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/ 24 September 2004
Twice a year the Chrissiesmeer shop owners put up signs on their doors that say, "Gone Frogging". Instead of preparing for World Tourism Day on September 27 by publishing a set of platitudes about the most prominent places to visit, we decided to abide by the spirit of these intrepid merchants and prepare a portfolio of the country’s more unpredictable and out-of-the-ordinary travel destinations.
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/ 21 September 2004
The madness of the floor-crossing period for municipal government councillors is over and once again the ruling African National Congress has snatched up swathes of support from the opposition. In the period of September 1 to 15, it reaped 326 councillors and only lost four to the opposition — two of them to Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats.
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/ 21 September 2004
Mahatma Gandhi’s iron-fisted control over the life of his son is the focus of a newly released book in South Africa, written by his great-granddaughter. Controversially titled Gandhi’s Prisoner? The Life of Gandhi’s Son, Manilal, the 400-page book released last week is written by Uma Dhuphelia-Mesthrie and explores the Gandhi family’s early years in South Africa in the early 1900s.
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/ 21 September 2004
Aggravated robbery was the only violent crime to show an increase over the past two financial years, national police commissioner Jackie Selebi announced on Monday. Murders dropped by 9,9%, attempted murder by 17,8%, serious assault by 4,3%, common assault by 2,6% and common robbery by 7,8%, he told reporters in
Pretoria.
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/ 16 September 2004
The jury was out on the effectiveness of Thursday’s public-service strike in the Western Cape as unions claimed a massive turnout while the provincial government sought to downplay its impact. In Cape Town, police estimated about 17 000 strikers snaked their way through the city.
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/ 16 September 2004
Congress of South African Trade Unions secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi has called on public servants to stay home on Monday and Tuesday next week. As Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi arrived to address a massive protesting crowd in Pretoria, Vavi told the public servants the department was robbing them.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=122277&t=1">Strikers are ‘gatvol'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=122266">How strike will impact on economy</a>
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/ 16 September 2004
There’s nothing like patting yourself on the back (something Lemmer has given up doing as it puts his spine out of place) when no one else is willing to hand you the kudos. The African National Congress Premier of the Western Cape placed prominent advertisements in newspapers to mark the first 100 days of his government elected in April.
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/ 15 September 2004
Black economic empowerment company Akani Leisure Investments has taken over the Halcyon Hotels Group — which includes in its portfolio the prestigious Bay hotel and Blues restaurant in Camps Bay. The acquisition represents the first major empowerment transaction at the top end of the Western Cape hospitality industry.
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/ 13 September 2004
The department of health is being taken to court again by Aids pressure group the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which is demanding the department release its detailed anti-retroviral rollout programme. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has already filed notice of her intention to oppose it.
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/ 13 September 2004
Legendary South African communist and trade unionist, Ray Simons, died in Cape Town on Sunday night, the SA Communist Party said in a statement. Simons was born Rachel Alexander in Latvia in 1914. When she came to South Africa at the age of fifteen she was already a political militant, SACP spokesperson Mazibuko Jara said in the statement received in Johannesburg.
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/ 10 September 2004
Beer giant South African Breweries (SAB) says its lawyers are considering whether to appeal a Labour Court judgement that it wrongly dismissed 115 workers in 2001. The announcement was made on Friday to a group of about 40 of the workers who gathered at the gates of the company’s brewery in Newlands, Cape Town, demanding to be taken back into service.
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/ 10 September 2004
Like many South Africans I was devastated by the news that a baker’s dozen of our most respected senior politicians have been accused of not revealing to Parliament the full details of their accumulated prosperities. ”The MPs who tried to cover their assets”, jibed the front-page headline in this very paper in a patently clear attempt to hide terrible and hurtful slander behind subtle wordplay.
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/ 9 September 2004
Women in labour so intoxicated they do not know they are giving birth, children fed alcohol to keep them quiet, and low grade wine cheaper than bread. These are realities in South Africa, the country with the worst foetal alcohol syndrome in the world.
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/ 9 September 2004
When examining the Fair Trade movement it is important first to understand the concept of social consciousness. Becoming socially conscious does not require a paradigm shift in lifestyle — joining a commune, hugging trees or lying down in front of bulldozers. What it does require is lateral thinking and that you ask a few earnest questions about the products you buy, and, in this case, the places you go to on holiday.
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/ 8 September 2004
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon’s remarks about Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel during the 2004 election campaign did not constitute hate speech, the South African Human Rights Commission said on Wednesday. ”Mr Leon did not suggest in anyway that certain people or segments of the population be subjected to hatred.”
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/ 5 September 2004
A total of 5 138 firearms, mostly illegal have been destroyed during an ongoing firearm operation since last year in the Western Cape. Police spokesperson Superintendent Riaan Pool said the ongoing operation started on September 2003 and has seen about 967 people being arrested for possession of illegal firearms.
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/ 4 September 2004
A media briefing called by the Independent Democrats (ID) to welcome eight new councillors into its ranks turned into a public spat with members of the Democratic Alliance (DA). ID Leader Patricia de Lille lost her temper when DA members repeatedly questioned her about her party’s policies.
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/ 2 September 2004
Twenty dams will be built over the next 20 years at the cost of R21-billion, Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said in Cape Town on Wednesday. Addressing the media at a post-Cabinet briefing, Sonjica said the Cabinet had approved South Africa’s first national water resource strategy, which would ensure that ”we use our nation’s limited water resources to achieve a better life for all South Africans”.
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/ 1 September 2004
Unjustified complaints about delays in the approval process of the controversial Roodefontein golf estate development made former Western Cape environmental director Ingrid Coetzee feel like she was being blackmailed, she told the Bellville Regional Court on Wednesday where she was under cross-examination for a second day.
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/ 1 September 2004
The Independent Democrats welcomed 18 municipal councillors — mainly from the New National Party — to its ranks on Wednesday, the first day of the two-week period for councillors to change parties without losing their seats. Former NNP Cape Town councillor David Sassman said the NNP ”sold out to the highest bidder”.
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/ 1 September 2004
Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille has sent out 6Â 500 SMSes to councillors across the country urging them to defect to her party, according to one of her MPs, Avril Harding. The defection window starts for municipal councillors runs until September 15.
Local councillors in the Western Cape claim they are victims of ”widescale intimidation” as the opportunity for them to cross the floor without losing their seats approaches. A Democratic Alliance councillor ”has 24-hour protection following [unspecified] threats. He is not sleeping at his own place.”
While schools are under pressure to distribute condoms at schools, not one of the 12 African countries represented at a high-level meeting in Durban is doing so and most education officials felt this would be inappropriate. A number felt that schools should nonetheless help sexually active secondary-school students to get access to condoms.
The head of a suspected mercenary recruitment agency, one other man and a two women were released by the Scorpions in Cape Town on Thursday after being questioned about possibly illegal military activity. A spokesperson for the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions said the investigation is not over.
Four men detained in a raid on a suspected mercenary recruitment centre in Cape Town on Wednesday are being questioned by the Scorpions about possible illegal military activity. National Directorate of Public Prosecutions spokesperson Sipho Ngwema said on Thursday the Scorpions in the Western Cape had raided the offices of International Intelligence Risk Management in Parow. They took possession of two computers, files and stationery.
Former Western Cape premier Peter Marais was let off the hook in the Cape High Court on Wednesday on a sexual harassment civil claim brought against him by former provincial social services minister Freda Adams. Adams had claimed a total of R2 421 342 from Marais for sexual harassment and defamation.
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk on Tuesday gave an undertaking to sceptical representatives of the Western Cape fishing industry that he will ensure fishing quotas are allocated in an open and honest way. He was addressing several hundred members of the fishing community.
A summons for R80 000 in respect of outstanding legal fees has added to the woes of former Western Cape Environmental Affairs and Tourism MEC David Mickey Malatsi, who is on trial in the Bellville Regional Court on corruption, theft and fraud charges. He lamented the fact in court on Monday, when his trial resumed before magistrate Andre le Grange.
Former South African president FW de Klerk has relinquished his New National Party membership saying the party had gone too far in merging with the ruling African National Congress. ”I am not considering joining the ANC and shall decide in due course for what party I shall vote,” he said.
The council of Cape Town’s Peninsula Technikon has approved a severance package ”not exceeding” R2,3-million for vice-chancellor professor Brian Figaji. However the National Health and Allied Workers Union in the Western Cape has called on the national education ministry to intervene to reverse the council decision, which it says sets a bad precedent and is procedurally flawed.
A group of youngsters brought a hush to Parliament chamber this week when they spoke about their lives of poverty and hardship and how they think the Children’s Bill could create a happier future for them. They call themselves Dikwankwetla, meaning heroes, and this is how they see themselves in the face of the Aids epidemic.
The party that built apartheid and turned South Africa into a pariah State completed its march to oblivion on Saturday by deciding to merge with its one-time nemesis, the African National Congress. The New National Party, heir of a mighty movement that jailed Nelson Mandela and built nuclear bombs, said its shrunken membership would dissolve and fight future elections under the banner of the black ruling party.
FF+: Don’t join the ANC, join us