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/ 11 November 2005
The African National Congress government seems paranoid about disaffected minorities staging a counter-revolution, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday. ”The president seems to think that foreign-funded non-governmental organisations are out to undermine the government,” Leon said.
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/ 10 November 2005
Tensions in the tripartite alliance in the Western Cape have flared anew with a stinging rebuke in a letter published in the Cape Times on Thursday to Congress of South African Trade Unions provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich by the chairperson of the African National Congress in the province, James Ngculu.
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/ 9 November 2005
The African National Congress in the Western Cape has disciplined a member who fired shots in the air at a chaotic branch meeting in September, and accepted his protestations of loyalty to the provincial leadership. A disciplinary committee has sentenced Douglas Ndawonde to expulsion, but suspended the punishment for one year.
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/ 8 November 2005
South Africans should use water sparingly due to the drought in many parts of the country, Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Buyelwa Sonjica said on Tuesday. Indications from the South African Weather Service are that prospects for above-normal rainfall this season are not good.
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/ 8 November 2005
Luke Woodham’s self-described ”first kill” was his pet dog, Sparkle; a year later, in 1998, he murdered his mother and two schoolmates in Mississippi at age 17. Woodham was not the first serial killer to target animals and, since the 1970s, research by criminologists has found links between violence against humans and cruelty to animals.
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/ 8 November 2005
Entrepreneurial activity among most black South Africans is motivated by necessity and hampered by historical disadvantages. Black micro-businesses are most usually a case of one woman battling to survive. Or, when they are larger, they face a higher failure rate than would a white, Indian or coloured SMME because the entrepreneurs lack skills, experience or networks.
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/ 7 November 2005
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel and Western Cape Congress of South African Trade Unions regional secretary Tony Ehrenreich have taken each other on over the demands of the modern South African state — and how best to run the economy — in a new magazine, <i>Mindshift</i>.
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/ 4 November 2005
Treatment Action Campaign members demonstrated outside the office of the Medicines Control Council in Pretoria on Friday, calling on it to act on the ”illegal” clinical trials conducted by Mathias Rath. Vitamin entrepreneur Rath and his foundation have been involved in a legal battle with the TAC.
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/ 3 November 2005
Although fires raging through South Africa are being brought under control, the Working on Fire programme warned on Thursday morning that fire danger has increased in three provinces. It said that in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Gauteng the ”high orange” on the fire-danger rating index has risen to red.
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/ 3 November 2005
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has threatened to take legal action against vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath within days if the authorities do not move to halt his activities. The Rath Foundation advocates its vitamin products as a treatment for HIV/Aids. It claims anti-retrovirals are toxic.
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/ 3 November 2005
The Humansdorp fire department was still frantically answering telephone calls on Wednesday evening as blazes ran rampant through the southern part of the Eastern Cape. A spokesperson said the N2 highway, which was closed to traffic earlier on Wednesday and had vehicles backed up for kilometres, had been reopened.
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/ 2 November 2005
Large parts of the Eastern Cape are being evacuated in the path of runaway fires, the Working on Fire programme said on Wednesday morning. ”A fire is burning along the N2 highway towards Port Elizabeth near the Van Stadens River bridge,” spokesperson Evelyn Holtzhausen said. ”The fire is out of control.”
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/ 2 November 2005
A woman whose nose was bitten off by a seal on Sunday, will undergo reconstructive surgery on Thursday. ”I’m feeling alright,” Elsie van Tonder said on Tuesday from her bed in Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town. ”The doctors are going to reconstruct my nose on Thursday.”
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/ 2 November 2005
A number of fires in the Humansdorp area of the Eastern Cape were extinguished by 8.15pm on Tuesday, fire-department official Andrew Pietersen said. ”The Jeffrey’s Bay fire and the St Francis fire have been extinguished,” he said. Earlier, he said fires were ”jumping from one place to another”.
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/ 1 November 2005
A fire in the Humansdorp area of the Eastern Cape and three fires in the Tsitsikamma area were out of control on Monday night, Working on Fire (WOF) said. ”They are burning commercial timber and indigenous veld,” WOF spokesperson Val Charlton said at 7.30pm. Gale-force winds expected on Tuesday would fan the flames.
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/ 1 November 2005
When foreign Muslims, including from some conservative Muslim countries, visit South Africa, they are usually stunned that there are so many mosques with no women’s facilities. That some mosques do have women’s facilities does not placate them. And when visiting some mosques that accommodate women, they become despondent to see torn carpets in tiny rooms that pass off as ”women’s sections”.
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/ 28 October 2005
”There is total disregard for the well-being and safety of our people [in Khayelitsha] who are being used as guinea pigs,” declared Smuts Ngonyama, head of the presidency in the African National Congress. No, Ngonyama was not speaking about the activities of the Rath Foundation, which has been undermining the government’s HIV/Aids treatment programme.
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/ 27 October 2005
Aids activists on Thursday challenged Western Cape health MEC Pierre Uys to seek a court interdict against vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath, or even have him arrested. The call was made in a memorandum handed over at a demonstration by about 200 Treatment Action Campaign members outside Uys’s office in Cape Town.
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/ 27 October 2005
Two people narrowly escaped death on a Stellenbosch golf course when a Harvard aircraft made an emergency landing on the greens, News24 reported on Thursday. The accident happened on Wednesday afternoon on the De Zalze wine-estate golf course, near Cape Town in the Western Cape.
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/ 24 October 2005
Thousands of workers belonging to the country’s largest union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), have embarked on strike action in the Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal provinces to protest against issues such as job losses, casualisation and racism in the workplace.
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/ 22 October 2005
In just one week, police reported 15 murders in South Africa, with the most gruesome case being that of a North West father who wiped out his entire family. Inspector Thabo Makhafola said the man, from Madikwe’s Lethlakeng village in North West, had been a security guard at a mine in the area.
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/ 20 October 2005
Only a small number of Gauteng motorists on Thursday appeared to have heeded the government’s call to participate in Car-Free Day. Minister of Transport Jeff Radebe was walking and taking taxis in the Pretoria city centre on Thursday, raising awareness of Car-Free Day.
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/ 18 October 2005
Sixty-five government officials in the Western Cape will appear in court this week on charges relating to defrauding the social grant system. The Department of Social Development said it ”considers prosecuting these officials as a statement of determination to ensuring that only the legitimate and needy beneficiaries receive grants.”
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/ 17 October 2005
One of 11 accused in a case possibly linked to the kidnapping of a young boy in Ennerdale, Johannesburg, was allegedly subjected to ”shock treatment” in prison near Cape Town at the weekend. Defence counsel Leigh Thompson, for accused Vernon Noel Victor, told the Cape High Court Victor needed urgent medical attention.
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/ 14 October 2005
Western Cape African National Congress dissidents on Friday displayed soccer-style red cards to condemn the actions of provincial executive committee members during a protest at the ANC’s regional headquarters. The red and yellow cards targeted provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha and others.
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/ 14 October 2005
Mike van Graan asks if we can move on to real transformation, now that we have generally replaced white people with black people at the trough of public funds.
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/ 14 October 2005
Serendipity, coincidence, synchronism, eureka moments — these have garnished my life-track beyond all expectation. The most striking serendipitous occurrence of my student years marked my first visit to the cave I was subsequently to name Mwulu’s Cave.
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/ 13 October 2005
Thousands of children in Ravensmead in the Cape Town area are to be photographed and fingerprinted in a bid to curb child abductions, the Cape Argus website reported on Thursday. It said a campaign will begin soon at 17 schools and crèches in the area.
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/ 13 October 2005
A charge relating to allegations of racism has been laid by the Cape Bar Council against Cape Judge President John Hlophe, Beeld newspaper reported on Thursday. Hlophe was recently accused of calling a Cape Town lawyer Joshua Greeff a ”piece of white shit” and telling him to go back to The Netherlands.
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/ 13 October 2005
The Democratic Alliance has called on the Judicial Services Commission to intervene in the ongoing controversy over Cape Judge President John Hlophe. Hlophe was recently accused of calling a Cape Town lawyer a ”white shit” — a claim that he has denied.
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/ 12 October 2005
Ten-year-old Liam Aspeling, who was kidnapped in Ennerdale, south of Johannesburg, on Tuesday, has been found, a friend of the family said on Wednesday. The multimillion-rand hijacking trial in which Aspeling’s father is to testify for the state is scheduled to start in the Cape High Court on Monday.
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/ 12 October 2005
The chairperson of the General Council of the Bar, advocate Norman Arendse, on Wednesday denied being part of any conspiracy to discredit John Hlophe, Judge President of the Cape division. Media reports suggested Hlophe had deliberately tried to sabotage his fellow judge and colleague, Wilfred Thring.