Rescue services are using boats to evacuate residents of a flooded settlement near Philippi outside Cape Town in the wake of a massive cold front that has brought heavy rain to the Western Cape. ”Metro [rescue services] and the police are using rescue boats to evacuate people,” Disaster Risk Management Centre manager Walter Solomons said.
Rain continued to fall in the Western Cape on Wednesday following the occurrence of a cold front in the area this week. Spokesperson for the South African Weather Service Mnikeli Ndabambi said rainy conditions would continue until the end of the week. ”Cold and rainy conditions will persist until the end of the week,” said Ndabambi.
Snowfall and thunderstorms are expected in the southern and western parts of the country, said the South African Weather Service on Tuesday. A cold front over the Western Cape on Tuesday night is expected to result in heavy rainfalls and thunderstorms in the extreme south-western parts of the province.
A man who allegedly claimed over the internet to have had sex with a number of prominent South Africans appeared in the Kroonstad Magistrate’s Court on Monday. District court prosecutor Tanya Buitendag confirmed that Juan Uys appeared in court in connection with a warrant of arrest for theft in the Western Cape.
We all rewrite our personal histories. Putting positive spins on past defeats, deliberately forgetting embarrassing relationships and adapting our views are quintessentially human activities. But it is a far more serious matter when the political history of a head of state is revised and fictionalised, writes Nicoli Nattrass
The man allegedly behind bizarre internet sex claims against prominent South Africans will probably be transferred from Kroonstad to Cape Town sometime this week, said police. Juan Duval Uys (39) was arrested at the home he shared with his mother in Kroonstad on Saturday after a months-long investigation.
President Thabo Mbeki has urged unemployed South Africans to create their own job opportunities through the setting up of small businesses. Addressing Lwandle community members near Cape Town at a presidential imbizo on Saturday, Mbeki told the unemployed to utilise the several business support programmes which the government had set up for their benefit.
The government’s reluctance to allocate adequate resources towards the fight against substance abuse has contributed to the sharp increase in drug-related crimes in the country, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Friday. Writing in her weekly newsletter, Zille blamed the fuelling of substance abuse in provinces such as the Western Cape on state inaction.
Matric pupils at about 50 schools in the Western Cape are yet to write their mid-year exams because of the recent teachers’ strike, provincial education minister Cameron Dugmore said on Monday. ”Although various schools have been affected differently by the recent public-service strike, I am most concerned about matric learners,” he said.
Nine young girls have been found dead around South Africa in the past seven months after they had been reported missing. The nine comprise the most widely publicised cases. The most recent find was the decomposed body of Elizabeth Martin (13), found in a water tank at a farm in Leeu-Gamka in the Western Cape.
The body of a young girl, suspected to be that of a 13-year-old reported missing in Merweville, was found on Friday, Western Cape police said — the same day that a newly born baby was found dead in a dustbin in Mamelodi East, Pretoria. Spokesperson Ntobeko Mangqwengqwe said police found the girl’s decomposed body in a water tank at a farm outside Leeu-Gamka.
Affirmative action is dead in many respects, says Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin. Beeld newspaper reported him on Friday as saying the policy was not being applied in South Africa because of skills shortages. Erwin was defending the government’s affirmative action policy on Thursday at the South African Business Club in London.
In a weekend with only one Currie Cup game being played, there will also be two compulsory friendlies around the country. The Sharks will be hosting Griquas at the Absa Stadium in Durban in the only Currie Cup fixture. In East London, it’s the Bulldogs versus the Lions, and in George it’s Western Province versus South Western District.
Film tourism might be an ambiguous term, but it refers to the idea that every time a specific location or destination is used in a film, the film indirectly promotes the destination to its viewers. "This has been evident within the Bollywood film market," says Mark Visser of the Cape Film Commission.
The Cape Flats community would be outraged if Taliep Petersen’s widow, Najwa, and her alleged accomplices in Petersen’s murder were released on bail, the Wynberg Regional Court heard on Tuesday. Najwa and co-accused Abdoer Emjedi have launched a bail application before magistrate Robert Henney, acting Regional Court president in the Western Cape.
The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) is probing the death of builder Pieter Wheeler in a police cell in Grabouw, Western Cape police said on Tuesday. Wheeler (51) was found dead in the cell he shared with three other men at 11pm on Saturday, just over six hours after his detention for alleged drunkenness.
Western Cape African National Congress (ANC) provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha on Tuesday accused the Paarl town council, led by the Democratic Alliance and Independent Democrats, of organising a witch-hunt against duly appointed council officials. He was responding to reports that the council had suspended municipal manager Sidima Kabanyane.
Western Cape police are investigating charges of rape and abduction after a five-year-old girl, who had been reported missing in the Karoo, was found alive, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Tuesday. Police spokesperson Captain Malcolm Potje said that he was relieved that the girl had been found.
The Independent Democrats (ID) will campaign to take over the provincial Western Cape government in the 2009 elections, party leader Patricia de Lille said on Saturday. ”The signs are there; written in the results of most of the by-elections we have fought this year,” she said at the party’s national conference in Cape Town.
The N1 to Beaufort West in the Western Cape has been reopened to traffic after a collision involving two trucks and three buses outside Laingsburg earlier on Friday. Seven people were killed and 17 seriously injured, among them a seven-year-old girl. The accident started when a bus heading toward Cape Town collided with a truck.
Thirteen years after the African National Congress came to power promising to right the wrongs of colonialism and apartheid by returning lands seized by white settlers, the snail’s pace of delivery is prompting poor black communities to fend for themselves through land grabs.
Western Cape police declined to comment on Thursday on contradictory news reports that the suspected killers of two-year-old Sonja Brown were about to be arrested, and that an autopsy showed she was not murdered. The reports were carried earlier in the day by a Cape Town newspaper and a local radio station.
The only people who said crime was out of control in the Western Cape were the Democratic Alliance, Western Cape provincial community safety minister Leonard Ramatlakane said on Wednesday. He said calls for him to step down were ”frivolous” and something to which he would not respond.
Capetonians have been asked to use water sparingly this month as the dam supplying much of their water is being worked on. The distribution of water will be limited until the end of the month as the Berg River Dam, which is near completion, is being connected via a tunnel to the province’s main supplier, the Theewaterskloof Dam.
The latest crime statistics released on Tuesday prove crime is out of control despite government assurances to the contrary, opposition parties said. ”We are alarmed at the increase in murder [2,4%], the 118% increase in bank robberies … and the sharp increase in robberies at residential premises,” Inkatha Freedom Party spokesperson Velaphi Ndlovu said.
The African National Congress (ANC) is to contest the legality of the decision to reinstate Truman Prince as municipal manager of the Central Karoo district municipality. Western Cape ANC secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha described the move as ”improper and wrong”.
Education Minister Naledi Pandor and leaders of teachers’ unions will meet on Tuesday to discuss an education recovery plan designed to help pupils catch up on the 10 days of schooling missed during the recent public-sector strike. Also expected to be discussed is a review of the results of the interrupted June examinations.
A decision on winter schools in KwaZulu-Natal is expected on Monday when various stakeholders will meet to discuss it, the provincial department of education said on Saturday. Similar plans are afoot in North West and the Western Cape to recover from the effects of the lengthy public-service strike.
The Western Cape’s newest — and potentially second largest — cycle race, Die Burger Fietstoer, was unveiled on Friday and will take place on Sunday December 2. This road race will take place in and around Stellenbosch and is an official seeding event for the Cape Argus Pick ‘n Pay Cycle Tour.
Grahamstown’s arts festival is the most varied in the country, but still lacks diversity, writes Brent Meersman.
Thursday was described as the ”toughest yet” by a delegate at the African National Congress (ANC) policy conference in Midrand. ”It was the toughest … there are different views in terms of the decision to nominate a presidential candidate,” said Ernest Makopo from Gauteng.
Freezing weather and snowfalls in parts of South Africa have seen the death of a homeless man in Johannesburg, the delay of airline flights and the closure of mountain passes. Snowfalls left more than 300 bus passengers and 20 truck drivers trapped between Harding and Kokstad in KwaZulu-Natal.