The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) on Friday reaffirmed its call for an independent judicial inquiry into the escape last year of Annanias Mathe from Pretoria’s C-Max prison. This follows the African National Congress parliamentary caucus decision on Thursday to express its full confidence in the Department of Correctional Services and agencies that probed Mathe’s escape.
The low-fare airline operated by Comair, kulula.com, has offered to host a party for rival South African Airways offshoot Mango if it ever makes a profit, kulula said on Friday. It challenged Mango to come clean on its profit performance after Mango claimed this week that it was performing well since its start four months ago.
A 60-year-old man who was stabbed to death and his 56-year-old wife who was tied up and robbed in their Hermanus home are United States citizens, Western Cape police said on Friday. ”They are American … They [had been] here since December, and were due to leave in April,” said Captain Elliot Sinyangana.
Increased trade is beneficial to Africa in that it supports poverty alleviation and is able to create new employment opportunities on the continent, said Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. It promotes regional integration and helps to expand intra-regional trade "while infusing new capital and technology into the continent", he told the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank.
United States talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey is to open on Friday an innovative, environment-friendly school she has funded with the South African government to create a model state education facility. This comes as authorities at the exclusive private academy for poor girls that Winfrey opened in January dismissed complaints it is too strict.
South Africa’s central bank is willing to raise interest rates further if the inflation outlook worsens, the bank’s governor Tito Mboweni said on Thursday, urging consumers to cut debt. But he offered a reprieve to commercial banks, saying the Reserve Bank would hold off on raising reserve requirements to give them more time to curb high lending.
Heavily armed gangs raided three cash vans in and around Johannesburg on Thursday, taking undisclosed amounts of money. The first gang struck at the Midas store in Luipardsvlei, Krugersdorp, at 9.30am. The three men had apparently been waiting inside the store when two unsuspecting guards went in with cash containers, spokesperson Captain Sphiwe Ndlovu said.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown last year offered to quit his position in a bid to stave off curatorship, according to a document handed in at his bail hearing on Thursday. The document, a letter from Fidentia’s lawyers to the Financial Services Board, was attached to an affidavit by Brown setting out the reasons he thought he should be granted bail.
South Africa needs to step up its development of people working in the field of nuclear energy and technology, Minister of Science and Technology Mosibudi Mangena said on Thursday at the opening of the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy conference at Gallagher Estate in Midrand, Gauteng.
The African National Congress (ANC) parliamentary caucus has rejected the portfolio committee on correctional services’ call for a fresh investigation into Annanias Mathe’s escape from C-Max high-security prison, saying it has confidence in the agencies that probed the prisoner’s escape.
Cape Town mayor Helen Zille says she will stand for the post of Democratic Alliance leader at the party’s federal congress in May this year. She made the announcement at a Cape Town Press Club dinner on Thursday evening, a year to the day after being elected mayor of Cape Town.
Beneath the M1 highway overlooking Newtown, two vibrant little structures became the focus of attention on Wednesday when the City of Johannesburg launched what it calls ”the best seats in town”. Enclosed in bright yellow and purple, pod-like buildings, the ”seats” in question are silver, cone shaped and flush at the press of a button.
The state has taken possession of the Pniel estate near Barkly West in the Northern Cape, the first piece of land to be fully expropriated in terms of the government’s restoration programme. ”Land claims commissioner Tovey Gwanja visited the farm personally on Thursday to symbolically receive the key,” Eddie Nkomazana of the land claims office in Bloemfontein said on Thursday.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown says he has already been convicted in a trial by media. He made the statement in an affidavit handed in at his bail hearing in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Thursday. ”I have been held out to be the villain in the tale, and have already been convicted by it [the media],” he said.
Police were asked to have another look at the charge of reckless driving against Ekurhuleni metro police chief Robert McBride, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said. On Thursday, Beeld reported that the NPA had asked police to clear up a few points.
”Angel of Soweto” Jackie Maarohanye appeared briefly in a Soweto court on Thursday, later facing police who want to re-charge her in a kidnapping case from a year ago. Ithuteng Trust school principal Maarohanye and three others appeared in the Protea Magistrate’s Court on charges of kidnapping a Sowetan reporter and driver.
The government will never overlook qualified South Africans in preference to foreign skills in its ongoing drive for economic transformation, said Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on Thursday. The minister said that ”while the government is trying to address disparities of the past and transform our economy, all South African citizens … are its first priority”.
South Africa on Thursday named a suspended player in their squad for an African Nations Cup qualifier in the latest in a series of public-relations howlers for the country’s football association. Germany-based defender Bradley Carnell was booked in South Africa’s last two qualifying matches and is suspended for next Saturday’s Group 10 match against Chad in Ndjamena.
If South Africa was not capable of hosting the 2010 World Cup, it would not have approached Fifa for the rights to host the event, the local organising committee (LOC) said on Thursday. LOC spokesperson Tim Modise said there were people who were sceptical about the country’s capabilities, especially in the media.
South Africa’s environmental police force, the ”Green Scorpions,” will be out in strength around the country on Thursday in a massive crackdown on polluters and poachers. The Department of Environmental Affairs is to crack down on illegal fishing, the disposal of hazardous waste and the activities of at least one chemical plant.
Mamelodi Sundowns went through to the quarterfinals of the Absa Cup when they beat Maritzburg United 1-0 at the Harry Gwala Stadium in Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday. The half-time score was 0-0. The only goal of the match came from substitute Patrick Apataki. The striker came on for Lerato Chabangu in the 88th minute and scored almost immediately.
South African consumers are still bearing the brunt of the legacy of apartheid, Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille told a consumer conference on Thursday. She was speaking at the National Consumer Forum at the Oppenheimer Conference Centre at Gold Reef City in Johannesburg.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was doing well after she underwent a successful five-hour liver transplant due to long-term liver disease, said Professor Jeff Wing on Thursday morning. ”The were no complications during the operation, none whatsoever,” said Wing, head of the department of medicine at the Johannesburg hospital and the University of the Witwatersrand.
Bernard van Zyl, accused of the axe murder of his former gay partner, was found walking naked along a road at Plettenberg Bay, on his way to the police, the Cape High Court heard on Wednesday. Van Zyl has pleaded not guilty to charges of the murder of estate agent Andre Weitz and aggravated armed robbery.
Parents of students at Oprah Winfrey’s all-girl leadership academy want better access to their children, comparing the school’s restrictions on visits, phone calls and email contact to prison rules. A few mothers complained that a two-hour visit one Sunday a month was not long enough to reconnect with their daughters.
South Africa wants the state to have the first opportunity to buy property entering the market to help speed up the redistribution of white-owned land to blacks, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Whites still own over 90% of commercial farmland in South Africa, more than a decade after the end of apartheid.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang underwent a successful five-hour liver transplant on Wednesday due to a long-term disease that attacks the liver, the Department of Health confirmed. ”The operation was successful and uneventful,” said Professor Jeff Wing, head of the department of medicine at the Johannesburg Hospital and Wits University.
The government is looking at underground storage of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations as a way of reducing the millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases the plants belch into the country’s atmosphere each year, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Wednesday.
A 30-member environmental management inspection team, the so-called ”Green Scorpions”, is set to descend on the Foskor Plant in Richards Bay on Thursday to effect a compliance inspection, according to the KwaZulu-Natal department of agriculture and environmental affairs.
African leaders, for so long reluctant to speak out about the crisis in Zimbabwe, are finally running out of patience with President Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, suffered a suspected skull fracture, doctors reported on Wednesday after what lawyers and other activists said were savage beatings while in police custody.
Black South Africans are six times more likely to get infected with the HI virus than other race groups, the Health Department told an Aids conference on the government’s National Strategic Plan for Aids and Sexually Transmitted Infections 2007-2011 in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
Three media institutions expressed concern on Wednesday that Parliament’s home affairs committee chairperson Patrick Chauke might fast-track the draft Films and Publications Amendment Bill. The South African National Editors’ Forum, the South African chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa and the Freedom of Expression Institute issued a joint statement in this regard.