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.
There had been nothing inappropriate about socialising with Italian Count Riccardo Agusta while his own department was deciding on Riccardo’s planned Roodefontein golf estate development, former Western Cape environment MEC David Malatsi said on Wednesday.
Violence will not stop the minibus taxi recapitalisation programme, the Department of Transport said on Thursday. ”No amount of threats and thuggery by a tiny group will influence our determination to proceed with the implementation of our policies and programmes,” spokesperson Collen Msibi said in a statement on Thursday.
A senior official in the Western Cape’s department of environmental affairs was on Wednesday accused of racism by corruption accused David Malatsi. Malatsi, a former environment and development planning minister in the province, was being cross-examined by prosecutor Bruce Morrison in the Bellville Regional Court.
Millionaire Italian developer Count Riccardo Agusta doled out donation cheques to senior New National Party members in the Western Cape government after they intervened on his behalf in the Roodefontein development, the Bellville Regional Court heard on Tuesday. This was in testimony from former Western Cape environment and development planning provincial minister David Malatsi.
Former Western Cape premier Peter Marais told his environment planning minister David Malatsi to make a ”political decision” on the Roodefontein golf-estate development if it was necessary, the Bellville Regional Court heard on Tuesday. He and Marais face corruption charges over payments totalling R400Â 000 to the New National Party in 2002, which the state claims were bribes.
South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance has announced a reshuffle of four key posts in its shadow cabinet, including the shifting of fiery health spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard to the safety and security portfolio. Kohler-Barnard takes over from Free State MP Roy Jankielsohn.
The South African Chamber of Business says although the announcement of a proposed fuel levy to be implemented in the Western Cape comes as no surprise, the timing of the announcement by the region’s Transport MEC is ”unfortunate.” The figure of the proposed fuel levy has not yet been announced, although sources have suggested figures of between 10 and 50 cents per litre.
The FF Plus said on Thursday that it would ask Finance Minister Trevor Manuel to investigate the constitutionality of an intended provincial fuel levy. The party’s minerals and energy spokesperson, Willie Spies, said he would ask Manuel to investigate whether the planned fuel levy for the Western Cape would be justifiable in terms of Section 228(2) of the Constitution.
A European Union ban on ostrich imports and meat from two Western Cape districts will not be devastating, the South African Ostrich Business Chamber (SAOBC) said on Thursday. ”It is the low season for ostrich consumption in Europe so most of the abattoirs are closed …, so the effect will not be [as] big as it was in 2004,” said Anton Kruger, chief executive of the SAOBC.
A probe has been ordered into the leaking of SMS messages over an apparent secret love affair between a married Western Cape provincial minister and a journalist, the Cape Times reported on Thursday. Provincial Premier Ebrahim Rasool said there had been ”several incidents of breaches of provincial government security” in the past few weeks.
The justice system is failing children because an important Bill that will protect the rights of children has virtually disappeared since 2003. This emerged on Wednesday at the Reducing Exploitative Child Labour in South Africa conference in Boksburg. ”The Child Justice Bill was the product of four years of work,” said Jacqui Gallinetti of the University of the Western Cape.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Wednesday condemned the proposed Western Cape fuel tax of between 10c and 50c a litre in addition to the current national levy. ”The effect of such a levy would be to move the greatest burden of this special tax onto the poor people,” Cosatu said in a statement.
Western Cape road users will soon have to pay a provincial fuel tax of between 10 and 50 cents a litre in addition to the current national levy, the media reports said on Wednesday. The money raised through the levy would be used to pay for the rehabilitation and upgrading of transport infrastructure and to develop a high quality public transport system.
Violence in Western Cape club rugby reared its head again when spectators, including a knife-wielding man, invaded a rugby field in Clanwilliam, the Argus reported on Tuesday. Its website said the fight broke out towards the end of the game between the Clanwilliam Rugby Club and the Delicious club of Clanwilliam on Saturday.
Speaking during the July update on the government’s programme of action for 2006, the second report back since the State of the Nation address, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said in Pretoria on Tuesday that all of the programmes of the economic and investment cluster were "well on track".
The National Prosecuting Authority on Monday started exhuming remains of eight Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) cadres who were killed in the apartheid era between the years 1984 and 1986 and buried as unidentified paupers at Mmabatho cemetery in the North West province.
A small outbreak of avian influenza was detected on an ostrich farm about 30km west of Mossel Bay in the Western Cape, the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs said on Monday. Preliminary surveillance indicated that the outbreak was probably limited to the single farm on which it was detected and which had been put under quarantine, the department added.
The government is developing an ambitious plan for every household in the country to use gas for its cooking and heating needs. The plan, which includes regulating the price of gas, foresees the development of special import facilities at the country’s harbours to ship in vast quantities of liquid petroleum gas from gas-rich countries such as Algeria.