Those involved in lawful protests have nothing to fear from an intelligence probe into such actions, Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils said on Monday. ”Anybody who transgresses the laws of the country and foments violence, then obviously that is a criminal offence and that is to be dealt with,” he told SAFM.
A group of disgruntled Cape fishermen spent the whole of Sunday night chained to Parliament’s gates in a protest against fishing policies. The fishermen contend that the proposed new fishing policies unveiled recently by the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, amounted to ”subtle genocide”.
The disciplinary hearing of disgraced Beaufort West politician Truman Prince will resume on Sunday morning when the African National Congress will call its last two witnesses to testify. The hearing arises from a documentary on SABC3 on child prostitution that showed Prince flirting with under-age girls.
The Cape Town municipality has given rugby boss Brian van Rooyen’s company another chance despite its role in a recent fiasco with traffic fines, the Cape Times website reported on Thursday. It said the municipality had decided to re-assess its contract with Labat Traffic Solutions only at the end of August.
In the high-stakes nuclear game, will a radioactive waste-management policy be foisted on an unsuspecting public or will ”transparency, consultation and stakeholder participation” be a reality? A draft policy containing those words remains ungazetted while the government looks at prototype pebble-bed nuclear reactors for commercial use.
Western Cape police used teargas, rubber bullets and stun grenades on Wednesday morning to break up a group of protesters in Blackheath, Cape Town. Captain Billy Jones said police warned the group of about 600 protesters to disperse but they refused. He said the police then opened fire.
The spiralling use of the drug ”tik” in South Africa, especially among the youth, came under the spotlight in Parliament on Tuesday, with Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour vowing to ”break the back” of those peddling the deadly substance. He also spoke about the issues of prison gangs and overcrowding.
Jacques Kallis was voted the 2004 Sportsman of the Year for the Western Cape Sports Writers’ Association. Kallis was presented with the trophy by Nick Mallet at a function held at the Newlands cricket stadium on Monday evening. The woman’s award went to Natalie du Toit for her performance at the Paralympic Games held in Athens.
Beleaguered clothing manufacturer Rex Trueform said on Tuesday that a black economic empowerment (BEE) consortium has expressed a willingness to offer attractive terms to lease its Salt River factory, which faces closure. The company announced in March that the Salt River factory was no longer viable.
More and more people are committing family killings because they are "catching", Family and Life Centre director Liz Dooley said on Monday. Her comments follow a bloody fortnight for some South African families. Just over the weekend, 15 people died when men opened fire on their families.
The Western Cape education minister was not interfering with the language policy of Mikro Primary School, the Supreme Court of Appeal was told on Monday. The Mikro school governing body refused to admit several grade-one pupils, even when the department directed it to do so, saying admitting the pupils would be against its language policy.
Truman Prince, the embattled central Karoo district municipal manager, has pleaded not guilty to charges of bringing the African National Congress into disrepute, SABC radio news reported on Wednesday. Prince’s disciplinary hearing began in Cape Town on Wednesday night, chaired by attorney Peter Williams.
An apartheid-era law is causing headaches for a committee set up to investigate the underlying reasons for instability and conflict in the Western Cape minibus taxi industry. The ”problematic area” relates to Ordinance 13 of 1978, which stipulates that the proceedings of such committees should not be open to the public.
A woman was found shot dead and three children died in a fire after an attack on their Mitchells Plain home on Wednesday, Western Cape police said. An unknown number of people allegedly set the house in Chrysler Street, Beacon Valley, on fire after trying to gain entry to it at about 4am.
A black economic empowerment (BEE) consortium is to be set up in a bid to save the embattled Rex Trueform clothing company, Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool said on Tuesday. This follows talks between textile-factory owners and trade-union leaders on ways to avert the closure of a Rex Trueform plant outside Cape Town.
An off-duty police officer allegedly killed five relatives, including two four-year-old twin girls, in a bloody killing spree in the Cape Town area on Tuesday night, police said. The 48-year-old inspector, who had taken leave, shot each of his victims in the head, execution-style, said a Western Cape police spokesperson.
The impact of climate change on Africa in 30 to 40 years will be as significant as that of malaria and Aids, the chief scientific adviser to the British government said in Johannesburg on Monday. Sir David King is in the country to promote Zero Carbon City, the British Council’s awareness campaign on global warming.
The court case against vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath is a distraction from the real work of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), its national chairperson Zackie Achmat, said on Friday. Earlier, Rath’s lawyer argued Rath should have a chance to reply to ”vilifying statements” Achmat and the TAC made against him in their papers.
It seems the coffers of the Western Cape government haven’t been entirely flattened by the publicly funded drol-spoeging contest between Premier Ebrahim Rasool and pretender to his throne, Mcebisi Skwatsha. No, there’s just enough in the kitty to launch an ad campaign intended to make the world think differently about the province that launched the Great Trek, among other things.
The owners of the hake trawler that collided with a container vessel killing 14 people near Port Elizabeth on Sunday are still investigating ways to reach the trawler with the aim of recovering bodies that might be trapped in the wreckage. This is according to a statement issued on Tuesday by the Mossel Bay municipality.
Eskom has lit up the night, albeit with only a ”dim flicker”, at a farm dam in the Western Cape’s Overberg in a bid to stop blue cranes flying into nearby power lines. The power lines, on the farm Hillside near Caledon, have been responsible for the deaths of at least 30 of the elegant birds in the past eight years.
The Department of Correctional Services says it is sure an amicable solution will be found to the issue of a Muslim staffer suspended for wearing a headscarf. A spokesperson said on Tuesday that the department’s Western Cape office has been instructed to meet with the suspended staffer and Worcester prison management.
The time has come to get out the winter woolies because very cold conditions and snow is expected over the Northern and Western Cape this coming weekend. The South African Weather Service said that very cold and windy conditions are expected over the high ground of the Northern and Western Cape on Friday, with rain over the Western Cape and the western escarpment of the Northern Cape.
South Africa will pay dearly for global industrialisation and other activities that generate greenhouse gases, a new study revealed on Thursday. A report by the South African National Biodiversity Institute, released in Cape Town, warns that rising temperatures will change the face of the country by 2050.
Taxi owners cautiously welcomed a new government code unveiled on Thursday for minimum wages and basic employment conditions in the industry. Workers embraced the announcement and warned employers that attempts to violate or undermine the initiative will face ”vigorous challenge”.
Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour’s plan to reduce the sentence of some prisoners could free ”potentially violent” individuals, the Democratic Alliance said on Wednesday. At a Freedom Day rally in George in the Western Cape, Balfour said categories of prisoners that qualified for the reduction have been ”carefully identified”.
The Western Cape’s education budget has risen by 10% to R6,5-billion, with the extra money to go to ”human capital”, provincial education minister Cameron Dugmore said on Tuesday. Cameron, addressing the provincial legislature during his budget speech, reflected on past achievements and future challenges.
Horses are dying in their hundreds from an outbreak of African horse sickness and the problem is worsening, the Cape Times website reported on Tuesday. It said 586 horses in KwaZulu-Natal’s Midlands area and two horses in the Western Cape had died of the disease in the past two months.
Western Cape local government minister Marius Fransman has instructed the mayor of the central Karoo District Council to suspend Beaufort West municipal manager Truman Prince immediately. Prince is facing charges of public violence, crimen injuria and assault following incidents in the past two weeks.
The official opposition Democratic Alliance on Friday threw its support behind "the pyjama protest" action taken by South African nurses over their uniform allowances. DA spokesperson Diane Kohler Barnard said that the allowances in all provinces are far too low to actually buy uniforms.
Growing coloured perceptions of an African threat on the jobs and housing fronts in the Western Cape have been thrown into relief by new research on race relations in the province. Tensions between black and coloured groups ebb and flow with pressure on social and economic resources, and the politics that plays on inter-group competition.
The first snow of winter has dusted peaks in the Western Cape. Hex River valley resident Andries Brown said that in the wake of the cold front that moved in on Tuesday, the Matroosberg had a fair coating of snow. Above Tulbagh, there was light snow on the Groot Winterhoek peak on Tuesday.