Raenette Taljaard, Tshilidzi Marwala, Stuart Wilson, Zandile Mciza, Karin Jacobs, Mamokgethi Setati and Carol Simon.
President Thabo Mbeki strongly criticised the Sunday Times on Wednesday for what he termed its peddling of ”falsehoods” in a report published earlier this month. The report dealt with the alleged rejection by Western Cape health authorities of doctors for top posts because they were white.
South Africa’s civil-service strike broadened on Wednesday as other union workers walked out, piling more pressure on the government in a dispute stoking political tensions in Africa’s largest economy. Union leaders have vowed to shut the country down in sympathy with civil servants, whose two-week-old strike has already caused chaos in hospitals, schools and public offices.
The City of Cape Town’s renaming panel, set up in a bid to avoid the controversy that has enlivened the process in other centres, has hit a stumbling block. The Western Cape African National Congress announced on Tuesday that it rejected the 17-member panel and demanded that the body be reconstituted.
Energy production in the Western Cape is set to become cleaner and greener with the introduction of ground-breaking legislation that will kick-start the renewable energy industry throughout the province. The legislation includes a range of incentives, tariffs and tax breaks to stimulate the use of renewable energy across the residential, commercial and industrial sectors.
South African higher education could face a leadership crisis with the opening of four vice-chancellor positions from the end of the year and a struggle to fill them with high-quality appointments. This comes at a time when institutions are battling to find suitable leaders and managers.
Public-service unions officially made a counter-proposal, demanding a 10% wage increase from the government on Friday. ”Unions’ demands remain the same but in order to facilitate the reaching of a settlement the unions have agreed to put on the table a proposal of 10% ..,” Don Pasquallie said on behalf of the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
South Africa’s controversial health minister returned to the spotlight on Thursday after snubbing a major Aids conference, announcing a ”significant” decrease in the number of pregnant women infected with HIV. ”This is mainly as a result of our continued focus on prevention as the mainstay of our response to combat HIV,” Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told Parliament.
All levels of government have to work towards more balanced economic growth in South Africa, Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi said on Thursday. Mufamadi was speaking at a conference for local government representatives to meet provincial and national government figures.
It’s been a remarkable turn of the tables as Henry Jeffreys recently notched up one year as the first black editor of Die Burger. The paper historically was at the heart of Afrikaner nationalism. His position at the publication is a measure of the immensity of change in South Africa. So, how has it been working out?
Three of South Africa’s trade-union giants, with a combined membership of about 600Â 000, are considering sympathy action with striking public servants. The country’s largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers will meet attorneys on Thursday to see if full-blown industrial action can be taken in a shorter period than the required seven days’ notice.
The government stuck to its guns on Tuesday in the current pay dispute with public servants, saying the current salary demands of the public servants were not realistic. Public-service unions rejected a revised offer of a 6,5% pay rise by the government on Monday and are demanding a 12% rise.
Residents of Gauteng earn more, are better educated and are likely to live longer than people in other provinces, a South African Institute of Race Relations study has found. In a report released on Tuesday, it identified ”glaring inequalities” in service delivery and living conditions across the provinces.
They may be united in their demand for better pay, but when it comes to the national anthem, public-service unions are not necessarily all singing from the same song sheet. This emerged on Monday at a mass report-back meeting in Cape Town called by unions participating in the public-sector strike.
The next African National Congress (ANC) president should be biased towards the working class, gender sensitive and a unifier, said the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Friday. The NUM said the government should own the mines to create employment and generate revenue towards education.
Union leaders sought to draw other sectors into their wage dispute with the government on Friday as thousands of public servants countrywide downed tools. The first day of what the unions said would be an indefinite strike passed without major incident and had a patchy effect on service delivery.
A massive stayaway by public servants will hit the country on Friday even if last-gasp efforts to settle their pay dispute with the state succeed. ”Friday’s strike is going to go ahead because all the unions have committed themselves to the action,” Congress of South African Trade Unions Western Cape secretary Tony Ehrenreich said on Thursday.
The Education Department must do something about school security, a school principal pleaded on Thursday after the ”horrific” stabbing of one of his pupils with a pair of scissors. Another three school pupils have died in violence throughout the country this week, including an eight-year-old hacked to death by two classmates.
The Labour Court in Cape Town on Thursday granted an order interdicting unions from calling on immigration officers to join Friday’s national strike. Judge Deon Nel also ruled that the statutory essential-services committee should hold a hearing not later than June 15 to decide whether the officers are essential-services workers.
Unions on Thursday rejected the minister of public service and administration’s announcement of a breakthrough in negotiations and that a 6,5% salary increase was on the table. Representatives of 16 unions that plan to strike on Friday told a press conference that there was no such offer.
One of the two units at the Koeberg nuclear power station near Cape Town was unexpectedly shut down on Thursday morning because of a technical problem, Eskom said. Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga said there was no need for concern, as Eskom had enough reserve capacity to supply the Western Cape.
Western Cape police are still searching for the gang which gunned strip-club owner Yuri Ulianitski and his young daughter in Milnerton on Tuesday night. Ulianitski’s wife Irina survived the attack and is in a stable condition in the Milnerton Medi-Clinic.
The ”Green Scorpions” begin an inspection of Mittal Steel’s Vereeniging plant on Tuesday, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism said. The inspection, to last several days, marks the launch of a national environmental compliance campaign in the iron, steel and ferro-alloy industry.
The multiparty committee that will decide whether Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool misled the legislature plans to hold open hearings ”as soon as possible”, its chairperson said on Monday. Provincial deputy speaker Yousuf Gabru, who is chairing the six-person committee, said the committee sees its work as ”quite important”.
International Cricket Council president Percy Sonn, who died on May 27, will be remembered as an able administrator and a firebrand who sometimes spoke his mind too freely for his own good. He was a major figure in the racial unification of South African cricket and served as president of the United Cricket Board from 2000 to 2003.
Public-sector unions on Friday warned the government of ”indefinite labour action” if their demands for better pay and working conditions were not met. The unions outlined six demands in a two-page memorandum submitted to the government in mass marches across the country.
A ”standstill” can be expected in South Africa if the government does not act on public-service workers’ demands, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) president Willie Madisha told thousands of marchers in Cape Town. Speaking outside Parliament, Madisha called on the government to ”negotiate seriously and properly”.
News that three highly qualified medical doctors nominated for posts in two under-staffed public hospitals have been rejected by the Western Cape provincial health department — because they are white — has been slammed by Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille.
More than 10 000 public-service workers started marching in Pretoria on Friday demanding better pay and working conditions. Much of the protesters’ anger was aimed at Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. Protesters sang songs blaming her for the breakdown in pay talks between the unions and the government.
Severe shortages of health staff in four Southern African countries is the main barrier to expanding HIV/Aids treatment, according to a Medecins sans Frontières report released on Thursday. The report, Help Wanted indicates that more than one million people need Aids treatment but are not getting it.
Failed land-reform projects threaten food security in South Africa, warns a study by the FW de Klerk Foundation, launched in Cape Town on Thursday. The document — titled Land Reform: A Contextual Analysis — says the country’s food security is already under pressure.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) expects about 20Â 000 public servants to take part in Friday’s march through central Cape Town, the first called by the federation in the city since last year’s security sector protest. That event was marred by looting, violence and damage to public and private property before it was broken up by police.