The building of Cape Town’s 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium is back on track with a R185-million funding guarantee from banking group Investec. The city put the R2,9-billion project on hold last week. Mayor Helen Zille said on Wednesday that Investec had guaranteed the outstanding R185-million as payment on a post-2010 operating lease on the stadium, to be built at Green Point.
To celebrate the third birthday of Team Shosholoza, the South African entry in the America’s Cup yachting event, Archbishop Desmond Tutu announced on Wednesday he would be joining the team in the Spanish port city of Valencia in June.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has challenged the Department of Corrections to truly fulfil its mandate of openness and transparency by revealing former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni’s parole conditions. The DA has officially requested Yengeni’s parole conditions from the department, DA spokesperson James Selfe said on Wednesday.
Hundreds of striking Autopax bus drivers delivered a memorandum of their demands to the company’s management on Wednesday afternoon. The group, mainly members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu), was gathered at Beyers Naude Square in central Johannesburg.
Crime is an ”illness” that affects all and makes the population live in fear, businessman and former premier of Mpumalanga Mathews Phosa said on Wednesday. He was speaking at a symposium at the University of the Free State on the effect of serious crime and violent crime in South Africa.
African governments are beginning to acknowledge that Zimbabwe has slipped into chaos, Democratic Alliance (DA) chairperson Joe Seremane said on Wednesday. He said Zambian Foreign Affairs Minister Mundia Sikatana "should be … supported in his drive to get his country’s counterparts in the Southern African Development Community to stop pretending ‘all is well in Zimbabwe’".
Police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, also the head of Interpol, told delegates at the Interpol Symposium in Kempton Park that security forces from around the world will be deployed in South Africa during the 2010 Fifa World Cup, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Tuesday.
Pupils at an Eastern Cape school are doing a choreographed set of movements to Bok van Blerk’s controversial song De la Rey, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday. A number of songs have been choreographed as part of the school’s 70th anniversary celebrations.
Budget constraints have forced the Western Cape provincial government to reduce the budget at Groote Schuur and Tygerberg hospitals, Business Day newspaper reported on Wednesday. The provincial health department has had to cut 90 beds at the hospitals in order to boost primary healthcare services in townships.
Hundreds of striking Autopax bus drivers were congregating at Johannesburg’s Park Station ahead of a march to Beyers Naude Square on Wednesday morning, their trade union said. The workers are protesting against a lack of transformation at Autopax, saying there are still no black people or women in top management.
Media and entertainment group Primedia reported a 421% leap in headline earnings per share from 14 cents to 73 cents per share for the six months ended December. It said this was due largely to a one-off black economic empowerment (BEE) charge of 49 cents per share expensed in the prior year.
A Cape Town man has invited the media to watch him try to cross a busy city street during afternoon rush hour on Wednesday. Inok Zwane says he wants to highlight the dangers pedestrians face when they cross Buitengracht Street at the spot where two British tourists were killed when they were hit by a car last month.
”It is a dream come true,” is the way Louis de Jager (19) summed up his feelings after returning a final round of 73, one over par, giving him a 36-hole total of 145, one under par, one stroke clear, and the Sanlam South African Amateur Championship Stroke-Play trophy.
Only 48 hours after being drawn to meet in the Absa Cup, Orlando Pirates and Bloemfontein Celtic face each other in a Premier Soccer League match-up of equal importance at Ellis Park on Wednesday night. The Pirates-Celtic rumble could reveal which of the teams are best equipped to challenge for second place in the log.
So much for an international race. A strong South African contingent set the tone in the opening stage of the Cape Argus Pick ‘n Pay Giro del Capo and were the dominant force in the prologue in Paarl on Tuesday evening. Quickest on the 5,5km stage was MTN Microsoft’s Daryl Impey (7:23,93).
The correctional services committee in Parliament on Tuesday rejected a report on the escape of Annanias Mathe from Pretoria’s C-Max prison. The report found that Mathe had probably escaped by squeezing himself through a tiny window and then walked over the roof of the maximum-security prison.
Carel van Heerden feels no reason to apologise about his doomed lion-breeding business. ”Trophy hunters will always exist. We’re taking the pressure off the rest of the roaming lions in Africa.” The appetite for big-game hunting among foreign tourists sustains around 300 lion-breeding farms across South Africa.
Soft-drink companies use it by the tonne, natural health devotees swear by it and it forms part of secret recipes for French perfume despite having a bouquet similar to cat’s urine. The South African herb buchu is now so valuable it is attracting poachers.
Africa’s biggest bank by assets, Standard Bank, increased normalised headline earnings per share by 20%, driven by strong growth in corporate and retail lending, the group said on Wednesday. The bank said normalised headline EPS for the year to end-December increased to 796,4 cents per share.
The ”dismal” state of housing delivery in the Eastern Cape needs national intervention, a public watchdog organisation said on Tuesday. Public Service Accountability Monitor researcher Chantelle de Nobrega said the province would not meet a nationally set target to eradicate informal settlements by 2014 without help.
Some in the ruling African National Congress want to ensconce affirmative action as a permanent measure and thus enforce a new form of apartheid, the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) said on Tuesday. It wants the International Labour Organisation to pay urgent attention to its complaint, submitted last year, about affirmative action.
Students at the University of Pretoria’s Mamelodi campus were prevented from attending classes on Tuesday by fellow students who were protesting, university authorities said. Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania president Sebei Mametlwe denied, however, that anyone had been prevented from attending class.
An Elsies River resident gave birth to a 7,3kg girl at Tygerberg Hospital on Friday, believed to be the largest in the hospital’s history. The Cape Argus reported on Tuesday that Cathleen Abels said her family members were ”generally big people” — but that even she had been amazed at baby Chesner’s size.
Five men who robbed a bank at the Atlasville shopping centre in Boksburg, Gauteng, on Tuesday afternoon were arrested within minutes, police said. Captain Jethro Mtshali said two men, armed with a 9mm pistol and an AK-47 rifle, went into the Standard Bank branch at about noon and assaulted some of the employees.
Three pupils at an East London school have been suspended after filming themselves performing sex acts in a classroom, the Dispatch Online reported on Tuesday. The 36-second cellphone video was circulated among pupils at Greenpoint High School, as well as at other schools in the city.
Eight people are feared drowned during floods in the Eastern Cape over the weekend, emergency services said on Tuesday. Captain John Fobian said the missing people were from the former Transkei, Queenstown and Grahamstown. Four bodies have been recovered in the province since Monday.
Several patients virtually fled an East London hospital after the admission of eight people suffering from extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), the Dispatch Online reported on Tuesday. The patients with deadly XDR-TB were brought in from Jose Pearson TB Hospital in Port Elizabeth.
South Africa and Qatar agreed to ”remain engaged” with Iran and other parties in dealing with the nuclear situation in that country, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday. Qatar, like South Africa, is a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown, the man at the centre of what could be South Africa’s biggest-ever corporate-investment scandal, is behind bars. He and group accountant Graham Maddock were arrested by the Scorpions at their luxurious Cape Town homes shortly after 8am on Tuesday.
South African high jumper Jacques Freitag and his training partner, Zeegfriedt Veenemans, will have to attend a diversion programme before charges of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm can be withdrawn against them. The two men appeared in the Hatfield Community Court in Pretoria on Tuesday.
Food prices increased by an average of 7,88% between December 2005 and December 2006, the National Agricultural Marketing Council said on Tuesday. The increase was more than the 3% to 6% inflation target of the South African Reserve Bank. Food items such as super maize meal increased by 36,16%, frozen chicken by 27,9% and frozen peas by 21,3%.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown and fellow director Graham Maddock appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday on charges of fraud and theft involving more than R200-million. The two men were denied bail and will appear in court again on March 15 for a bail application.