Good News 14:00

BULLETIN 3 January 2 pm

Good afternoon, here is your Good News:

# Cape Town residents and visitors yesterday came out in their thousands to support the iconic Cape Town Minstrel Carnival. The event, historically known as the Kaapse Klopse, kicked off in District Six, with thousands of people screaming, shouting, and dancing along with the Klopse. The festivity has its roots in colonial times when slaves were allowed to relax on the day after New Year’s Day. It is now seen as a celebration of the Cape’s diverse culture and marks the start of a competition where minstrels battle it out for the title of best troupe.

Staying in the Mother City: The future looks brighter for the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town’s radio station. RX Radio is run by, and for, young patients, and faced financial difficulty leading to the loss of three staff members early last year. Now the Media Development and Diversity Agency approved funding to the tune of 660-thousand-rand for the hospital, while it also received over half-a-million-rand from a private American donor. Station manager Noluyolo Ngomani says this financial aid could really turn RX Radio’s trajectory for the better.

# University of the Witwatersrand professor Leketi Makalela says the implementation of the new language policy for curriculum transformation and student success will benefit students. The Department of Higher Education and Training had taken the strategic decision to normalise the use of multi languages in the classroom, planned for next year. Makalela says it’s exciting that the department had also used seed funding to move from rhetoric to the actual implementation, which previously had not been advancing as expected. He encourages the country’s institutions of higher training to train more sign language teachers.

# Darts: The 16-year-old sensation Luke Littler produced another stunning display to reach the World Championship final. The teenager from Warrington beat 2018 winner Rob Cross 6-2 to move within one victory of becoming the youngest world champion in history. Littler, the youngest-ever player to reach the decider, will face fellow Englishman Luke Humphries in tonight’s final. If he wins it will be one of the greatest sporting stories of all time, which would rival Emma Raducanu winning the US Open tennis tournament in 2021 when she was 18.

# And finally: The minister of Health, Joe Phaahla has congratulated the mothers of one-thousand-703 babies born on New Year’s Day in public health facilities across the country. Phaahla urged fathers and family members to support mothers because it takes a village to raise a child. The department’s spokesperson, Foster Mohale, says the first bundles of joy were born exactly at midnight at the Philadelphia Hospital and Seshego Hospital in Limpopo, Mowbray Maternity Hospital in Western Cape and Mafikeng Provincial Hospital in North West respectively:

Stay tuned for more news………….