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/ 24 January 2006
Voluntary counselling and testing services are meant to help HIV-positive people cope with the disease, but some counsellors are doing more harm than good, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal. NGOs and Aids activists in the province say many HIV-positive patients could live longer lives if provided with better information about the virus and their treatment options.
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/ 23 January 2006
Provincial housing ministers should not blame a lack of funds for slow delivery when they fail to spend their full budget allocation, the chairperson of Parliament’s finance select committee said on Monday. ”Don’t … plead poverty,” Tutu Ralane told the housing ministers of four provinces who reported on their spending.
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/ 22 January 2006
The African National Congress in the Western Cape and the Democratic Alliance in Pretoria reported on Saturday that both parties’ election posters were being removed. The DA filed charges against five people on Saturday afternoon for allegedly removing DA election posters in Centurion.
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/ 20 January 2006
Supporters of activist groups Khulumani and Jubilee South Africa are planning demonstrations in a last-ditch effort to get Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Bridgette Mabandla to withdraw an opposing affidavit in an apartheid-reparations appeal case due to be heard in the United States next week.
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/ 16 January 2006
Foreign and local experts meet later on Monday to help find the best course of action for repairs to Koeberg nuclear power station, which has been responsible for numerous recent power outages in the Western Cape. Discussions about repairs to one of two faulty generators would be on the agenda, said Carin de Villiers, spokesperson for the nuclear plant.
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/ 13 January 2006
Department of Health and blood-bank data does not reflect the HIV/Aids status of South Africa’s gay community, a Western Cape lobby group said on Friday in reaction to the South African National Blood Transfusion Service’s recent decision to exclude all sexually active homosexual men from donating blood.
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/ 13 January 2006
A British national is assisting the South African police with an investigation into the alleged rape of a teenager in Johannesburg, the British high commission in Pretoria confirmed. A Friday-afternoon edition of a Johannesburg daily newspaper identified the man as a son of a British diplomat in South Africa.
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/ 13 January 2006
When the Visdorp minstrels threatened to cancel their citywide retro-rave on Tweede Niewedjaar if the Western Cape government didn’t give them a squillion rand, Premier Ebrahim Rasool came down on them like a tonne of plastic tambourines. The province would ”not be held at gunpoint”, he said, a noble sentiment but one that suggests he hasn’t been mugged lately.
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/ 12 January 2006
As the disciplinary hearing of controversial Central Karoo municipal manager Truman Prince got under way on Wednesday, the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) Special Assignment team came under fire for refusing to become involved in the proceedings. Prince has pleaded not guilty to seven charges.
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/ 10 January 2006
Environmental group Earthlife Africa on Monday attacked power utility Eskom’s lack of clear identification and disclosure of the problems at South Africa’s only nuclear power station, Koeberg. Electricity supply in the Western Cape was disrupted four times in November last year — on November 11, 16, 24 and 25.
Doctor Fareed Abdullah on Monday denied he had been forced by the African National Congress to resign from one of the Western Cape’s top Aids-fighting posts, as alleged by the Democratic Alliance. Abdullah was responding to a statement by Robin Carlisle, DA spokesperson on Aids and opposition representative on the Provincial Aids Council.
President Thabo Mbeki launched the African National Congress’s election campaign in Cape Town on Sunday with promises of cleaner, more responsive and effective local government. The president repeated the promises in the ANC’s election manifesto, which was also launched at the rally attended by about 25 000 people.
The number of shack dwellings in South Africa rose from 1,45-million in 1996 to 2,14-million in 2003, according to Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu. That was 417 new shacks a day on average between 2001 and 2003 and 210 shacks per day on average in the five years between 1996 and 2001.
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress is ”confident” of winning the metropolitan city of Cape Town in March, the only metropolitan area in the country that eluded it electorally in the last municipal poll in 2000, says the party’s deputy secretary general, Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele.
The road death toll for December has risen to 1 215, the Department of Transport said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Collen Msibi said 512 of the fatalities were pedestrians, 414 were passengers and 289 were drivers. The figure is down from 1 234 reported in the same period last year.
Distell, South Africa’s largest listed wine producer, has launched the first wines under a new brand from its ground-breaking joint venture in the Gansbaai area of the Western Cape, called Lomond Wines. Started in 2000, the Lomond project was experimental, being situated in the southern-most area in South Africa to be planted with vines.
A ”lacklustre” performance by Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula and the ”disappearance from the radar” of National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi have left the Democratic Alliance wondering who is in charge of fighting crime, the party said in a statement on Tuesday.
The case of the 47-year-old handyman accused of killing a six-year-old Johannesburg boy in Plettenberg Bay was on Tuesday postponed to March 3 in the Knysna Magistrate’s Court. The court ordered that the man, known as Theuns Christian Olivier or Raymond Sinclair, be held at the Knysna correctional centre.
Road deaths during the Christmas holidays were at 1Â 162 by the end of December, the Department of Transport said on Monday. There was heavy traffic on the country’s main routes on Monday as holidaymakers returned home. Meanwhile, the bodies of five people who drowned after their car plunged into the Vaal River have been recovered.
Western Cape police suspect that the 47-year-old handyman accused of killing a six-year-old Johannesburg boy in Plettenberg Bay might not be South African. The accused, who was on Tuesday expected to appear in the Knysna Magistrate’s Court, goes by the names of Theuns Christian Olivier as well as Raymond Sinclair.
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/ 28 December 2005
The death toll on South Africa’s roads over the holiday season has reached 965, the Department of Transport said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Collen Msibi said 411 of the casualties were pedestrians and 88 were children under 14. Msibi said that although ”shocking”, the figure was down from the 1 140 deaths over the same period last year.
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/ 28 December 2005
Bus subsidies cost the national Transport Department R2,17-billion in 2003/04, according to the department’s annual report for 2005. The report, tabled in Parliament, noted that Gauteng received the largest cut of the nine provinces — with R788-million — followed by KwaZulu-Natal with R452-million. The Western Cape received R380-million.
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/ 21 December 2005
Western Cape fruit farmers are over the worst of their diesel crisis, Agri WesCape chief executive Carl Opperman said on Wednesday. ”At the moment, there is diesel trickling in to the point where we can keep the [industry] going,” he said. ”The worst is over if the flow of diesel continues to increase.”
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/ 20 December 2005
South Africa’s Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) company on Tuesday announced that it has signed a R17,5-million contract with United States group Westinghouse. The contract is for the basic design of automation safety sub-systems for the PBMR’s demonstration power plant at Koeberg in the Western Cape.
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/ 19 December 2005
Since the beginning of December, 560 people have been killed on South African roads — mostly due to drunken driving, driver fatigue and speeding. At about the same time last year, 726 road deaths had been reported. Road accidents have also decreased, from 619 up to this time in December 2004 to 466 thus far.
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/ 19 December 2005
A massive effort is under way to provide fuel to the two sectors most in need — the deciduous fruit farmers in the Western Cape and the summer rainfall farmers of Gauteng, Mpumalanga, the Free State and North West — the South African Petroleum Industry Association (Sapia) said on Monday.
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/ 14 December 2005
A Cape Town regional magistrate on Wednesday rejected a bid by former Western Cape premier Peter Marais and co-accused David Malatsi for their discharge on two counts of corruption totalling R400 000. Magistrate Andre le Grange did, however, discharge Malatsi on a third corruption count that he alone faced.
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/ 13 December 2005
A call for members of the public not to panic over fuel shortages was made by Minister of Minerals and Energy Lindiwe Hendricks in the National Assembly on Tuesday morning. In Gauteng, the problem has been exacerbated by panic buying among motorists who do not even need to fill up with fuel, she said.
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/ 12 December 2005
As motorists struggled to find petrol on Monday, the government denied any fuel shortages inland. The situation inland constituted ”an inconvenience rather than a crisis”, and motorists should not wait for their tanks to empty before filling up, Minerals and Energy Minister Lindiwe Hendricks told reporters in Pretoria.
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/ 12 December 2005
The state has failed to prove its corruption case against former Western Cape premier Peter Marais, his lawyer told the Bellville Regional Court on Monday when applying for his client’s discharge. Marais’s co-accused, former Western Cape environment minister David Malatsi, has also applied for his discharge.
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/ 12 December 2005
Satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys, whose alter ego is Evita Bezuidenhout, has sent a Christmas message to South Africa and President Thabo Mbeki. He has played on the words of the Lord’s Prayer in what he described as a festive-season message of good hope for South Africa.
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/ 10 December 2005
A 49-year-old man arrested in connection with murders and rapes on farms around Philippi in the Western Cape was released on Friday. No evidence could link the man to the incidents, said police spokesperson Captain Elliot Sinyangana. ”He could, however, be re-arrested if new evidence emerges,” he said.