Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin "must apologise publicly" for misleading the South African public about sabotage at Koeberg power station, says the official opposition Democratic Alliance. Minerals and energy spokesperson Hendrik Schmidt said in a statement on Monday that this week he would introduce a motion in Parliament to censure Erwin "for this gross lack of discretion".
Negligence by Eskom — and not sabotage — led to the widespread power outages in the Western Cape, media reports said on Monday. Because of this and the fact that Eskom had breached its licence conditions, the parastatal could see its licence conditions re-evaluated. These findings are contained in the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s final draft report.
The Ministry of Health has slammed Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon’s Women’s Day speech in which he said that the ministers of health and foreign affairs were ”letting women down”. ”Leon is the last person to speak on racial and gender transformation in this country,” said the ministry in a statement on Thursday.
Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool said on Wednesday that Women’s Day amounts to nothing if the celebrations take place against a backdrop of lack of delivery. "Women’s Day celebrations should be accompanied by the delivery of services … ," Rasool told thousands of women who had gathered at the Gugulethu sports complex to celebrate Women’s Day.
Forensic auditors have uncovered records of more than R25-million listed as having been paid to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and its structures by Brett Kebble and companies linked to the slain magnet, the Sunday Independent reported. The ANC says it has not been quizzed about any such alleged funds.
This week South Africa experienced weather extremes starting with a berg wind and a tornado, and ending with snow and floods. A report by South African Weather Service meteorologists Luis Fernandes and Lee-Ann Clark — from the National Forecast Centre in Pretoria — detailed the week’s strange weather.
A Tuberculosis (TB) Crisis Plan to increase the number of people cured of the infection was launched on Friday by the Gauteng health department, the department said. ”In 2005 there were 18Â 275 new reported TB cases in Johannesburg alone,” said provincial health minister Brian Hlongwa in a statement.”
The towns flooded in the southern Cape and Eastern Cape this week are being assessed for aid, provincial officials said on Friday. All except one of the national roads in the Eastern Cape are now open. Meanwhile, a three-night ordeal for eight people trapped in their cars by snow in the mountains in Lesotho has finally come to an end.
The City of Cape Town on Thursday signed a 20-year contract to buy wind energy from a yet-to-be-built generating farm at Darling on the West Coast. ”Ultimately we would like to see Cape Town become one of the world’s leaders in sustainable energy,” said city mayor Helen Zille in a statement issued at the signing ceremony.
Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu had a penchant for the "phantom openings" of non-existent projects and for ignoring the fundamental problems facing housing in the Western Cape, said official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon at the Delft settlement on Thursday.
Fourteen people were rescued from a truck in a flooded river in Plettenberg Bay using a front-end loader, the National Sea Rescue Institute said on Wednesday. A massive cold front has brought freezing conditions and flooding to the country. Four bodies were recovered after a car was washed away in floods in George.
A massive cold front sweeping across South Africa has brought freezing conditions to much of the country, with snow reported as far north as Bloemfontein in the Free State and parts of Gauteng, as well as reports of serious flooding in the southern Cape and a tornado in Dullstroom in Mpumalanga.
South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance is holding simultaneous public events outside five South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) provincial offices as part of its nationwide campaign to highlight what it views as television-news reporting bias. In a statement, spokesperson and MP Donald Lee said on Tuesday: ”The DA will erect posters and distribute stickers outside each provincial SABC office.”
South Africa’s population was estimated at approximately 47,4-million at mid-year 2006, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Tuesday. In addition, Stats SA said the estimated overall HIV-prevalence rate is approximately 11%, from less than 9% in 2001, with the HIV-positive population estimated at approximately 5,2-million.
Whip out your winter woollies, put on thick socks and boots and stock up on firewood — it is going to be cold and wet in the entire country this week. The South African Weather Service said on Tuesday a strong cold front was moving in over the interior with snow already being reported in the Western Cape.
Five years ago, in an article titled "Scent of the plague", published in the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> (June 29 2001), I summarised my experiences as a doctor working in a health service faced with the plague of HIV infection among children in South Africa. I wrote about how difficult it was to break the news of a deadly infection to the parents, whose likely HIV status was revealed by the illness of their baby.
A temporary ban on the movement of ostriches and other poultry in Mossel Bay and Riversdale has been lifted, the Western Cape department of agriculture said on Friday. However, this did not apply in areas between the N2 in the south and the Langeberg mountains in the north, and the R232 and R238, said provincial minister of agriculture Cobus Dowry.
The African National Congress accused the media on Friday of distorting its policies in a bid to sow racial division among South Africans — particularly residents of the Western Cape. Recent ”gross distortion” of the ANC’s position on equity and restitution had been no innocent mistake, the party claimed in a statement.
Malizole Diko, a Member of Parliament who defected from General Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement last year to form the United Independent Front, (UIF) died in the early hours of Friday morning. Colleagues said that he had died after a short illness in Cape Town and had been extremely ill in recent weeks.
A Spoornet engineer was questioned in the Paarl Regional Court on Thursday about a Metrorail passenger coach that smashed into a goods train near Muldersvlei three years ago, killing 10 people. Hennie Klopper, a mechanical engineer, was giving evidence in the culpable-homicide trial of the train driver.
Five young men have been gunned down in a massacre on the Cape Flats, Western Cape police said on Tuesday. Two men entered the back yard of a house in Langa’s Zone 4 shortly before midnight on Monday and opened fire on a group of 10 people, all of them teenage youths or young men, in a wooden hut there.
Hundreds of Western Cape Grade 10 pupils — guinea pigs for the new curriculum — failed their June exams, the Cape Argus reported on Monday. Its website said some schools reported a failure rate of up to 60%. This year’s Grade 10 was the first to tackle the revised curriculum, referred to as the Further Education and Training Band, and will be followed by grades 11 and 12.
Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin praised Eskom on Monday for returning the Koeberg nuclear power plant back into service on time. He also thanked the people of the Western Cape for participating in an energy-saving campaign, ministerial spokesperson Gaynor Kast said in a statement.
The developer of Stellenbosch’s upmarket De Zalze golf estate appeared briefly in Cape Town’s Bellville Regional Court on Monday in connection with fraud and theft charges involving bearer bonds worth over R11-million. Klaus Strauli, a Swiss national, had been formally arrested by the Scorpions at Cape Town International airport.
The grim state of public education in South Africa highlights the fact that — in spite of "pretentious rhetoric" about a national-democratic revolution and transformation — the African National Congress has failed to facilitate access to opportunity for most South Africans, says official opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon.
The African National Congress has condemned the killing of two police officers in Langa, Cape Town, on Wednesday, and called on anyone with information to come forward so that justice can be done. ”We hope the perpetrators of this crime will be brought to book and be removed from society,” ANC provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha said on Thursday.
The end of the marathon Roodefontein corruption trial came into sight on Wednesday as former Western Cape premier Peter Marais decided to exercise his right to silence. As the state and his co-accused, former Western Cape provincial minister of environment David Malatsi, closed their cases, Marais’s advocate Craig Webster asked for half an hour to consult his client.
Hundreds of ostriches are being culled following an outbreak of avian influenza near Mossel Bay, the Western Cape’s veterinary chief said on Wednesday. ”At least a couple of thousand will be culled,” said Dr James Kitching. He said the number is small — about the same number a single abattoir handles in a week.
Former Western Cape provincial minister of environment David Malatsi lied to a Scorpions investigator in order to save his own skin, the Bellville Regional Court was told on Tuesday. Malatsi — in the witness box for the fifth day in succession — was being questioned by prosecutor Bruce Morrison on a 234-page statement he gave to the Scorpions in 2003.
Avian influenza detected in poultry north-west of Mossel Bay is under control, the Department of Land Affairs and Agriculture said on Tuesday. ”The virus has been classified as type H5N2 which is not known to infect humans, unlike the H5N1 virus that has caused disease in humans in Asia, Europe and North Africa”, said spokesperson Nare Mabuela.
The government’s plan to establish a seventh regional electricity distributor (RED) to take care of the power-supply distribution for all non-metro municipalities may end up "fixing" non-existent problems, says the official opposition Democratic Alliance.
Whether or not there was enough water for the Roodefontein development should not have held up his department’s decision on its approval, former Western Cape environment provincial minister David Malatsi said on Thursday. He was testifying in the Bellville Regional Court, where he and former premier Peter Marais face corruption charges.