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/ 22 November 2006
Police stopped students from handing out garlic, beetroot and pamphlets to foreign tourists at OR Tambo International Airport outside Johannesburg on Wednesday, police said. The students, wearing bandages, neck supports and carrying crutches, wanted foreigners to note ”the harsh realities of South Africa”.
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/ 22 November 2006
ADT Security, the owner of Kusela Security, on Wednesday denied that the company ever handled security at OR Tambo International airport. ”ADT would like to confirm that this statement is factually incorrect,” managing director Danna Strydom said. ”Kusela has never handled the security at the OR Tambo airport.”
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/ 22 November 2006
Hundreds of South African prisoners who have been in jail since the apartheid era are hoping to reclaim their freedom by convincing the government that their crimes were politically motivated. Some of the prisoners, ranging from die-hard defenders of the whites-only regime to members of the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party, concede they were involved in serious crimes.
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/ 22 November 2006
A two-month strike by Sun International employees belonging to the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu) is over, the company said on Wednesday. Sun International’s chief executive, David Coutts-Trotter, said the company signed a three-year agreement with Saccawu on Tuesday night.
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/ 22 November 2006
The Jackie Selebi affair, as a sidebar to the Brett Kebble saga, has exposed South Africa’s ”dark underbelly” and complicated criminal networks, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon said on Wednesday. Selebi, the police National Commissioner, should be suspended and a commission of inquiry appointed, Leon said.
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/ 22 November 2006
It will be an unlikely scenario at Green Point stadium on Wednesday night when Moroka Swallows carry the torch for the dimmed fortunes of Soweto’s glamour clubs as they face Ajax Cape Town in the last of the Telkom Knockout quarterfinals. With Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs already eliminated from the tournament, Swallows will be out to swoop into the semifinals.
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/ 22 November 2006
An East London businessman has taken First National Bank to court over what he claimed was bad investment advice, media reports said on Wednesday. John Alexander is demanding R272 232 in damages from FNB’s Southernwood branch and one of their financial advisers, Michael Ries.
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/ 22 November 2006
Two men were arrested outside Potchefstroom on Wednesday after they allegedly blew up an ATM at a shopping complex and sped off. Superintendent Louis Jacobs said the police were investigating the possibility of linking the two men with a similar incident on November 12 at Wedela on the N12 near Fochville.
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/ 22 November 2006
The township residential property market is showing more vibrancy than that of formerly white suburbs, media reports said on Wednesday. First National Bank Home Loans CEO Ed Grondel said the township market is performing better than the national metropolitan market in more than one respect.
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/ 22 November 2006
Iran has promised to support Zimbabwe against ”a few bully nations”, Harare’s Herald newspaper reported on Wednesday. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran did not recognise the current economic sanctions against Zimbabwe imposed by Western countries.
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/ 22 November 2006
Wealthy tourists jetting into South Africa to stay at luxury safari lodges pay top dollar for the illusion of danger, epitomised by a trumpeting elephant or a lion moving in for a kill. But lodge workers and the impoverished surrounding communities face a threat far more deadly than the leopards and lions that thrill the visitors.
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/ 21 November 2006
With proper investment and management, railways can be made the backbone of the transport system in South Africa, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said on Tuesday. ”We cannot be complacent until our economy is aggressively driven by an overall competitive and sustainable public transport system,” the minister said at the launch of the new ”10M5” trains in Pretoria.
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/ 21 November 2006
The Democratic Alliance on Tuesday urged Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to establish a special task team to investigate the ”complete breakdown” of financial and operational management in the Limpopo health department. The Auditor General issued the department with a 21-page qualified audit report for 2005/06.
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/ 21 November 2006
A University of Johannesburg project hopes to track down the elusive genetic barcode of Earth’s plant species through research at the Kruger National Park, the university said on Tuesday. A small team of scientists aims to collect examples of all the plants in the park, said university spokesperson Herman Esterhuizen.
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/ 21 November 2006
The media walked out en bloc from a briefing due to be staged on Tuesday afternoon by the board of directors of the 2010 World Cup Local Organising Committee. The walkout was agreed upon when none of the board members had arrived for the briefing a matter of 70 minutes after the stipulated ”1pm sharp” starting time at the plush Westcliff Hotel in Johannesburg.
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/ 21 November 2006
Legislation on the Western Cape’s proposed fuel levy is expected to come into force in 2008, according to the provincial mini-budget tabled on Tuesday. Western Cape provincial minister of finance Lynne Brown first mooted the tax two years ago, saying then that the target date for implementation was this year, at 10c per litre.
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/ 21 November 2006
South Africa on Tuesday urged the loser of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) presidential election to accept defeat, while giving the country’s first democratic poll in more than 40 years a broad seal of approval. South Africa’s Deputy Defence Minister Mluleki George urged ”the people of [DRC] to accept the outcome of the elections”.
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/ 21 November 2006
”Rogue elements” within law enforcement are apparently spreading disinformation about the Brett Kebble murder probe, the Mercury reported on Tuesday. ”It’s a total nightmare,” National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi told the media.
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/ 21 November 2006
The Gauteng government will be considering a ”provincial tax” to ease pressure on resources from inter-provincial migration, provincial minister of finance and economic affairs Paul Mashatile announced on Tuesday. A feasibility study has already been completed and will soon go to the executive council for deliberations, he said in tabling his medium-term budget policy statement.
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/ 21 November 2006
One in six Gauteng adults, or over a million people, run small businesses and the growing diverse sector accounts for 35% of the province’s employment a survey has found, the FinMark Trust said on Tuesday. The survey, commissioned by the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller and the FinMark Trust, aimed at accurate information and better understanding about the small-business sector.
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/ 21 November 2006
South Africa coach Mickey Arthur has promised India’s batsmen a pace barrage in the second one-day international in Durban on Wednesday. ”We’re looking for pace and bounce, and it looks like that’s the type of pitch we will get,” Arthur told a news conference on Tuesday.
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/ 21 November 2006
An auction of South African art has broken local records and raked in over R22-million in Johannesburg, an auctioneer said on Tuesday. Four paintings brought in an average of nearly R3-million each on Monday and the sale still has a day to go, said auctioneer Stephan Welz.
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/ 21 November 2006
Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank still need to exist, but with large-scale reforms, South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Tuesday. Manuel was briefing reporters in Pretoria after returning from Australia where he attended the Group of 20 finance ministers’ and central bank governors’ meeting.
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/ 21 November 2006
South African state-owned enterprises are overall in "a good state" although performance has been uneven in the past financial year, the chairperson of the public enterprises portfolio committee reported on Tuesday. Yunus Carrim also argued that the government was correct to keep these enterprises in state hands.
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/ 21 November 2006
Interrogation of the financial viability of the businesses falling under the state arms company, Denel, may expose some skeletons, its CEO, Shaun Liebenberg, has warned MPs. Liebenberg said that as "the interrogation of the financial viability of the businesses deepened, we must accept that skeletons will come out of the closet".
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/ 21 November 2006
An unprecedented string of scandals has led to a haemorrhaging of support for South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) that can only be reversed with a thorough purge of the leadership, analysts say. ”There is no cohesive control. The leadership is just giving speeches about corruption and everything, but there is no action,” says Frederik van Zyl Slabbert.
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/ 21 November 2006
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula on Tuesday repeated his call that action would only be taken against police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi based on concrete evidence. He said Selebi’s friendship with Glenn Agliotti, recently arrested in connection with the murder of mining magnate Brett Kebble, could not be used to suspend Selebi.
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/ 21 November 2006
If violence, abuse and drug use are allowed to become a familiar and accepted part of schooling, the future is lost, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Tuesday. She was speaking at a school-safety colloquium in Pretoria. ”All of us must act and act in unison to indicate that these objectionable forms of conduct have no place in education,” Pandor said.
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/ 21 November 2006
More than R810-million has been stolen in about 3Â 400 cash-in-transit robberies in South Africa since 2000, the Mercury reported on Tuesday. Its website said these figures emerged on Monday in the Durban Regional Court in response to bail applications by 26 men charged with two robberies in the Umfolozi area.
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/ 21 November 2006
The two Boland rugby players accused of killing flyhalf Riaan Loots will have to wait until after Christmas to know their fate, Independent Online reported on Tuesday. The Worcester Regional Court granted the state a further postponement to give it time to receive a comprehensive doctor’s report on Loots’s injuries.
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/ 21 November 2006
The frequent and widespread misquoting of Schabir Shaik trial Judge Hilary Squires was ”a most regrettable error”, the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) said on Tuesday. ”Sanef was of the view, however, that the error was not deliberate and did not indicate any pervasive lack of professionalism,” it said in a statement on Monday.
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/ 21 November 2006
Cricket South Africa has been informed by the International Cricket Council (ICC) that Proteas off-spinner Johan Botha has passed reassessment tests of his bowling action at the University of Western Australia in Perth and has now been cleared to bowl again in international cricket.