Security personnel stationed at Tuynhuys, the Cape Town office of The Presidency, today received a suspicious parcel. Following preliminary investigations by security personnel and the bomb disposal unit of the SA Police Service, the parcel was detonated.

It was then discovered that the parcel contained a coffee machine, which was sent by a Cape Town company as a surprise birthday gift to Mr A. Kathrada, Advisor to President Mandela.

Following the detonation, the bomb experts have confirmed that the parcel did not contain any bomb or explosive device. Their actions however were justified in the context of the uncertainty around the content of the parcel; and the detonation was necessary as a precautionary measure.

For more images visit News24

Classes have been suspended at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s (CPUT) city campus following three days of often violent protests over proposed fee increases.

Earlier on Wednesday students were forced to flee and 37 were later arrested as police opened fire with rubber bullets.

In a terse statement on Wednesday night, university spokesman Thami Nkwanyane said: “The executive management this afternoon decided to suspend classes on the Cape Town Campus as well as at the Thomas Patullo Building (satellite campus) following three days of protest action by students.

Anda Bici, a member of CPUT’s student representative council which had called the strike on Monday, was equally terse on Tuesday night: “We’ll do whatever it takes to make our voices heard even if the university is closed.”

Here are some photos of the students causing havoc inside the buildings, vandalising property and stealing

Traffic chaos hit Cape Town’s roads this morning as heavy flooding forced several road closures including parts of the M5 and slowed down traffic along M3 highway leading into city.

The Liesbeeck River burst its banks, causing traffic along the M5 incoming and outgoing lanes to be redirected along the Koeberg Road interchange.

The M5 had been closed since 8pm last night. Traffic authorities are not sure when the road will be opened.

Sandbags have been lined up along parts of the mountain on the M3 to slow down traffic.

The Cape of Storms made its name justice this weekend.

Heavy rains since Saturday afternoon caused havoc in various regions of the city. In Caps Bay six motor vehicles was stuck in Victoria Street due to flooding. The Vygieskraal-chanel also flooded its banks in the Athlone area yesterday afternoon, causing people great damage in the nearby Vygieskraal informal setlement.

Various roads are still closed this morning and motorists are adviced to take caution when traveling.

Here are some pics.

If you have more pics please send them through to info@igeek.co.za

According to a user on the DSTV forums the MNetHD channel’s bitrate has been dropped from previously 12Mbps to 10Mbps.  Now the question is how can this be proven and what impact does a 2Mbps drop have?

DSTV runs on the Intelsat 7, 10 satelite and the owners of the satelite has quite allot of details about the channels available on the internet. A simple browse to http://www.satcodx3.com/ will reveal a list of satalites with information about all the channels on each satelite. Upon browsing to Intelsat 7, 10′s channels and choosing to view the MNetHD graph we can clearly see the drop in bitrate.

So now the question is how does this affect the quality of the channel? Well lets just say that a standard dstv SD channels’ bitrate is 2Mbps, this means that MNetHD’s quality dropped by a whole SD channels quality. The bad thing about this is that even before Multichoice lowered the bitrate, it was still way below the norm of HD channels out there. If we take DiscoveryHD, a channel that is not on the DSTV bouquete, for example it runs at a amazing 19.75Mbps. Now that is true HD quality.

Multichoice aparrently deleted the thread on their site about the posts revealing this and later on brought it back but merged it under a picture breakup thread.

Multichoice should just stop their anti competativeness, just a few months back we got a price increase, now that more and more people are starting to use the HD channel they are dropping bitrates in a effort I believe to save on satelite bandwidth costs. Come on multichoice, get real and start offering us a real HD channel with real HD quality, and perhapes more than just 1 HD channel. Stop trying to bullshit the consumers by trying to cover up changes like this or not even anouncing it.

Acording to Disaster Risk Management a chemical container carrying potentially harmful chemicals washed up on Camps Bay beach this afternoon.

The owner of the container, whose name has not been confirmed, has been tasked with removing it, Disaster Risk Management’s Charlotte Powell said.

Acording to News24 and Powel from Disaster Risk Management the container contains a form of Cresol chemical, used to produce various household cleaners and disinfectants. While exposure to the chemical at low levels is not harmfull, inhaled it can cause irretation and pain.

Full story at News24

The Barkas cargo ship from China caused great havoc yesterday morning in the west coast town of Jacobsbaai, Saldanha when it ran upon the rocks the previous night.

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Acourding to a study done by the Medical Research Councel of South Africa 1 in 4 men in South Africa are rapists.

Of those surveyed, 28% said they had raped a woman or girl, and 3% said they had raped a man or boy. Almost half who said they had carried out a rape admitted they had done so more than once, with 73% saying they had carried out their first assault before the age of 20.

But where I think this study fails is that it was only conducted in 2 provinces with 1 738 men. The two provinces being Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal, the provinces with the highest level of HIV and disbelieves amongst certain cultures like having unprotected sex with a virgin wil cure you of HIV Aids.

How can you acuse a quarter of SA men being rapists when your study was not conducted correctly? Perhaps if the study was done in all the provinces with a much larger group of men that statement would have been correct.