In the 1980s every young pilot’s dream was to be Tom Cruise’s character, Maverick, in the film Top Gun. But this is not so anymore, the South African Air Force said on Friday. ”Their role model is no longer the guy … with the big watch and sunglasses; it is a four-bar [commercial airline] captain who is driving a big car,” said Major General Des Barker.
The Cape Town city council on Thursday afternoon approved a R2,9-billion budget for its 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium at Green Point. The approval brings to an end most of the uncertainty that has surrounded the funding of the 68Â 000-seater structure, destined to host a semifinal.
Western Cape provincial minister of education Cameron Dugmore was discussing projects when he visited the school where former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni is doing his community service, his office said on Thursday. Yengeni is working at the Siyazama school for mentally challenged children in Guguletu.
No Hout Bay ‘apartheid’ Your coverage of Hout Bay is simplistic and immoral. It is not an “apartheid” conflict, as you suggest, with racist, affluent whites on one side and poor, victimised black people on the other. It is about upholding the law and trying to find a humane and practical solution to unhealthy, overcrowded […]
A shortage of raw materials and procurement issues may delay the construction of stadiums for the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa, a government official said on Wednesday. Malcolm Simpson, deputy director general at the Treasury’s World Cup unit, said a shortage of skills, a lack of materials and rising costs could jeopardise the increasingly tight schedule.
A proposed fuel levy in the Western Cape of 10 cents a litre will not have the Inkatha Freedom Party’s (IFP) support, unless there is clarity on where the money will go, party spokesperson Eric Lucas said on Wednesday. ”For the IFP there are a lot of questions surrounding this proposed fuel increase,” he said.
Fifty out of 85 construction employers were found to be violating workplace safety regulations during an on-site crackdown by labour inspectors in the Eastern Cape, the Labour Department said on Wednesday. Department spokesperson Zolisa Sigabi said seven construction sites had been shut down and an additional 48 contravention notices were served.
The building of Cape Town’s 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium is back on track with a R185-million funding guarantee from banking group Investec. The city put the R2,9-billion project on hold last week. Mayor Helen Zille said on Wednesday that Investec had guaranteed the outstanding R185-million as payment on a post-2010 operating lease on the stadium, to be built at Green Point.
Budget constraints have forced the Western Cape provincial government to reduce the budget at Groote Schuur and Tygerberg hospitals, Business Day newspaper reported on Wednesday. The provincial health department has had to cut 90 beds at the hospitals in order to boost primary healthcare services in townships.
So much for an international race. A strong South African contingent set the tone in the opening stage of the Cape Argus Pick ‘n Pay Giro del Capo and were the dominant force in the prologue in Paarl on Tuesday evening. Quickest on the 5,5km stage was MTN Microsoft’s Daryl Impey (7:23,93).
Funding for subsidised housing in the Western Cape increases dramatically in the coming financial year, according to the provincial budget tabled on Tuesday. The funds the province gives to municipalities to build subsidised housing will climb by 58,4%, from R599-million in the 2006/07 budget to R949-million in 2007/08.
The 50th British soldier to die in Afghanistan was a South African who grew up in the Western Cape. Ross Clark (25) was also a former head boy of Somerset West Private School. Lance Bombardier Clark was with the 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery.
A rapist who intimidated his 14-year-old victim into submission with a punch to the face and then raped her three times the same night was jailed for 17 years by the Cape High Court on Monday. Lungile Deya, now 23 but 19 at the time of the offence, was seemingly shocked at the sentence and covered his face with his hands.
The public gallery of court number one at the Cape High Court was on Monday packed to capacity for the start of the trial of two men charged with the murder in April last year of actor Brett Goldin and fashion designer Richard Bloom. On the night of April 16 2006 Goldin and Bloom were shot dead execution style, each with a single gun shot to the back of their head.
Two girls, aged 14 and four, have been rescued after being held in a tiny underground burrow by an alleged serial rapist, South African police said on Monday. A 31-year-old man arrested near the coastal town of Hermanus in the Western Cape province on Sunday claimed the younger girl was his daughter, police said on Monday.
A small blackboard and a pointed archaeologist’s trowel lay on top of pauper’s grave number 5 910 in Mamelodi West cemetery where Looksmart Ngudle’s family hoped to find his remains. Chalked on the blackboard was ”Mam-07/001 (5910) 01-03-2007”, for the forensic anthropology team’s photographic record of the exhumation.
The sudden upsurge in right-wing Afrikaner mobilisation and the purge of Somali traders from Port Elizabeth’s Motherwell township both underscore how far South Africa still has to travel in dealing with diversity and xenophobia to stem inter-group hatred and find the holy grail of non-racialism.
The bones exhumed from a paupers’ grave in Mamelodi West cemetery near Pretoria on Thursday could well be the remains of African National Congress liberation fighter Looksmart Ngudle, who died four decades ago, said the exhumation team.
The National Prosecuting Authority on Thursday started digging up an unmarked grave at Mamelodi West cemetery, near Pretoria, in search of the remains of an African National Congress liberation fighter who died in detention 44 years ago. The family of Looksmart Ngudle was at the site of the digging.
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/ 28 February 2007
The largest household-based survey undertaken to date by Statistics South Africa officially wrapped up on Wednesday. Survey workers had interviewed more than 232 673 families across the country — 85% of the total number of households sampled, said spokesperson Solly Kganyago.
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/ 28 February 2007
After her father was murdered, Vanessa Lynch started a fund-raising initiative called the DNA Project to help the South African Police Service build up an efficient DNA database that can be used to identify criminals or to eliminate suspects. She explains how the project works and what its benefits are.
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/ 27 February 2007
The 2010 Soccer World Cup marks the beginning of a revolution in South Africa’s transport system, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said on Tuesday. ”The 2010 World Cup is a major milestone in our history and marks the beginning of a major revolution in South Africa’s transport system,” Radebe told the African Business Tourism Conference in Sandton.
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/ 27 February 2007
Widely reported as ”the first farm expropriation”, the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights recently announced that it had expropriated a 25 200ha farm near Barkley West in the Northern Cape to settle a restitution claim by 471 families. The expropriation notice came into effect on January 26 and the land is now vested with the state until it can be transferred to the claimants.
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/ 23 February 2007
The Afrikaans language is being eroded in many spheres of society, former president FW de Klerk said on Friday. ”I find the systematic erosion of the rights and claims of Afrikaans, as established in the Constitution, unacceptable,” De Klerk said at the University of Pretoria’s Afrikaans language conference.
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/ 23 February 2007
Nedbank — once regarded by many as the doyen of South Africa’s so-called "big four" banks before losing some of its sheen — continues to make major strides in its turnaround strategy. For the year to the end of December, the group improved headline earnings by 40%, posting a R4,435-billion headline profit.
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/ 23 February 2007
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has criticised the proposal to rename Cape Town International Airport after ”little-known” trade unionist Jimmy la Guma, saying such a move will diminish the international branding of the city.
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/ 22 February 2007
The Democratic Alliance (DA) speaker of the Oudtshoorn Municipality in the Klein Karroo, Pierre Nel, has been fired, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday. Nel and four other DA members were suspended after siding with the African National Congress in a bid to vote out former Independent Democrat’s mayor Jeffrey Swartbooi.
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/ 22 February 2007
The manne were denouncing hypocrites left and right this week when they heard that plans are afoot to build a R90-million wall around the president’s Pretoria residence, but Lemmer supports Mr Mbeki entirely. After all, the man has refused to indulge in empty theaÂtrical gestures in the fight against crime, and a plain, utilitarian wall is as un-theatrical as it gets.
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/ 22 February 2007
Creating two separate time zones in the country could lead to a massive annual saving of about 500MW of electricity generation, says an internal Eskom study. Eskom’s figures show that it currently costs R10-million per megawatt to build new power capacity, suggesting that energy savings from more efficient use of time zones could obviate the need for R5-billion in new capacity.
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/ 20 February 2007
French nuclear power companies are circling power utility Eskom, hoping to get in on the construction of the next conventional nuclear plant in the Western Cape. Industry speculation is that the Areva company is prepared to take a stake in the development of the fourth-generation pebble-bed modular reactor programme.
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/ 19 February 2007
Truman Prince is to be allowed to appeal against his dismissal from the post of Beaufort West’s municipal manager, the Democratic Alliance (DA) confirmed on Monday. It was reacting to an African National Congress statement saying that the Central Karoo council had voted for the move despite a legal opinion that ”clearly” stated Prince had no right to a challenge.
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/ 19 February 2007
South Africa’s grain industry body, Grain SA, on Monday slammed the alleged price-fixing of bread, saying it is "a shame that certain large food companies" are allegedly involved. The Competition Commission has launched a case against two food companies, accusing them of running a bread cartel in the Western Cape.