ”contesting state power in elections” and will convene a policy conference next year to look at the various avenues open to it. A resolution on the ”SACP and state power” was adopted on the final day of the party’s 12th national congress.
The Sharks, with too much pace and abundant skill, earned a comfortable bonus point win over a plucky Griqualand West side in their Absa Currie Cup rugby match as they posted a 43-20 victory at the Absa Stadium in Durban on Saturday. The Sharks, who led 24-6 at half-time, scored six tries against two by Griqualand West.
In a game that promised to be the comeback of the Western Province rugby team, they managed to defeat the SWD Eagles 30-8 in front of about 2 000 spectators. The half-time score was 22-3. From the start, Province showed their intentions to run the ball when fullback Gio Aplon joined the back line and scored within seconds.
Free State were crowned the top team at the 2007 Coca-Cola Under-18 Craven Week after scoring a one-sided 52-3 win over hosts Western Province (WP) in the tournament’s final game at Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch on Saturday. WP scored first, but from there on it was all one-way traffic.
Tazmin Brits, number one on the javelin world list and South Africa’s best candidate for a gold medal, qualified in style for Sunday’s final when the IAAF World Youth Athletics Championships continued in the Czech Republic on Saturday. Willem Voigt, of South Western Districts, was one of the sensations of the high-jump competition.
In a real thriller, the Border Bulldogs gave the Golden Lions a scare in their compulsory friendly rugby match at the Absa Stadium on Saturday before going down 35-31. By half-time, the Lions had built a handy 21-11 lead, scoring three converted tries to one, and after the break scored another two goals to extend the gap to 35-14.
South African politician-turned-tycoon Tokyo Sexwale said on Saturday the country’s president has a tough and thankless job, shying away from saying if he would make a run for the presidency. ”It’s not an easy job to do. Look at Thabo Mbeki. It’s a tough job … and a thankless job,” Sexwale said.
Nine young girls have been found dead around South Africa in the past seven months after they had been reported missing. The nine comprise the most widely publicised cases. The most recent find was the decomposed body of Elizabeth Martin (13), found in a water tank at a farm in Leeu-Gamka in the Western Cape.
Religious groups protested against late-night pornography screened on e.tv outside the broadcaster’s Cape Town offices on Saturday. ”We have had enough! Porn on free-to-air national television is outrageous,” said Taryn Hodgson, the international coordinator of the Christian Action Network.
Three Cabinet ministers and two deputies were nominated for the central committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP) at the party’s 12th national congress on Saturday. Meanwhile, ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma told the congress that the ”revolution is going through a test”.
The main beneficiaries of economic transformation are white capitalists who remain the ”induna [chief]” while the black middle class holds jobs in human resources, Congress of South African Trade Unions general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told the national congress of the South African Communist Party on Saturday.
Police arrested seven protesters at Soweto’s Jabulani hostel alone on Saturday for public violence in a demonstration over housing. Arrests were also made elsewhere in Soweto and in Alexandra, but the exact numbers were not yet known. Metro police fired rubber bullets to disperse protesters from the Nancefield and Dobsonville hostels.
The town of Franschhoek, a tiny outpost of French Huguenot heritage near Africa’s southern tip, splashed out in blue, white and red on Saturday to mark Bastille Day. The normally sleepy settlement east of Cape Town came to life for a merry, two-day street festival, attracting hundreds of visitors with French-style wine, cheese and bread.
Anti-apartheid activist Nan Cross died peacefully at Nazareth House, in Yeoville, Johannesburg, in the early hours of July 14 at the age of 79. A founding member of the Conscientious Objector Support Group, Cross was active in the End Conscription Campaign and Conscription Advice Service.