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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
The Development Bank of Southern Africa has approved loans to the value of R25-billion over the past 10 years to finance development in the region. The bank, which describes itself as a financier, adviser and partner in development funding, estimates that since democracy its work has benefited four million households and created, with other funders, 527 874 jobs.
Police and soldiers are manning roadblocks in the Somerset East area of the Eastern Cape to enforce a quarantine following a suspected outbreak of avian influenza. Test results determining the nature of the virus are expected by the end of the week. A particular strain of the avian flu virus can be transmitted to humans.
Torrential rain on Thursday brought chaos to Cape Town, flooding shack areas and roads and causing major traffic snarl-ups. Several people were ferried to higher ground by boat from the aptly named River Club in Observatory when the nearby Liesbeeck River burst its banks. Informal settlements were also affected.
A basic income grant is affordable, sustainable and desirable, a coalition arguing for the adoption of such a scheme said on Thursday. The coalition told journalists at a press briefing at the Turffontein racecourse that giving every South African a basic income of R120 a month would cost between R10- and R24-billion a year.
Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool on Wednesday welcomed the provincial auditor general’s report into a R227 532 car-allowance overpayment to him, saying the findings are a vindication and manifestation of his commitment to transparency. However, the DA said the report raises two important questions.
A suspected outbreak of avian influenza (bird flu) in the Eastern Cape province has halted all movement of ostriches to the Western Cape until a confirmed diagnosis has been made regarding the cause of serious mortalities at three ostrich farms in the Cradock-Somerset East region of the Eastern Cape.
While the police and the government declined to comment on Wednesday on claims that two citizens held in Pakistan were plotting attacks on South African tourist destinations, the Democratic Alliance urged the authorities to keep the public properly informed of any real danger.
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The government needs to review its immigration policy, including possibly rewriting the Immigration Act, says Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula. ”There will be a need in the long term for government to look at a more holistic review of our immigration policy,” she said on Monday.
In a move to increases South Africa’s protected areas, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk has proclaimed more than 66 480ha of new land to be incorporated into the country’s national parks system. Three of the areas affected by the expansion fall within the Cape Floristic Kingdom.
The Democratic Alliance has called for a halt to the Western Cape’s multimillion-rand film city project, claiming that wrong decisions were ”deliberately made”. However premier Ebrahim Rasool’s office says due process was followed, and that anyone unhappy with what happened can launch a court challenge.
If you are inclined to bet on the weather, now is the time to buy shares in short-term insurer Mutual and Federal (M&F). A shining star in the Old Mutual camp, M&F announced enviable interim results this week — and gave ”benign weather” as the reason. ”In recent months, South Africa experienced no major weather events. This means that we have not had to pay out on damages associated with such events.”
More than half of the drivers on Eastern Cape roads do not have legal licences. Eastern Cape transport department spokesperson Tshepo Machaea said on Tuesday about 530 000 of roughly one million drivers in the province had either obtained fraudulent licences by bribing departmental officials or were carrying out-of-date licences.
Critics have likened KWV’s sale of a quarter of its shares to an empowerment consortium to filling rugby quotas with players from other sporting codes, and claim that instead of broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE), the deal "over-empowers" a select few in the black elite. The Food and Allied Workers’ Union says the Phetogo empowerment consortium is dominated by the "Lucky 14".
Although the economic powerhouse of Gauteng has only 1,4% of South Africa’s land area of 1,219-million square kilometres, it has 24% of the population aged between 25 and 59 years, Statistics South Africa said on Tuesday. It also announced that the life expectancy at birth in South Africa is forecast to be only 50,7 years next year.