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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.
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/ 16 January 2007
Several publications on Tuesday expressed fears that the current restructuring of the South African Police Service (SAPS) will severely limit the media’s ability to access information. Up until the restructuring started, media outlets approached designated police officers at area level. However, media organisations have now been told to contact designated officers at a provincial level.
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/ 16 January 2007
Crime-combating strategies should be decentralised and province-specific, the South African Institute for Race Relations said on Tuesday. Researcher Kerwin Lebone said the institute advocated the decentralisation of crime-fighting strategies following the release of a report on crime across the provinces.
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/ 15 January 2007
The call for land invasions in Hout Bay by the Congress of South African Trade Union’s Western Cape secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, is irresponsible, illegal and a red flag to investors, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Monday. Ehrenreich maintains there is a ”battle unfolding” in Hout Bay.
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/ 15 January 2007
Former African National Congress (ANC) chief whip and fraud convict Tony Yengeni was released from the Malmesbury prison on Monday morning. Yengeni was set free having served just more than four months of his original four-year sentence. Earlier, a group of senior Western Cape ANC leaders arrived at the Malmesbury prison to welcome him back into society.
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/ 15 January 2007
Fraud convict Tony Yengeni received two high-profile visitors at the Malmesbury Prison on Sunday –- African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma and Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour. While Zuma’s visit was a social one, Balfour’s was official, the department said in a statement.
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/ 12 January 2007
Fraud convict Tony Yengeni looks set to receive a warm welcome when he is released on parole from Malmesbury Prison on Monday morning. The African National Congress in the Western Cape said on Friday several of its senior members will be there to greet their party’s former chief whip, including provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha and chairperson James Ngculu.
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/ 11 January 2007
During December, when South Africans seem determined to be merry or drown their sorrows with the help of alcohol, more than 1 000 intoxicated drivers were arrested throughout the country. In KwaZulu-Natal, 673 people were caught for drunken driving from December 1 to January 10.
Shebeens near schools are a source of school violence and an access to drugs and alcohol for minors, the Young Communist League of South Africa said on Tuesday. The league was announcing at a Johannesburg press conference the launch of its Joe Slovo ”Right to Learn” campaign, which will run from Thursday until the end of January.
The bodies of a husband and wife who were swept out to sea along with their daughter by a wave in Camps Bay in the Western Cape were recovered in Bakhoven, police said on Sunday. Spokesperson Captain Randall Stoffels said paramedics tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate the woman on Sunday.
Four tourists were trapped for about two hours in darkness inside the Cango Caves near Oudtshoorn in the Western Cape, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reported on Sunday. The four were separated from their group, but when the cave lights went out, they were unable to find their way out.
Fourteen retired top cops are to assist police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi in the fight against crime, the Sunday newspaper Rapport said. The 14, all former commissioners, were asked in October to assist Selebi on an advisory council on policy matters.
Plans to build a 68 000-seater stadium for Cape Town to host a 2010 Soccer World Cup semifinal got the green light from the provincial government on Friday when it dismissed a series of appeals. The Western Cape province upheld the initial environmental authorisation and approved applications for the rezoning of the stadium grounds.
A vehicle-testing station owner has appeared in the King William’s Town Magistrate’s Court for allegedly trying to bribe an Eastern Cape transport official, the provincial transport department said on Thursday. Johannesburg businessman Haron Bhika appeared in court on Tuesday charged with corruption, said Eastern Cape traffic control deputy director Mqondisi Kulati.
The festive-season death toll on South Africa’s roads has dropped despite an increase in the number of cars and drivers, the Department of Transport said on Tuesday. Spokesperson Ntau Letebele said 1Â 366 people had died in 1Â 168 crashes over the December 2006 period — a drop from 1Â 454 deaths in 2005.