Sommaire pour 2023-06-21 de Cape Times

THE COMPETITION Tribunal ended the first day of hearings into the now Competition Commission conditionally approved takeover of national carrier SA Airways (SAA) by Global Aviation trading as the Takatso Consortium on a tense note, as the large sway of presentations were against the merger, at least in current form. Tribunal members, chairperson Mondo Mazwai, advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi and Dr Thando Vilakazi, heard from the commission, which was on the backfoot in justifying its recommendation of the deal. Its principal analyst, Wiri Gumbie, said that Takatso Aviation was created specifically for this acquisition and was bidding to acquire SAA operations, SAA Technical and Air Chef. He said the second part of the deal includes a “moratorium on merger- related retrenchments and to maintain a minimum number of employees at SAA.…

THE ETHEKWINI Municipality has defended its decision to keep the names of dead people on the list of those who were set to benefit from flood relief aid following the disaster in April last year. The city has faced scrutiny in the second report from the auditor- general (AG) on flood-relief spending. The report found that the names of dead people were on the list of those who would have benefited from building material to rebuild their damaged homes. But the city said this was done intentionally so that the relatives of the dead could benefit. AG Tsakani Maluleke tabled her second report on how the provinces, and especially eThekwini, had spent money meant to help those displaced by the floods before the ad-hoc joint committee on flood disaster relief…

from page 1 that was handed down yesterday, Judge Thandi Norman granted Mabuyane’s interdict. “In the circumstances I grant the following order: The Special Investigating Unit is interdicted from enforcing proclamation 84 of 2022 published in government gazette on 5 August 2022 in so far the SIU has taken steps or intends to take steps that are directed at the applicant, pending the determination of Part B,” said Judge Norman. In Part B, which is yet to be determined, Mabuyane wants to have the entire SIU probe declared unconstitutional. Reacting to the judgment, Mabuyane said : “Actually the judgment confirms what we have always believed in. “Yes, I know it’s Part A, we are still going to Part B where we are looking at merits, and so the advantage with…

THE Western Cape High Court has turned down high commissioner of the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council (GKKITC), Tauriq Jenkins’s bid for leave to appeal his authority to oppose the controversial Amazon development on behalf of the council. “The appeal is moot and it is also not in the interest of justice to grant leave to appeal,” Judge Elizabeth Baartman ruled, concurred by Judge Hayley Slingers and Judge James Lekhuleni. Lawyer for Jenkins, Jonathan Raphunga, said they now intended to take the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) for leave to appeal directly. The legal fight concerning Jenkins stems from heritage and environmental protection of the River Club development site, which saw Deputy Judge President Patricia Goliath last year halt construction, pending meaningful consultation with all affected…

Problems facing South Africa’s young people are not unique THE debate on the freedom (or lack thereof) of the black youth, especially, has generated more heat than light. Instead of sober thought and positive analysis, we have witnessed shallow dialogue, emotional reasoning, predictable utterances and finger pointing that traps black youth to be perpetual whiners that lack human agency. The fact that this negativity is peddled by academics and self-styled youth leaders is more depressing. Perhaps what we need to understand and acknowledge is that in the global village the condition of the black youth is neither special nor unique. The same tragic reality confronts young people around the world in countries like Brazil, India, China, and Spain. All youth in the world live in what the late female…

KAMPALA: Parents of learners missing after an attack on a school in western Uganda are flocking to the local police station to submit DNA samples that could identify their children among the 42 bodies that have been recovered. One of Uganda’s biggest massacres in recent decades occurred at the weekend at Lhubirira Secondary School. Assailants set a dormitory full of boys alight, then attacked a dormitory full of girls, hacking victims to death with machetes and knives. Six learners were also abducted by the attackers, who the authorities say were fighters from an Islamic State-affiliated group based across the border in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. | Reuters…

MADRID: A pregnant woman died trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands, the country’s coastguard said yesterday, after her body was found on a dinghy carrying about 50 migrants near the Atlantic coast of Lanzarote. A fishing boat had seen the migrants near Lanzarote’s Los Cocoteros beach, the coastguard said. The woman’s body was found in a boat with 42 men, seven women and three children on board, who received red blankets and medical attention after disembarking from a rescue vessel. At least 5 914 people reached the Canary islands between January 1 and June 15 this year, according to Spanish government figures. | Reuters…

PROTEAS netball captain Bongi Msomi can count herself as one of the lucky few to have Springbok captain Siya Kolisi’s number on speed dial. Msomi also intends to utilise it shortly, when she calls up the inspirational Bok skipper for some words of wisdom, ahead of leading her team into a first-ever home Netball World Cup starting on July 28 in Cape Town. Kolisi is currently in the midst of his own race against time to be fit for the Rugby World Cup in France later this year, but he will undoubtedly set aside time to share some of his personal experience with Msomi. He has, of course, also previously been a sounding board for the Proteas women’s cricket team during their epic journey to a maiden T20 World Cup…

SIYA Kolisi is undoubtedly a seasoned campaigner, a veteran of the trenches when it comes to experiencing every aspect that rugby can muster against him. He has battled all over the world, shed blood and flesh on vaunted fields across the globe, turned every conceivable type of grass over underneath his studs, played all varieties of opposition, and won the hard yards and lost the easy ones. He has also been in this position before where injury threatens his participation in a World Cup. As was the case in 2019, the Springbok captain is on the mend and battling against time to be ready from a knee injury for the showpiece event. Despite the enormity of the task before him, Kolisi - during a briefing in Pretoria yesterday - was…

THE former second-ranked women’s tennis player Anett Kontaveit announced yesterday that she would be retiring in July after Wimbledon because of a back injury. “Today I am announcing that I am ending my career as a competitive athlete,” the 27-year old Estonian posted on Instagram. “After several doctor’s visits and consultations with my medical team, I have been advised that I have lumbar disc degeneration in my back. This does not allow for full-scale training or continued competition. Therefore, it is impossible to continue at the top level in such a highly competitive field,” she wrote Kontaveit, ranked 79th in the world, reached the WTA’s No 2 ranking in June 2022. Her best performance in a grand slam event was a quarter-final at the 2020 Australian Open. “Tennis has given…

WITH the penultimate round of matches outstanding, 15 countries have been confirmed for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Cote d’Ivoire next January. When the remaining qualifiers are played in September it will be the last-chance saloon for nine countries if they wish to play in the 24-team continental showpiece in the west African country that won the championships in 1992 and 2015. It will be the second time that the Ivory Coast will be Afcon hosts after the 1984 event was held there. Among the 15 countries that have qualified are the Cosafa countries South Africa, Zambia and Namibia. Of these, Zambia (2012) and SA (1996) are former winners. Bafana Bafana won when they made their Afcon debut and the late coach Clive “The Dog” Barker…

from page 1 The report is undergoing quality assurance. A final report will be produced in due course. As the PPSA, we commit to bringing finality to the matter timeously.” Political analyst Professor Sipho Seepe said the Phala Phala saga proved that Ramaphosa’s presidency was built on “falsehood”. “We have moved from Ramaphoria to Ramaruin, now to Ramageddon. Before Phala Phala, Ramaphosa projected the persona of incorruptibility and accountability. He charmed his way by using his predecessor as a scapegoat for all that has gone wrong in the ANC and government. “He tried very hard to project himself in the image of Mandela. The Phala Phala scandal brought that to an abrupt end. The truth stares us in the face. Since taking over as president, things have got worse under…

HEALTH Minister Joe Phaahla has urged MPs in the the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) to focus on the vulnerable rather than those with narrow interests when processing the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill. Addressing the select committee on health and social services, Phaahla noted that the passing of the bill by the National Assembly had been met with mixed reaction from various stakeholders and commentators. “We hope within the NCOP as well it is not going to be easy-going. We hope the committee will manage this in various provinces such that we can get a positive result at the end of the exercise,” he said. “This bill provides an enabling framework for massive reforms to our entire health landscape in our country. It is no surprise that it generated…

TAXI associations have welcomed the handover of 106 operating licences yesterday, after a delay of several years that led to the impoundments of hundreds of vehicles in the northern suburbs. The SA National Taxi Council (Santaco) said they had fought a long battle with the Western Cape transport directorate to get the permits to operate in Brackengate. According to the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata), the delay in the issuing of permits was due to court arbitration between the Bellville Taxi Association and the Bloekombos-Wallacedene Taxi Association, which related to route monopoly. Santaco provincial second deputy chairperson, Gershon Geyer, said: “We have been trying to get to this point for many years. It has been seven years since the development in Brackengate started and over the years around 1 000…

While consumers were warned to brace for a bleak winter amid higher load-shedding stages, Eskom has recently offered some respite from the power cuts. Energy experts have attributed the lower stages of load shedding to reduced demand for electricity and Eskom burning more diesel. Ruse Moleshe, the managing director of RUBK, an energy and infrastructure consulting and advisory company, said that due to the constrained system, Eskom was burning more diesel. “Open Cycle Gas Turbines are designed to meet peak demand and for emergencies, but system constraints have forced Eskom to utilise them much more than they are supposed to. The more Eskom’s system performance improves, the less diesel is required. However, there has been a marked improvement in diesel use for June 2023 relative to June 2022.” Moleshe added…

SINCE Monday, a protest under the banner of Operation Purge has been playing itself out on the streets of Pretoria. The protest is the brainchild of community members, civil society and other stakeholders. They are unhappy with illegal immigrants, drug dealers, illegal traders, the non-payment of tax, illegal scrap yards, brothels and unregistered churches. The first two days of the week-long protest may not have had a huge impact, but a drop in the ocean has previously gone on to create devastating waves. Of particular concern is the fact that over the past two days, the protest targeted specifically foreign nationals. In September 2019, xenophobic attacks escalated dramatically in Johannesburg and Pretoria and other parts of the country. At the time, businesses belonging to the immigrants were looted, burned and…

BUDAPEST: Hungarian authorities have arrested a 45-year-old Norwegian man suspected of plotting mass killings that were intended to eclipse a 2011 massacre by Norwegian far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik, police said yesterday. Breivik killed 77 people in Norway’s worst peacetime atrocity in July 2011. He killed eight with a car bomb in Oslo and then gunned down 69, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp. Hungarian police said the man arrested in Budapest had uploaded several posts to a video-sharing portal in which he outlined plans to commit mass killings in an unspecified location. | Reuters…

PARIS: The French government said yesterday that it would soon shut down an activist climate group over a series of recent demonstrations, including one that led to fierce clashes with the police over a controversial irrigation project. The government accused the Uprisings of the Earth (SLT) coalition of encouraging violence at protests in March near Sainte-Soline in western France over irrigation. SLT has vowed to fight the shutdown order. The state said SLT “whipped up violence at Sainte Soline by inviting rioters, who came from across Europe to try to kill police officers”. SLT is part of a new wave of more radical climate activist groups. | AFP…

ESports has long been derided as “not a real sport”. But now, an Olympic-organised event is being dismissed by competitive gamers as not real eSports. Many long-time backers of big-money digital contests, which are edging their way towards elite-level recognition, are puzzled by the choice of games at the inaugural Olympics Esports Week that kicks off in Singapore tomorrow. Instead of well-established gaming titles, it will feature 10 simulated sports, among them archery, baseball, chess and taekwondo. Aficionados are concerned with the choice of virtual sports -- that is, digital recreations of real-world events -- rather than eSports, which are essentially video games played at an elite competitive level. With popular video games such as “Counter-Strike” and “DOTA 2”, eSports has been booming over the past decade. It has penetrated…

NELSON Mandela Bay Municipality residents say they are “disgusted and fed up with this municipality’s mismanagement of the water system”, as they continue to suffer through a drought. They have now called on the municipality to be transparent, saying a cancer-causing by-product was found during tests conducted in the water earlier this year. “For many months, we have been drinking water that contains high levels of bromodichloromethane, a carcinogenic chemical,” said the Water Crisis Committee. “Bromodichloromethane is used to treat water when there are high levels of bacteria and other micro-organisms. “This leaves us wondering; is the municipal water so highly polluted with faeces and other pathogens that they are flooding our drinking water with chemicals to fix the problem? “Inside the municipality, there was a choice between cholera or…

ESKOM group executive for legal and compliance, Mel Govender, stood her ground yesterday on her views that there was nothing in former CEO André de Ruyter’s interview with eNCA that brought the state-owned entity into disrepute. “My view is that nothing in the interview brought Eskom into disrepute. “Nothing that was said is completely news to Eskom,” she said. She made the comment while appearing before the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) during its oversight visit to Eskom’s headquarters. Scopa is probing the allegations that De Ruyter made in the interview. Govender said her view was that Eskom should have focused on recovering losses and taken action against suppliers and employees that were involved in wrongdoing. She told Scopa there were no grounds to take legal action against De…

Request to obtain outstanding information on Phala Phala sent to investigating team THE National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has given itself a month or two to make a decision on the the Phala Phala case, involving millions of rand in foreign currency, stuffed in couches on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Limpopo farm. The NPA also confirmed it had been presented with a docket for consideration, however, a request to obtain outstanding information has been sent to the investigating team. “The NPA is abreast of the status of the investigation and as soon as the outstanding information is received, it should take us a month to two months to make a decision,” said NPA Limpopo spokesperson Mashudu Malabi-Dzhangi. Just over a year ago former State Security Agency (SSA) director-general Arthur Fraser lodged…

SUSPENDED ANC MPL, Andile Lili, who believes his party’s “step-aside” rule was wrongly applied to him, is seeking legal advice over whether he could interdict the decision before the 9th elective provincial congress this weekend. The party placed Lili on step-aside in February, barring him from representing the ANC or appearing at gatherings until his legal matters came to a conclusion. This, after he appeared in the Khayelitsha Magistrate’s Court on charges of assaulting the principal of Inkanini Primary School – a woman. According to Lili, the ANC had sent a “vague letter” informing him of the decision, and his attorney wrote to the party, but they never received a response. In a letter seen by the Cape Times from Naven Pillay Attorneys to the ANC, the lawyers called for…

We are 29 years into our democracy, yet we have become the most unequal society in the world. The indicators are that South Africa is in serious trouble, and we must acknowledge that fact. It is a sad state of affairs that worries all of us, both young and old, rich and poor and all the races that make us a diverse nation. No one is spared as food inflation is on the rise, the price of electricity, fuel and the cost of credit has everyone struggling to meet their contractual obligations with creditors or to put food on the table. Salaries still remain low while costs have gone up tremendously, and more people are being laid off as businesses struggle. The burden is too enormous to bear, and it…

The head of the UN’s refugee agency yesterday urged Sudan’s neighbours to keep their borders open in spite of security worries as the number of people fleeing the conflict topped 500 000, while those internally displaced climbed to two million. Filippo Grandi warned that the two-month-old war threatened to spread insecurity in the “fragile” nations that border Sudan. “My appeal to all the neighbouring countries is to say I understand your security concerns, but please keep your borders open because these people are really fleeing for their lives,” he said during a visit to Nairobi to mark World Refugee Day. Sudan has been riven by conflict since April 15, with the army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan battling the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former…

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis held talks yesterday with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel who was making a rare trip to the West, as police kept a demonstration demanding respect for human rights on the communist-run island away from the Vatican. The Vatican said that in Diaz-Canel’s talks with Holy See diplomats, the topic was the situation in Cuba and the Cuban Church’s charity activities. Cuba is suffering a near unprecedented economic crisis. About a dozen demonstrators opposed to the Cuban government held a protest near the Tiber River. They planned to hold it outside St Peter’s Square but police did not allow it. | Reuters…

HE came up short again at the US Open on Sunday, but perhaps Rory McIlroy’s fifth major championship is finally due next month. The standout from Northern Ireland will return to Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, England, the site of his only Open Championship victory (2014). And after McIlroy finished second to Wyndham Clark at the US Open by a single stroke, some bookmakers have pegged McIlroy as the Open favourite - above Scottie Scheffler and Spain’s Jon Rahm. McIlroy is the +750 favourite at BetMGM and DraftKings, while he is listed at +800 at FanDuel and PointsBet as of Monday. Curiously, it wasn’t a clean sweep. Caesars Sportsbook lists Rahm as the favourite to win at +750 and McIlroy tied for second with Scheffler at +900. McIlroy shot an even-par…

THE Cheetahs have learned from last year’s semi-final heartache against the Pumas in Bloemfontein and will be looking to turn the tables on the defending champions in Saturday’s Currie Cup final (4pm kick-off). Cheetahs coach Hawies Fourie said they will have to be sharp on the attack to back up the efforts of their pack of forwards if they want to come out on top at home this time. After defeating the Free State side in the City of Roses last year in the semis, the Pumas travelled to Kimberley and beat Griquas in the final to become champions. They now stand between Fourie and his Cheetahs in their quest to claim the title. “Our forwards dominated in that game, and we would hope it happens again,” Fourie said ahead…

JAPAN coach Futoshi Ikeda believes the potential Women's World Cup TV blackout could hurt the long-term development of the women's game in the country. Japan, whose Nadeshiko team won the World Cup in 2011 and reached the final in 2015, is the last major country where broadcasters have yet to strike a deal with Fifa a month out from the tournament in Australia and New Zealand. "For women's soccer to develop in the future in Japan, it's important we have many people watching and supporting us," Ikeda told Reuters. "I think it's important that the tournament is broadcast and I really hope everyone will be able to watch. Whether it will be broadcasted or not we don't know yet, but it is important to show it on television and I…