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.
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/ 18 February 2007
A prisoner is taking Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour to court after an offer to reduce his sentence failed to materialise, media reports said on Sunday. Balfour allegedly offered Xolani Mahambehlala a sentence remission after he filmed acts of corruption by prison warders in the Eastern and Western Cape.
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/ 16 February 2007
Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has committed R1-billion to boost security and policing in the province, the Cape Argus reported on Friday. In his state of the province address in the provincial legislature, Rasool said the money would go to staff, vehicles, equipment and volunteers to beef up police capabilities.
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/ 16 February 2007
Four finance youth ministers will be in Parliament as guests of Finance Minister Trevor Manuel when he delivers his budget speech on Wednesday. They will attend a pre-budget function and will meet Manuel and Minster in the Presidency Essop Pahad, Johan Reiners of the South African Youth Ministers’ Programme said on Friday.
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/ 10 February 2007
An unstabled yearling has died of rabies in the Western Cape, the provincial agriculture department disclosed on Friday. It was the first rabies case in the area in 17 years, said provincial agriculture minister Cobus Dowry. Cautioning against alarm, he said it was probably an isolated case.
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/ 9 February 2007
The City of Cape Town is not alone in attempts to bring down the costs of its new 2010 World Cup stadium, according to the local organising committee, but it is definitely the most successful. Five new stadiums are to be built and five upgraded for 2010.
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/ 8 February 2007
South Africa is not experiencing a heatwave, the South African Weather Service said on Thursday. ”It is close to a heatwave, but it [the temperature] will be cooling down rapidly tomorrow [Friday],” said spokesperson Garth Sampson. He said a heatwave is measured in the smallest province of the country, which is Gauteng.
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/ 8 February 2007
The Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Western Cape has won by-elections in Hout Bay and Beaufort West, the party said on Thursday. In Wednesday’s vote it won 61,8% of the votes in Hout Bay, compared to the African National Congress’s 37%, said spokesperson Gareth van Onselen.
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/ 8 February 2007
The South African Aids Vaccine Initiative, which is supported by power parastatal Eskom and the South African government, announced on Thursday the start of the first large-scale test of a concept HIV vaccine — which will involve 3Â 000 participants in South Africa.
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/ 6 February 2007
The state might appeal against former Western Cape premier Peter Marais’s recent acquittal on corruption charges, the Cape Argus reported on Tuesday. Marais said on Monday his lawyer had told him he had been informed that Scorpions prosecutors had initiated the first step in a possible appeal against his acquittal.
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/ 6 February 2007
The Democratic Alliance and the Independent Democrats have ousted the African National Congress (ANC) from control of the Bergrivier municipality in the Western Cape. The two parties on Monday afternoon won a vote of no confidence in the ANC mayor, deputy mayor and speaker.
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/ 5 February 2007
Almost 35% of the total South African personal income of R1,232-billion accrued to Gauteng in 2006, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 16,3% and the Western Cape with 14,7%, a new report showed on Monday. Gauteng led the pack despite the 2005 boundary changes that favoured the Northern Cape.
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/ 5 February 2007
Shipped halfway across the world to Asia as a seafood delicacy, abalone has become a prized commodity for South African entrepreneurs as well as criminals who have poached the mollusc almost to extinction. Known colloquially in South Africa as ”perlemoen”, abalone is so endangered the government has drastically reduced the total allowable catch.
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/ 30 January 2007
The tussle over who has the right to live on and farm some of South Africa’s most fertile soil has taken on an added tension as the government presses ahead with land reforms intended to right past wrongs. But even supporters say the reform is failing, with just 4% of white-owned land transferred so far.
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/ 30 January 2007
The Western Cape’s police commissioner has taken legal advice following threats of court action over his English-only language policy. A group of Afrikaans-speaking members of the police approached the FW de Klerk Foundation when they felt their language rights were being trampled.