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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.
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/ 30 January 2007
Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulu Xingwana and the agriculture ministers of the nine provinces have vowed to tackle the abuse of farm workers, her department said on Monday. Xingwana met the provincial ministers in Pretoria to review their progress and outline their plans for the year.
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/ 29 January 2007
On August 2 last year, the University of KwaZulu-Natal passed its language policy and plan through the university senate. The policy advocates additive bilingualism in English and isiZulu, and supports multilingualism more broadly with respect to Afrikaans, the Indian heritage languages, and languages of strategic importance in Africa and globally.
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/ 28 January 2007
Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana has invited the Society for the Prevention of cruelty to animals (SPCA) to attend a ceremony during which a bull will be slaughtered. ”I invite the SPCA to join us as we will be slaughtering a bull without euthanising it. We’ll ask them to come into the kraal to share in the feast.”
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/ 28 January 2007
Knife-wielding muggers have again struck above Cape Town’s world-famous botanical gardens, the media reported on Sunday. Seven hikers in two separate groups became the latest victims near Kirstenbosch on Saturday, bringing to 14 the number of people mugged in the area in the past nine days.
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/ 27 January 2007
Former South African president FW de Klerk said on Friday that Afrikaans is under threat after regional police accused authorities of banning the language. Afrikaans-speaking police officers complained that officials in the Western Cape had declared English the only means of communication.
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/ 26 January 2007
There is not enough evidence suggesting that former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni had violated any animal rights during the slaughter of a bull at his father’s house, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) said on Friday.
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/ 26 January 2007
A niece and a nephew of mine started school this year. The inevitable conversations about uniforms and school bags, alongside blanket coverage of schools’ opening day, drove home several unpleasant realities about our education system. I am glad that Warona and Sinesipo wake up to schools that are better resourced than the one I first enrolled in at the beginning of 1978, writes Pumla Dineo Gqola.
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/ 25 January 2007
The FW de Klerk Foundation has threatened legal action against the Western Cape police’s English-only language policy. It said on Thursday if it hasn’t received a formal response from provincial Commissioner Mzwandile Petros by Monday, it will seek a court order forcing him to bring his policy in line with national police requirements.
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/ 25 January 2007
No dates have yet been set for the scrapping of taxis in Gauteng, Transport Department spokesperson Sam Monareng said on Thursday. Dates have also yet to be set for the destruction of old vehicles in the North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga, he said. All Monareng could indicate was that dates would be announced ”soon”.
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/ 23 January 2007
About 60 Cape Town taxis — described as ”moving time bombs” — are to be scrapped next month, the Cape Argus reported on Tuesday. Western Cape Taxi Council chairperson Junaid Peters said the vehicles are scheduled to be destroyed on February 10.
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/ 22 January 2007
The power failures that plunged much of South Africa into darkness last week will not hurt economic growth or cost the nation nearly as much as some have predicted, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Monday. Factories, mines and homes throughout Africa’s economic powerhouse lost electricity last Thursday without warning.
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/ 21 January 2007
A 35-year-old Muizenberg woman was wounded in the stomach on Sunday morning when her ex-husband shot her outside a church, Western Cape police said. Inspector Bernadine Steyn said the woman was shot in the parking lot of the church in Marina da Gama just before 10am.
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/ 20 January 2007
First National Bank (FNB) is to spend R50-million on standby generators and uninterrupted power supply units at its branches nationwide in response to power failures, it said on Friday. FNB said about R15,5-million [of the total amount] had already gone towards generators at 63 branches.
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/ 19 January 2007
The Western Cape directorate for public prosecutions is to decide the fate of Zimbabwean student Tinashe Rioga, who allegedly tried to hijack a South African Airways flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg in June last year. Rioga appeared in court on Friday following a month of observation at the Valkenberg psychiatric hospital.
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/ 19 January 2007
Eskom’s national power-alert messages will be flighted on television to encourage countrywide electricity savings, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Eskom general manager Andrew Etzinger said the power-alert messages would illustrate the current state of electricity supply while asking individuals to respond by reducing electricity use.
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/ 18 January 2007
Power cuts rippled across South Africa on Thursday, blacking out parts of major cities and spurring warnings from state utility Eskom that unexpected shortages could extend into next week. The cuts, which Eskom attributed to power-station maintenance and the shutdown of one unit at Koeberg, caused power failures stretching from Cape Town to Johannesburg.
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/ 17 January 2007
Holiday season traffic deaths and accidents dropped by less than 5% compared with a year ago, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said on Wednesday. Radebe issued his report on the December 1 to January 10 holiday season traffic at Atteridgeville in Gauteng. The number of fatal accidents dropped by 59 from 1 428 to 1 369 compared with the same time a year ago.
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/ 17 January 2007
Two members of the Delicious Rugby Club in the Boland, who allegedly rendered an opposing player unconscious in an on-field brawl, appeared on Tuesday in the Worcester Regional Court on charges of culpable homicide. Ben Zimry and Wayne Matthee were not asked to plead when they appeared before magistrate PJ van Rensburg, who postponed the case to May 15.