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/ 28 November 2006
More South Africans are voluntarily getting counselled and tested for HIV with figures rising annually, the Department of Health said on Tuesday. Spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said 1Â 715Â 588 people utilised the free voluntary counselling and testing services between April 2005 and March 2006. ”The trend is that it seems to be doubling every year,” he said.
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/ 28 November 2006
Raising consumer safety and maximising crime prevention are the targets of a national rail-safety campaign launched on Tuesday, said Metrorail. The campaign focuses on staff riding, train surfing, cable theft and standing behind the yellow safety line, said CEO Lucky Tshepo Montana.
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/ 28 November 2006
Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Tuesday paid warm tribute to the staff of Cape Town’s Tygerberg hospital, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. ”God wants you to know just how proud God is of you,” he said at the annual thanksgiving service for the complex’s children’s hospital, of which he and wife Leah are patrons.
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/ 28 November 2006
Dear Comrade Vavi,
Your article in last week’s Mail & Guardian (”The media must own up to its massive blunder”) will be seen as the view of organised labour on all the issues that you discuss. While this may be the case with many of your statements, some do fill one with concern.
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/ 26 November 2006
Tony Leon will step down as leader of the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) in May, he told reporters in Johannesburg on Sunday. He said 13 years in office is ”the absolute upper limit of effective leadership”. Leon will, however, remain an MP and continue writing a book he has been commissioned to publish.
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/ 26 November 2006
Gauteng minister of community safety Firoz Cachalia launched the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children campaign in Soshanguve, north of Pretoria, on Saturday. Marches against violence and abuse took place in Johannesburg — where participants wore stilettos — and Cape Town.
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/ 24 November 2006
Julian Jonker explores the reasons why Cape Town loves a good summer street bash.
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/ 23 November 2006
A total of 303 cases of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) have been confirmed across the country, the Department of Health said on Thursday. ”They are in the hospitals, they are on treatment. Some of them have died,” said the department’s head of TB, Dr Lindiwe Mvusi. Mvusi did not have details at hand of how many had died.
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/ 22 November 2006
In the caves of South Africa’s Cederberg mountains, an ancient people left a legacy of rock art that could teach modern man a valuable lesson or two about living in harmony with nature. That is the view of John Parkington, professor of archaeology at the University of Cape Town, who has spent 40 years in the Cederberg and neighbouring areas researching rock paintings.
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/ 22 November 2006
Over five million South African pupils and 13Â 000 schools will be exempt from school fees from January, the Department of Education said on Wednesday. ”The Department of Education wishes to announce that all the nine provincial departments of education have submitted their lists of the number of learners and schools [that] would benefit,” the department said in a statement.
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/ 21 November 2006
With proper investment and management, railways can be made the backbone of the transport system in South Africa, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said on Tuesday. ”We cannot be complacent until our economy is aggressively driven by an overall competitive and sustainable public transport system,” the minister said at the launch of the new ”10M5” trains in Pretoria.
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/ 21 November 2006
Legislation on the Western Cape’s proposed fuel levy is expected to come into force in 2008, according to the provincial mini-budget tabled on Tuesday. Western Cape provincial minister of finance Lynne Brown first mooted the tax two years ago, saying then that the target date for implementation was this year, at 10c per litre.
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/ 19 November 2006
Being a role model doesn’t sit comfortably with Ntsiki Biyela, who overcame modest beginnings in a poor, rural village to become the country’s first fully fledged African, female winemaker. ”It is a lot of pressure,” the 28-year-old told the media in an interview at her office on the grounds of the Stellekaya winery in the Western Cape.
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/ 18 November 2006
The African National Congress (ANC) has lost the plot for the future, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Saturday. ”The ANC is so busy tearing itself apart and plundering the public purse and pursuing narrow racist agendas that they have forgotten the people who put them in power,” said DA leader Tony Leon during a Western Cape DA congress.
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/ 15 November 2006
Following the recent announcement by the Department of Health on the revised dispensing fee, South African retailer Pick ‘n Pay announced on Wednesday that all medicine prices in its pharmacies will remain at the current levels until the end of this year.
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/ 14 November 2006
The whole wine industry should provide aid for those affected by Monday’s fatal railway accident at Faure in the Western Cape, according to leading figures in the industry. Nineteen wine farm casual workers died and 17 were injured when the truck carrying them was hit by a train at a level crossing.
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/ 14 November 2006
Only slightly more than one out of 10 South Africans with bank accounts have used their cellphones for banking, according to research released by World Wide Worx on Tuesday. A surprising finding from the research is that the youth market is the least likely to have tried cellphone banking.
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/ 13 November 2006
Nineteen people were killed and 12 injured in an accident involving a train and a truck at a railway crossing near Somerset West in the Western Cape, Metrorail confirmed on Monday afternoon. Earlier reports had quoted a Netcare 911 spokesperson as saying that 27 people had died in the accident.
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/ 11 November 2006
Fraud convict Tony Yengeni — the former African National Congress chief whip — would be released on weekend parole, the Department of Correctional Services said on Friday. A few offenders per prison are released each weekend, with 22 prisoners from the Western Cape benefiting this month.
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/ 8 November 2006
The church handyman who is going to bury PW Botha says he has no reason to think ill of the former state president. ”As I see it, he was a good person,” Manie Botman (40) said on Wednesday morning at the Dutch Reformed Church at Hoekwil near Wilderness where Botha is to be interred.
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/ 8 November 2006
Eskom will decide within six months whether to commission a second nuclear power plant to supplement its Cape Town Koeberg plant, media reports said on Wednesday. Phumzile Tshelane, Eskom’s technical strategy manager, said the company was looking at models of light-water reactors from French and United States suppliers, and one type of heavy-water reactor from a Canadian supplier.
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/ 7 November 2006
A nuclear reactor at Koeberg in Cape Town was restored on Tuesday after it automatically shut down on Sunday night, Eskom said. ”The power level will be increased during the course of today [Tuesday] and the unit is expected to be back to the previous power level of 84% on Wednesday morning,” said a spokesperson.
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/ 6 November 2006
A nuclear reactor at Koeberg in Cape Town automatically shut down on Sunday night but risk of power interruption was minimal, Eskom said on Monday. "The initial indication is that the fault is on the turbine control system, which is currently being investigated," it said in a statement.
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/ 6 November 2006
While President Thabo Mbeki will only give up his Union Buildings office in 2009, the next president will effectively be chosen in just over a year’s time at the ANC’s watershed elective conference in Polokwane, Limpopo. How will it happen? And how are the cards stacked? Zukile Majova and Mbuyisi Mgibisa investigated to bring you this exclusive report, taking you into the mechanics of an elective conference.
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/ 4 November 2006
The military will not be used to help cash-in-transit teams, but business and the government will work together to battle the heists, said Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula on Friday. ”There are other ways which this particular problem can be attended to,” Nqakula told a press briefing in Johannesburg.
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/ 3 November 2006
The deal brokered in Cape Town by Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi this week was little more than a face-saving mechanism for the African National Congress, acting Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Kraai van Niekerk said on Friday in DA leader Tony Leon’s internet column.
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/ 3 November 2006
Former president PW Botha ought to be remembered for the fact that during his time as head of state, he saw the need for change ”even though his approach to this change was in itself controversial”, says African National Congress deputy leader Jacob Zuma.
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/ 3 November 2006
Yolandi Groenewald looks at books that explore things that go bump in the night in South Africa.
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/ 3 November 2006
While the British government is making climate-change combat its priority, South African officialdom is squabbling over who should administer a green tax worth up to R600-million a year. Electricity users pay between R400-million and R600-million annually as a tariff on electricity usage to promote energy saving.
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/ 2 November 2006
Over 8Â 000 health practitioners have been struck off the roll after failing to pay their annual fees, the Health Professionals’ Council of South Africa (HPSCA) said on Thursday. ”A total of 8Â 593 health professionals have been struck off the roll after failing to meet the deadline,” said HPCSA spokesperson Tendai Dhliwayo.
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/ 1 November 2006
Former president PW Botha, who is to be laid to rest next week, will not have a state funeral, according to a spokesperson for the church where his memorial service is to be held. He died on Tuesday night at his home in the Western Cape. The news follows a visit on Wednesday by Director General in the Presidency Frank Chikane to Botha’s wife Barbara at the couple’s home in the coastal town of Wilderness.
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/ 1 November 2006
The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the city of Cape Town has noted and welcomed the agreement reached between Western Cape local government and housing minister Richard Dyantyi and Cape Town mayor Helen Zille, saying it should reduce tension and instability in the city.