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/ 27 September 2006
Wednesday’s eventual release of the annual crime statistics raised strident calls for the figures to be made public more regularly. Democratic Alliance spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard said the government’s continued refusal to publish crime statistics on a more regular basis meant the public had to wait another year before finding out just how serious the current crime spike affecting the country was.
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/ 27 September 2006
The eighth World Masters Championships, to be played in Cape Town from October 16 to 21, sees the biggest individual squash championships in Africa with 672 players from 31 countries participating in the 16 age-group sections. For the first time since 1995 there will be an over-65 women’s section and an over-75 men’s section.
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/ 27 September 2006
Judgement is to be given on Monday in the Roodefontein corruption case, in which former Western Cape premier Peter Marais and his then-provincial minister for environment, David Malatsi, face two charges of corruption. The Bellville Regional Court case stems from two alleged corrupt donations that were given to the then-New National Party as sweeteners to expedite approval for a golf estate.
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/ 27 September 2006
Durban businessman Schabir Shaik will only later find out if he has to turn over R34-million to the state after the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein reserved judgement on his civil appeal on Wednesday. The state says the R34-million is proceeds from the benefits Shaik and his Nkobi group reaped from their relationship with former deputy president Jacob Zuma.
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/ 27 September 2006
Special courts are planned for the 2010 Fifa World Cup to deal with offences related to the event, national police said on Wednesday. ”In the case of offences committed by visitors, these special courts will speedily resolve cases before their departure,” police Assistant Commissioner Peter Mathogwame told a media briefing in Pretoria.
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/ 27 September 2006
Top SA Rugby officials are to meet the three Southern and Eastern Cape unions soon to find a solution to an ongoing franchise dispute, Dispatch Online reported on Wednesday. The SA Rugby delegation will comprise president Oregan Hoskins, vice-presidents Mike Stofile and Koos Basson and chairperson Mveleli Ncula.
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/ 27 September 2006
South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has launched a searing indictment of the new rainbow nation, saying it was losing its moral bearings. Tutu, who asked former deputy president Jacob Zuma to relinquish his bid for the country’s top job after Zuma admitted to having sex with a young HIV-positive woman, said South Africans were erring in their daily lives.
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/ 27 September 2006
New cases of tuberculosis found in South Africa have raised fears there could be multiple versions of a highly drug resistant strain that has killed 62 people and threatens to spread across a region ravaged by HIV/Aids. An easily-transferred airborne respiratory disease, tuberculosis is the main direct cause of death for people with HIV/Aids in South Africa.
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/ 27 September 2006
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The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) is not calling for Jacob Zuma to be reinstated as the country’s deputy president, ANCYL said on Wednesday. ”We are not making any calls for President Thabo Mbeki to reinstate Zuma,” said league president Fikile Mbalula. Mbalula was briefing the media on the ANCYL’s view of the implications of the judgement in the Zuma trial.
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/ 27 September 2006
Cash-in-transit heists have increased by 74,1% in the past year, the South African Police Service revealed on Wednesday in releasing the country’s annual crime statistics. Car-hijackings were also up by 3,1%, the police said in a statement ahead of the official release of the statistics at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
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/ 27 September 2006
The South African Communist Party (SACP) wants an urgent national summit on public transport, and will focus its annual Red October Campaign on accessible, affordable, efficient public transport and road safety for all. ”We call on the Ministry of Transport to convene as a matter of urgency a national summit on public transport,” the party said on Wednesday.
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/ 27 September 2006
Durban businessman Schabir Shaik will have to turn over more than R34-million in assets to the state if he loses his civil appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein, which starts on Wednesday. The assets, currently in the custody of a curator, would be returned to Shaik if his bid to have the state’s ruling overturned is successful.
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/ 27 September 2006
The celebrated Afrikaans author André Brink — due to be bestowed a National Order on Wednesday — has castigated the government over its response to crime. Beeld newspaper reported that he had labelled Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula a ”monster” who ”betrayed the legacy of [former president] Nelson Mandela”.
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/ 27 September 2006
Two white Zimbabwean farmers are to be charged for refusing to vacate their land, Zim Online reported on Wednesday. Another 50 white landowners across the country had meanwhile been ordered to surrender their properties, the Commercial Farmers Union said.
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/ 27 September 2006
South Africa had more than 2,7-million tourist arrivals between January and April, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk revealed on Wednesday. This was the first time arrivals had broken through the 2,5-milion mark in the first four months of the year, he quoted from the latest tourism review.
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/ 27 September 2006
Investment in the development of 15 new chrome and platinum mines will make Burgersfort the country’s new platinum capital within the next ten years, a property director said on Tuesday. Hoffman Prinsloo, the managing director of Cranbrook Property Projects, was speaking at the launch of Motaganeng, a housing development in Burgersfort in Limpopo province.
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/ 26 September 2006
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Jacob Zuma’s weekend comments about gays earned him the wrath of gay and lesbian groups on Tuesday. Speaking at Heritage Day celebrations in KwaDukuza on Sunday, Zuma said: ”When I was growing up an ungqingili [a gay] would not have stood in front of me. I would knock him out.”
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/ 26 September 2006
Multimillionaire Italian Count Riccardo Agusta has never attended a single day of the marathon corruption trial of former Western Cape premier Peter Marais and his environment provincial minister David Malatsi. Yet as the hearing entered its final stages on Tuesday in Cape Town’s Bellville Regional Court Two, his shadow lay over proceedings as surely as if he had been there in person.
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/ 26 September 2006
The admissibility of the now famous encrypted fax, which led to Durban businessman Schabir Shaik’s second corruption conviction, dominated proceedings at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein on Tuesday. On the second day of Shaik’s appeal hearing, state prosecutor Billy Downer faced an array of questions from a full bench of SCA judges.
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/ 26 September 2006
Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang denied on Tuesday ever claiming that the use of certain fruits and vegetables by HIV/Aids patients could be an alternative to medical treatment. ”I challenge you to read all my statements and show me where this minister ever said it was an alternative. It is not,” Tshabalala-Msimang told reporters at media briefing.
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/ 26 September 2006
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) expressed its outrage on Tuesday at violence against Zimbabwe trade unions. Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said a statement by Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe condoned the use of violence by police against Zimbabwean trade unions.
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/ 26 September 2006
With the deadline for companies to file their employment-equity reports looming, trade union Solidarity has criticised labour regulations asking employees to indicate their race. ”The Department of Labour wants to use the new regulations to return to a dispensation in which the labour force is classified along racial lines,” Solidarity’s deputy general secretary Dirk Hermann said in a statement on Tuesday.
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/ 26 September 2006
Following rigorous testing of multi-drug resistance tuberculosis patients, the Gauteng department of health has confirmed six cases of extreme drug-resistance tuberculosis (XDR-TB) in Gauteng, the province said in a statement on Tuesday. ”Three of these patients are already receiving medical care at Sizwe Tropical Disease Hospital,” the statement said.
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/ 26 September 2006
About 100 families were left homeless when their shacks caught fire in an informal settlement at Alexandra on Tuesday afternoon, Johannesburg emergency services said. No one died and no injuries were reported, said spokesperson Malcolm Midgley. ”We were alerted to the scene at around 1.30pm, but by the time we put out the fire about 100 shacks were totally destroyed.”
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/ 26 September 2006
Community and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) voiced anger on Tuesday over the disbanding of several Gauteng police protection units. ”We have worked so hard and for so long to establish an environment where victims of abuse feel safe enough to report, and this disbandment reverses what we’ve done,” said Miranda Friedmann, director of Women and Men against Child Abuse.
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/ 26 September 2006
State prosecutor Billy Downer on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court of Appeal to refuse Shabir Shaik’s application for leave to appeal a conviction which entails his ”generally corrupt” relationship with former deputy president Jacob Zuma. Shaik was sentenced by Judge Hilary Squires in June 2005 to 15 years’ imprisonment on two corruption counts, with an additional three years for fraud.
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/ 26 September 2006
South Africa’s National Assembly has signed an agreement with its Chinese equivalent, the 3000-member National People’s Congress. The agreement formalises ”a strategic political partnership” between the two legislatures, Parliament’s public affairs sector said in a statement on Tuesday.
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/ 26 September 2006
Two of the men charged with the murder of Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe’s granddaughter pleaded guilty in the Vereeniging Circuit Court on Tuesday. South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported that they admitted guilt to five counts, including murder, armed robbery and rape.
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/ 26 September 2006
South Africa’s unemployment rate dipped to 25,6% in March from 26,5% in the same month last year, with more than half-a-million jobs created during that time, official data showed on Tuesday. Africa’s largest economy is battling to cut stubbornly high unemployment despite faster economic growth.
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/ 26 September 2006
The second day of the appeal hearing of Durban businessman Schabir Shaik started in his absence in Bloemfontein on Tuesday. Shaik was sentenced in June 2005 to 15 years’ imprisonment on two corruption counts. Judge Hilary Squires concluded that there was a ”generally corrupt” relationship between Shaik and former deputy president Jacob Zuma.
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/ 26 September 2006
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu says some of South Africa’s leaders are sinners and his compatriots have failed to sustain the idealism that brought an end to apartheid. ”Part of our own disillusionment is the high expectations that we had,” Archbishop Tutu told reporters on Monday night.
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/ 26 September 2006
Schabir Shaik did not ”cold-bloodedly” set out to enter a corrupt relationship with former deputy president Jacob Zuma, his advocate told the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein on Monday. ”There is a world of difference when people stake out and stalk people in [public] office with a cold-blooded intent,” submitted Jeremy Gauntlett SC.