"School van hit by train in South Africa; nine children dead, five are injured" by Associated Press | August 26, 2010
JOHANNESBURG — A driver taking children to school went around a closed railroad crossing gate yesterday, and the van was hit by a train, killing at least nine students and injuring five others, police and witnesses said.
Parents sobbed at the scene as grieving families stood near the smashed van that had been transporting 14 children at the time of the collision in the Blackheath area of Cape Town.
Colonel Billy Jones, Cape Town police spokesman, said three girls and six boys were killed....
Some parents were so upset they were unable to walk. Most of the parents were taken to a house for trauma counseling....
--more--""Victim of ’06 attack killed in S. Africa crash" by Associated Press | August 28, 2010
JOHANNESBURG — A South African girl who survived a criminal attack that shocked the nation was among those killed when a train hit a school van this week, a family spokesman said yesterday.
Liesel Augis was only 6 years old when she was raped, beaten unconscious with a brick, and thrown into a fire by a family friend in 2006. She survived and became known as “Little Rock’’ because of her strength and resilience.
Some friend!
On Wednesday, Liesel’s bus driver went around a closed railroad crossing gate and the van was hit by a train. Nine children died at the scene in Cape Town, and a 10th died yesterday.
Family spokesman Malvern de Bruyn said the accident has left a deep scar on the family and the nation. “We could see she was someone who wanted to defy anything that would cut her life,’’ de Bruyn said.
Liesel’s 2006 attacker, Abraham James, was sentenced to 28 years in jail without parole.
The family’s plight did not end with her attack. Days after James’s arrest, unknown people tried to set fire to Liesel’s home.
After the attack Liesel started school at the Good Hope Primary School in Kuilsrivier, a suburb of Cape Town. She had to conceal her name and the incident from her schoolmates, de Bruyn said.
Liesel would only refer to herself as “Little Rock,’’ the name de Bruyn gave her, he said. The pseudonym allowed her to build friendships without being taunted at school, he said.
De Bruyn derived the name from the 1956 march in which some 20,000 women protested against the introduction of pass books the apartheid government required them to carry at all times that restricted them to certain areas. The women then chanted, “you struck a rock, you struck a woman.’’
How come we don't read or see more of such things?
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You know who must be responsible, right?
"South Africans protest for higher pay" by Associated Press | August 27, 2010
JOHANNESBURG — Thousands of civil servants took to the streets across South Africa yesterday in a peaceful demonstration for higher wages, while police management tried to bar officers from joining a nationwide strike entering its second week.
That is NOT GOOD for the GOVERNMENT!
There was no resolution in sight to the strike that has left volunteers changing babies’ diapers and retired nurses dispensing medicine at the country’s public hospitals. A similar public service strike in 2007 lasted a month.
“The gap between the rich and poor is growing, yet South Africa is a rich country which can afford to feed its entire people,’’ Khaya Magaxa, a local leader of the South African Communist Party, told a crowd of 5,000 who marched to Parliament in Cape Town yesterday.
Isn't that GOVERNMENT'S JOB?
An additional 10,000 marchers took to the streets in Johannesburg seeking wage hikes.
Meanwhile, the police union said its members would start striking tomorrow, raising security concerns in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime in the world — some 50 killings a day.
You would think that would be worthy of more press coverage, but.....
Police officers also have used water cannon and rubber bullets to control sporadic violence during the strike.
Police management obtained a court order early yesterday barring police from striking, and said officers who joined the protests could be fired.What if they all go?
Norman Mampane, spokesman for the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, said union lawyers will challenge the court order.
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