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/ 22 December 2006
Charges of reckless or negligent driving are being investigated against an Ekurhuleni metro police official, but police have refused to say whether the official is police chief Robert McBride. Witnesses have reportedly claimed McBride was ”blind-drunk” when he rolled his car on the R511 near Centurion on Thursday night.
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/ 22 December 2006
President Thabo Mbeki on Friday rubbished suggestions South Africa will fail to successfully stage the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup. The truth is South Africa is way ahead in preparations for hosting a successful tournament, he said in his last weekly newsletter for 2006 on the African National Congress website.
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/ 22 December 2006
South African President Thabo Mbeki has pointed to South Africa’s good economic performance in 2006, which produced "some of the best news about our country" and world recognition of this success. In his internet column, <i>ANC Today</i>, on Friday, the president devotes much space to the strength of the business and fiscal environment.
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/ 22 December 2006
The African National Congress (ANC) and its alliance formations are themselves largely sidelined from policymaking, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has argued in its end-of-year report. Spokesperson Patrick Craven said in a statement issued on Thursday evening that political power resides in the Presidency.
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/ 22 December 2006
A two-year-old cheetah, who had her paw mangled in a crude snare, is to have a prosthetic leg fitted in a ground-breaking operation by animal surgeons in South Africa. Betty Blue was operated on at the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre, near Johannesburg, after being rescued from the iron jaws of the trap which had clamped down on her left hind leg in Mpumalanga.
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/ 22 December 2006
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) was not divided into pro-Zuma and pro-Mbeki camps. Zwelinzima Vavi, the union’s general secretary, said they had ”spent the year trying to convince the media that Cosatu has not taken any decision to support [African National Congress (ANC) deputy president] Jacob Zuma, or anyone else, as the next president of the ANC and South Africa”.
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/ 22 December 2006
Legal and technical experts from the Western Cape provincial government and the City of Cape Town met on Thursday to discuss a way forward on the city’s proposed 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium. Mayor Helen Zille said the experts were seeking a way to ”resolve the development approvals” required for the construction and would continue their work on Friday.
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/ 22 December 2006
The Congress of South African Trade Unions says it hopes that a basic income grant will be adopted at the African National Congress (ANC) policy conference in June 2007. Spokesperson Patrick Craven said: "We closed the year encouraged by Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya’s support for a reform [the basic income grant] that Cosatu has been campaigning for."
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/ 22 December 2006
Imagine it’s the year 2010 and a United States tourist with an adventurous streak goes journeying through the South African countryside. Finding himself lost in the rural Free State, Sesotho is the only language he hears being spoken for miles. Disoriented and confused, he could try to sign and signal his way out of oblivion; or he could use his cellphone to learn a foreign language.
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/ 21 December 2006
The Zimbabwean who tried to hijack a South African Airways (SAA) flight from Cape Town earlier this year is a ”paranoid delusional” and should be sent home for treatment, a psychiatrist has recommended. The recommendation was contained in a report handed in on Thursday to the Bellville Regional Court, where Tinashe Rioga (21) made another brief appearance.
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/ 21 December 2006
The January 1 implementation of reduced dispensing fees for pharmacists will be delayed after the Pharmacy Stakeholders Forum (PSF) and the Department of Health reached an agreement on the issue on Thursday. The PSF said the department agreed to suspend the implementation of the fees pending the outcome of a court challenge on the dispensing-fee regulations.
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/ 21 December 2006
Cape Town mayor Helen Zille will be to blame if Cape Town loses the 2010 Soccer World Cup semifinal, Independent Democrats (ID) leader in the city council Simon Grindrod said on Thursday. ”I’m holding Helen Zille personally responsible if we lose the World Cup [event],” he said.
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/ 21 December 2006
South African President Thabo Mbeki’s approval rating has dropped to its lowest level in four years following a series of scandals involving the governing African National Congress party, a poll showed on Thursday. The poll, by the Johannesburg-based Research Surveys, showed that Mbeki has a 53% approval rating, 8% down on the figure recorded six months ago.
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/ 21 December 2006
The City of Cape Town has called on residents to save water in the light of the soaring summer temperatures, the city’s Water Demand Management Services said on Thursday. Spokesperson Danie Kloppers said the city had passed two new by-laws this year aimed at promoting permanent good water-management practices.
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/ 21 December 2006
The Zimbabwean state has started another "blitzkrieg" — this time on businesses, threatening to take 51% of the equity in all foreign-owned concerns, the country’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) economics adviser Eddie Cross has said. Cross said there are already signs that foreign businesses are withdrawing from the embattled state.
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/ 21 December 2006
South Africa’s producer price index (PPI) rose by 10% year-on-year (y/y) in November from a 10% year-on-year (y/y) increase in October, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Thursday. The PPI increased 0,5% on a monthly basis after October’s monthly increase of 1%.
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/ 21 December 2006
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) will investigate allegations that 30 prisoners were stripped naked in the presence of women warders at the Westville prison, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Wednesday.
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/ 21 December 2006
Newly crowned Telkom Knockout champions Silver Stars secured Premier Soccer League boasting rights for the Christmas recess when they cemented their position at the top of the PSL table after a gruelling, uncompromising 0-0 draw against defending champions Mamelodi Sundowns at Atteridgeville’s Super Stadium on Wednesday night.
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/ 21 December 2006
Cape Town mayor Helen Zille on Wednesday evening rejected a claim by Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool that the city had committed a major procedural blunder over the proposed Green Point 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium. An angry Rasool called on Zille to summon an urgent council meeting to rectify what he said was an error threatening the already-fragile construction timetable.
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/ 21 December 2006
Eastern Cape provincial housing minister Sam Kwelita will visit tornado-ravaged Dutyini village to find out what help is needed. About 20 people were injured and more than 100 people from 65 families were left homeless when 85 households were destroyed or badly damaged by the tornado at Dutyini near Mount Ayliff on Sunday.
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/ 20 December 2006
The Boland Rugby Union (BRU) on Wednesday announced sanctions on two clubs and several players following a player’s death in June. Delicious Rugby Club player Ben Zimri, who was arrested in connection with the player’s death, was banned from rugby for life said BRU lawyer Chris Faure.
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/ 20 December 2006
”By heading out into the harshest environment known to man, all alone, equipped with yourself and whatever you remembered to pack, is a sure way to find out just what you are made of and what you are capable of,” Ray Chaplin writes on his website 3poles.co.za
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/ 20 December 2006
South Africa’s main inflation gauges came in below forecasts on Wednesday, but the jury was still out on whether the central bank would hold off hiking interest rates further as it grapples with runaway consumer spending. Statistics South Africa said the targeted CPIX inflation rate rose by a lower-than-expected unchanged 5% in the year to November.
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/ 20 December 2006
The police have not identified any suspect in their search for the killers of Cape theatre personality Taliep Petersen, spokesperson Superintendent Billy Jones said on Wednesday. He was commenting after a media report that investigators on Tuesday questioned Petersen’s wife Najwa and stepson Achmat Gameldien for a second day in succession.
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/ 20 December 2006
Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) workers suspended their strike over bonuses pending an arbitrator’s ruling on the matter, the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) said on Wednesday. In a meeting on Monday, Satawu and the CAA had agreed to accept the ruling of a private arbitrator, said Satawu spokesperson Ronnie Mamba.
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/ 20 December 2006
Poor pay is a key factor in the decision of many South African teachers to seek work in the United Kingdom, according to a new study. The as-yet-unpublished study, by researchers under the leadership of Oxford research fellow Dr Kimberly Ochs, surveyed 192 teachers recruited from other Commonwealth countries to jobs in the UK.
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/ 20 December 2006
Officials from the Royal Thai Embassy in Pretoria have arrived in Durban after the arrest of 26 Thai women who are alleged to have been brought into the country to become sex slaves. Discussions were under way between the embassy’s second secretary, Jeerasak Pomsuwan, and officials from the Organised Crime Unit.
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/ 20 December 2006
Filmmaker Sharron Hawkes has gone from Butterworth to Timbuktu. Hawkes returned this week from a two-week trip to Timbuktu in Mali, where she is producing and directing a documentary on the conservation and research of hundreds of thousands of ancient manuscripts.
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/ 20 December 2006
The wrath of the Premier Soccer League disciplinary committee has come down heavily on Supersport United’s Pitso Mosimane and Andre Arendse — with the coach and goalkeeper being suspended and handed heavy fines. The protracted case related to the Premier League game in which Sundowns were beaten 1-0 by Black Leopards at Thohoyandou last week.
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/ 20 December 2006
Having annexed the R4,25-million winners’ prize in the Telkom Knockout competition and currently heading the Premier Soccer League (PSL) table, high-flying Silver Stars face a moment of truth when they play defending PSL champions Mamelodi Sundowns at the Super Stadium on Wednesday night.
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/ 20 December 2006
Former international opening batsman and member of the Transvaal ”Mean Machine”, Jimmy Cook, has no doubt that South Africa will bounce back from their humiliating defeat by India and win the Castle Lager Test series. ”Every team has a blow-out from time to time,” he said.
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/ 20 December 2006
The Botswana pilot who was killed when his light aircraft crashed into a block of flats in Yeoville was training to be a commercial pilot, said a flight instructor on Tuesday. Anastasios Vouros, who runs a flight school at the Rand Airport and owned the wrecked Piper Cherokee 140, said the pilot was qualified to fly the plane.