(AL Jazeera 09/04/13)
The 95-year-old anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela is receiving intensive care for a respiratory illness at his Johannesburg home where he returned on Sunday after 86 days in a Pretoria hospital. Mandela's home has been reconfigured for the treatment and he receives the same level of intensive care from doctors and nurses back home. The South African government has said he could be taken back to hospital if there are health conditions that warrant another admission. "It's going to be a difficult process, he has a lot factors stacked up against him," said Elvis Irusen, who heads the department of Pulmonology at the University of Stellenbosch. Irusen said chances were high that Mandela is on a ventilator to aid his breathing...
(Reuters (Eng) 09/04/13)
JOHANNESBURG | Wed Sep 4, 2013 (Reuters) - South Africa's main mining union said on Wednesday it had offered to lower its wage increase demands to gold companies, raising hopes of a possible compromise that could limit the duration of a strike that has already hit producers. The stoppage over a wage dispute in South Africa's gold industry called by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) began at the evening shift late on Tuesday, with many miners refusing to go underground, producers said. Production at 17 of the 23 mines currently in negotiations was either partially or severely affected, the Chamber of Mines said. NUM had offered the chamber, which negotiates on behalf of gold companies, a more flexible position,...
(AFP (eng) 09/04/13)
JOHANNESBURG, September 4, 2013 (AFP) - South Africa's gold mining strike entered its second day on Wednesday with no further wage talks planned between unions and the employers, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said. "The strike is going on. We have not been invited to new talks to discuss our demands," said NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka. The NUM, which represents all of the striking miners, dismissed reports that it had scaled down its demand to increase wages by at least 60 percent to only 10 percent. "The NUM has not settled for a 10 percent. That is not true, our demand stands, but we are open to negotiations," said Seshoka. But Seshoka told local media that the union was...
(AL Jazeera 09/04/13)
South Africans welcome ex-president's discharge from hospital, but he faces long and uncertain road to recovery. The 95-year-old anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela is receiving intensive care for a respiratory illness at his Johannesburg home where he returned on Sunday after 86 days in a Pretoria hospital. Mandela's home has been reconfigured for the treatment and he receives the same level of intensive care from doctors and nurses back home. The South African government has said he could be taken back to hospital if there are health conditions that warrant another admission. "It's going to be a difficult process, he has a lot factors stacked up against him," said Elvis Irusen, who heads the department of Pulmonology at the University of...
(Zambia Daily mail 09/04/13)
For Jacob Makambwe, trade is what earns him bread and butter for his family of six. Mr Makambwe, 38, lives in Lusaka, but trades in any part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) where he finds business. He travels across borders, sometimes via Chirundu, Beit Bridge, Mwami or Nakonde-Tunduma ports. Currently, he has ordered 10,000 bags of soya beans from Malawi, which he hopes to bring into Zambia where demand for the product is high. South Africa, though is one of his regular destinations for orders and deliveries, it being the economic hub of the region. However, he feels doing business in SADC is not as easy as per commitment of regional leaders at their annual summits. Free movement...
(Reuters (Eng) 09/03/13)
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 3 (Reuters) - A strike in South Africa's gold mines began on Tuesday with some workers failing to go underground for the evening shift, despite an appeal by President Jacob Zuma for a solution to avert a stoppage that will hurt Africa's largest economy. "It has officially started. There are people who have not gone underground," Charmane Russell, a spokeswoman for gold producers grouped in the Chamber of Mines, told Reuters. She said it was too early to give details of how many workers were supporting the strike over wages called by the country's main mining union, NUM, or which specific mines were affected. The stoppage was called by the National Union of Mineworkers, which represents two thirds...
(AFP (eng) 09/03/13)
CAPE TOWN, September 3, 2013 (AFP) - A South African court on Tuesday jailed a serial killer to 25 life terms after he confessed to murdering 20 women and children and six rapes. Bulelani Mabhayi was convicted of murdering his victims with an axe or cleaver after breaking into their homes in a rural Eastern Cape village, in a three-year killing spree from 2007. His oldest murder victim was a 79-year-old woman and the youngest was a 14-month-old baby. "He confessed to everything that we charged him with," said Luxolo Tyali, spokesman for South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority. "We charged him with 20 counts of murder, six counts of rape, and 10 counts of house breaking with intent to commit...
(Haaretz 09/03/13)
Last week’s announcement that an agreement had been reached with an African country, later identified as Uganda, to accept African migrants from Israel was not only premature but far too optimistic in terms of the number of people likely to be involved, a senior government official said Monday. Haaretz has learned that the contacts with Uganda relate to the absorption of only a few hundred migrants, so even if an agreement is successfully concluded, its influence will be limited. According to the Population, Immigration and Border Authority, some 54,000 African migrants are now living in Israel, more than 90 percent of them Eritrean and Sudanese nationals. The initial announcement about an agreement with Uganda was made last week by Interior...
(Reuters (Eng) 09/03/13)
PRETORIA, Sept 3 (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday appealed to unions and companies in the gold industry to avoid an imminent strike that could seriously damage Africa's largest economy, force mine closures and cost thousands of jobs. Gold miners were set to strike for higher pay from Tuesday, after talks between unions and companies broke down last week. Labour unrest since last year has left more than 50 people dead and put renewed pressure on Zuma ahead of elections next year. The rand last week slid to a four-year low. With stoppages in auto and building sectors already hitting an economy suffering from slow growth and unemployment at 25 percent, strikes could cripple an industry that...
(Voice of America 09/03/13)
PRETORIA — Nelson Mandela's return home after nearly three months in hospital shows the fragile health of anti-apartheid hero has made some improvement, President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday. Zuma also told a news conference that the 95-year-old former South African president remained in a critical but stable condition and was responding to treatment. Mandela returned to his Johannesburg home on Sunday after spending 87 days in a Pretoria hospital for a recurring lung infection, a legacy of the nearly three decades he spent in jail as a political prisoner under apartheid. “We feel really good that he reached a point where the doctors who were treating him felt he could now leave the hospital to his home, which now...
(Reuters (Eng) 09/03/13)
PRETORIA | Tue Sep 3, (Reuters) - South Africa's mining minister Susan Shabangu said on Tuesday it was possible to avoid job cuts at Anglo American Platinum. The world's top platinum producer, also known as Amplats, said at the end of August it would cut about 4,800 jobs, laying off 3,300 workers and paying off the rest. It will redeploy 1,600 more. "In fact, the latest I am told is about a thousand, so it's quite clear we might even be able to avoid any retrenchments without impacting negatively on the performance of the company," Shabangu said at a presidential briefing.
(Voice of America 09/03/13)
The General-Secretary of South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) says members of the group will begin a strike Tuesday to press home their demands for better living conditions. “The strike ignited because the employers failed to respond to the reasonable demands submitted by the National Union of Mineworkers on behalf of its workers, among others, it is the recognition of the difficult underground environment it cannot be compared with the hospitality industry,” said NUM General-Secretary Frans Baleni. Baleni says mine employers have refused to meet workers’ demands, despite repeated appeals. Baleni’s comments came after Anglo Platinum Mines announced it will begin retrenching about 3,000 of its workers, beginning Tuesday. The workers are demanding about 60 percent pay increase, but...
(AFP (eng) 09/03/13)
JOHANNESBURG, September 3, 2013 (AFP) - Tens of thousands of gold miners are set to go on strike Tuesday after wage talks broke down, threatening to cost millions of dollars in lost output in the troubled sector. Powerful labour group the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) -- which represents the bulk of 120,000 workers affected -- called for stoppages following its members' rejection of a 6.5 percent wage hike last week. NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka said early Tuesday that the strike would kick off on the 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) shift. "We will go until Christmas," he told AFP. The gold sector stands to lose 761 kilogrammes in production each day, worth around $34 million, gold industry spokeswoman Charmane Russell...
(Voice of America 09/03/13)
JOHANNESBURG — Journalists and South Africans have flocked to former South African president Nelson Mandela’s home in Johannesburg following his release Sunday from a Pretoria hospital. Mandela spent 85 days there after being admitted on June 8 for a recurring lung infection. While many South Africans are breathing a sigh of relief, some have questioned why the world icon was released despite the fact that his condition remains critical and at times unstable. Since Sundays’ announcement that the 95-year-old former president was allowed to return home from the Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria, social media have been flooded with congratulatory messages, and the story has made international headlines. The media that was entrenched for months outside the hospital now has...
(Reuters (Eng) 09/03/13)
PRETORIA | Tue Sep 3, 2013 (Reuters) - A protracted strike in South Africa's gold industry would harm Africa's largest economy and the government is ready to intervene to bring parties together, the mining minister said on Tuesday. Gold miners were set to strike for higher pay from Tuesday, after talks between unions and companies broke down last week. A wave of strikes sweeping South Africa has sent the rand to four year lows and raised worries of slowing growth. With stoppages in the auto industry and the construction sector already sapping the struggling economy, shutting gold mines could cripple an industry that has produced a third of the world's bullion but is now in rapid decline. "If indeed we...
(Voice of America 09/03/13)
ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia’s youngest opposition party, the Blue Party, says it will try again to hold a demonstration against the government. The party had planned to hold a protest this past weekend, but was stopped when more than 100 members were arrested. The Blue Party held a successful demonstration against the government in June, Ethiopia's first anti-government protest in eight years. The party planned to hold another one on Sunday. The protest never materialized, however, after police raided the party office the day before, arresting more than 100 party members. The party says police also beat party members and confiscated equipment. Blue Party Chairman Yilkal Getnet said all arrested members were released, but the party will go to court...
(BBC News Africa 09/03/13)
The origins of human tuberculosis have been traced back to hunter-gatherer groups in Africa 70,000 years ago, an international team of scientists say. The research goes against common belief that TB originated in animals only 10,000 years ago and spread to humans. The work, published in Nature Genetics, outlines the strong relationship between the evolutionary history of both humans and TB. The disease causes more than one million deaths every year. Previous research has indicated that human TB originated about 10,000 years ago in Africa during the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT), when the human population was expanding and agriculture was becoming prominent. Researchers combined geographic and genetic data from 259 strains of TB to reconstruct its evolutionary history and compare...
(Bloomberg 09/03/13)
China’s smallest oil imports from West Africa in at least two years are curbing demand for tankers on the third-longest trade route, prolonging the worst rates in more than a decade for Frontline Ltd. and other owners. Chinese refiners will buy 28 percent less West African crude this month than a year earlier, the least in data starting in August 2011, according to loading plans and a Bloomberg News survey of eight traders. Shares of Frontline, which operates 32 very large crude carriers, will drop 38 percent in 12 months, the average of 14 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg shows. Those of Euronav SA, with 13 supertankers in its fleet, will retreat 24 percent, the forecasts show. Tanker owners are...
(AFP (eng) 09/02/13)
South Africa's peace icon Nelson Mandela is facing a long and uncertain road to recovery, despite his return home from nearly three months in hospital, medical experts said on Monday. The 95-year-old anti-apartheid hero is receiving intensive care for a respiratory illness at his Johannesburg home where he returned Sunday after 86 days in a Pretoria hospital. "It's going to be a difficult process, he has a lot factors stacked up against him," said Elvis Irusen, who heads the department of Pulmonology at the University of Stellenbosch. Mandela, he added, also has a long history of pulmonary illness to overcome, and his advanced years will make that recovery even more difficult. "It does not look good," said Irusen. Details of...
(AFP (eng) 09/02/13)
Industrial action in South Africa paralysed construction and automotive sectors on Monday, unions and employers said, but tens of thousands of petrol attendants delayed a strike. About 72,000 workers who serve petrol at fuel stations said they would have further talks before stoppages that are likely to hit consumers hard, according to union Numsa. "We are having talks with employers on Wednesday and Thursday. If nothing comes from those talks, the strike will begin the 9th of September," said Numsa spokesman Castro Ngobese. Meanwhile cross-sector stoppages continued. Mass strikes in the construction industry continued to hold up work across Africa's largest economy after over 45,000 downed tools last week, according to an industry spokeswoman. "Between 39 and 55 percent of...