Índice para 2021-08-19 em Mercury

Move is reminiscent of bread cartel in historical class action lawsuit against discrimination Sizwe Dlamini and Sihle Makhowana BLACK businesses organisations have called for South Africa’s banks to be taken to the Equality Court and for a class action lawsuit against them, citing blatant discrimination towards black-owned entities. This move is reminiscent of the bread cartel that was disrupted by Tiger Brands and Pioneer Foods when it was taken to the Competition Commission in a historical class-action lawsuit that found the cartel guilty of inflating prices, and the end result was that they had to pay billions of rand to rectify the situation. Mntuwekhaya Cishe, the secre- tary-general of the Black Business Chamber (BBC), said South African banks were now in a similar situation and black businesses now wanted the…

Mayibongwe Maqhina mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za POWER utility Eskom is still counting the cost of the damage caused by the explosion at Medupi Power Station last week. This was revealed when Department of Public Enterprises director-general Kgathatso Tlhakudi briefed Parliament’s public enterprises portfolio committee on the governance and financial challenges of state-owned entities, including the recent explosion at Medupi. There was an explosion at the power station’s Unit 4 generator on August 8, resulting in extensive damage to the generator. Eskom previously said the incident occurred during an activity to “displace hydrogen with carbon dioxide and air respectively for the purposes of finding an external leak”. This happened days after the last of six generation units at the Medupi attained commercial operation status and was handed over to the generation division. Tlhakudi said…

The man dubbed the “father of Sudoku” for his role in popularising the numerical brainteaser loved by millions, has died of cancer at 69, his Japanese publisher has announced. In a notice, Nikoli said Maki Kaji died at home on August 10 after battling cancer, and a memorial service would be held at a later date. “Mr Kaji was known as the father of Sudoku and was loved by puzzle fans all around the world,” the publisher said in a statement on its website. Sudoku, a numerical crossword, was invented by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in the 18th century. The modern version is sometimes said to have been formulated in the US, but Kaji is credited with having popularised the puzzle. He is also said to have come up with…

| Chris Codiroli | Bob Hope CLUBS hurled in anger, bags dumped in the water … some reflections on the absorbing and infuriating game of golf: It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf. | Robert Lynd If profanity had any influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is. | Horace G Hutchinson They say golf is like life, but don’t believe that. Golf is more complicated than that. | Gardner Dickinson If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork as poorly as they do a golf club, they’d starve to death. | Sam Snead If you drink,…

WHEN my sister was newly wed, their young family moved into a small flat on the Bluff. I know they had no idea of the friendship that would be born with the couple downstairs. John and Christine (Chris) Senekal became my friends too. I was all of nine or 10 years old and these were adults who were willing to take time with me. John was willing to kick a soccer ball for hours on the concrete area outside the garages and that stuck with me. Deeply. The time and attention John Senekal gave to me, a boy visiting his older sister’s home, was vastly magnified when John and “Sein” – that’s what everyone called Christine – became parents. The Senekals loved Jonathan and Peter with every ounce of their…

Police have appealed to parents and guardians not to leave children unattended after two toddlers aged 2 died in a house fire on Monday in Amersfoort, Mpumalanga. A set of fraternal twins and their female cousin, aged two, were reportedly under the care of a guardian who left the children alone to go to a shop. A candle had been lit since the area did not have electricity, Mpumalanga police spokesperson Colonel Donald Mdhluli said. “Moments later, neighbours saw flames and called for help. The guardian is said to have arrived and informed them that the children were inside the house.” The boy was rescued, however the neighbours were unable to get to his twin sister and their cousin. Inquest dockets have been opened. | African News Agency…

Sibusiso Mboto sibusiso.mboto@inl.co.za FORGING ahead with land expropriation without compensation could see South Africa experiencing unprecedented inflation and massive capital outflows. This is the view of leading academic Professor William Gumede, who was part of a panel discussion yesterday at the land summit organised by the DA. The summit featured land rights activists, the agriculture sector, civil society and other interest groups. It focused on land reform, land expropriation without compensation, rural safety as well as farm attacks and murders. The gathering comes as the debate rages on about proposed changes to Section 25 of the Constitution, which the ANC is pursuing as part of its land reform project. Gumede, who is a governance specialist at Wits University, spoke about Algeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, countries that had proceeded with expropriation…

SA’s deplorable youth employment strategy is holding the country back South Africa is a signatory to the International Labour Organisation that sets out the conventions for minimum age and other forms of child labour, from hazardous to the worst types of labour that should not be allowed if it involves persons under the age of 18 generally. Interestingly, on the flip side of the coin, in accordance with section 13 of the Public Service Act, the compulsory retirement age is 65, but surprisingly those sectors that fall outside this act are arbitrary and hardly regulated. In other sectors, there is no specific law that provides when persons must retire except for members of certain pension funds that may provide guidance. The current survey reveals that the official unemployment rate is…

Valletta: Malta’s attorney general called yesterday for a life sentence for businessman Yorgen Fenech for allegedly masterminding the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, which rocked the nation four years ago. Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg laid formal charges against Fenech, who was arrested in November 2019 trying to leave Malta on his yacht, for complicity in the murder and criminal conspiracy. The bill of indictment, which confirms that Fenech will stand trial, requests life imprisonment for the murder charge and between 20 and 30 years in prison for the criminal conspiracy charge. Fenech has denied involvement.…

At least three people were killed in anti-Taliban protests in the Afghan city of Jalalabad yesterday, witnesses said, as the militant group tried to set up a government and Western countries stepped up evacuations of diplomats and civilians. More than a dozen people were injured after Taliban militants opened fire on protesters in the eastern city, a former police official said. The Taliban have promised peace following their sweep into Kabul, saying they will not take revenge against old enemies and will respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law. The witnesses said the deaths took place when local residents tried to install Afghanistan’s national flag at a square in the city, 150km from the capital on the main road to Pakistan. Taliban spokespeople were not immediately…

WYNONA LOUW wynona.louw@inl.co.za THE Springboks have ticked the first box against Los Pumas with a superb display of rugby at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium last weekend. As a collective there were some really good moments, while there was also much to savour on the individual front. With another Test to be played in South Africa before the World Champions head to Australasia, the Bok players have another chance to impress. So, here are three players to watch this weekend … for different reasons. Jasper Wiese The No 8 produced a massive performance and was duly named Man of the Match last week, and this week he’ll be looking to build on that. Stepping in for a player of Duane Vermeulen’s quality was never going to be easy, and while his…

Thami Magubane thami.magubane@inl.co.za THE eThekwini Municipality has been ranked fourth in the country among municipalities that are allegedly “rife with corruption”. A report by Corruption Watch based on whistle-blower complaints said it had received about 166 complaints alleging corruption in the municipality. But the municipality’s political leadership said it was working hard to root out corruption and maladministration. The report – called “South Africa Needs Clean Hands” – was released yesterday. It highlights corruption issues that have plagued municipalities in South Africa for almost 10 years. Between 2012 and 2020, said Corruption Watch, it had received 32 998 whistle-blower reports, of which 16% contained allegations of corruption within the local spheres of government. Most complaints stem from Gauteng (41%), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (11%), with 8% of reports each from…

GERRY NELSON | Durban North “TRANSNET moves ahead with R100bn port expansion vision” was the headline in the Business Report of August 17. The article tried to soften its criticism of the Durban port by saying that it “slipped from top position in Africa to third position”. A few years ago, a spokesperson from Transnet was interviewed on SAfm and when asked about privatising the port using a non-South Africa ports authority to manage the Durban port, he said it would not make the slightest difference to efficiency, theft or corruption – and while he was saying that on the radio, that port was headed downward to today where it “ranks in the bottom 3 out of 351 ports worldwide” (iol, World Bank Report, The Mercury, News, May…

VISVIN REDDY | ADeC chief activist ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa told the Zondo commission that he never checked to see if minutes of party meetings were recorded. He attributed that to the fact that there were too many ANC meetings. Ramaphosa has effectively revealed the root cause of the poor performance of senior government leaders, including himself and his ministers. The same applies to provincial and municipal leadership. The ANC’s decision to deploy its leaders to key government posts has come back to haunt the party and cause irreparable harm to it. The president and Cabinet members all serve in the leadership structures of the ANC and are required to juggle their work between Parliament and Luthuli House. The demands of both are onerous. Over the years, contestation within the…

Tarryn-Leigh Solomons tarryn-leigh.solomons@iinl.co.za A GROUP of concerned gender activists has called on the National Assembly to institute an inquiry into the “extreme dysfunction” at the Commission of Gender Equality (CGE). In a letter to the Acting Speaker of the National Assembly, Lechesa Tsenoli, the group, which consists of 15 institutions including 32 individuals, says the dysfunction impedes the CGE from fulfilling its constitutional and public service mandates. The group also criticised the Portfolio Committee on Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities for its handling of CGE matters, claiming the biased conduct of the committee hinders effective oversight of the entity. “In particular, we are deeply concerned about the Parliament Portfolio Committee’s (PPC) apparent interference in the operations of the CGE, and the PPC’s recent partisan media statements on the CGE.…

Nonhlanhla Nozizwe Hlatshwayo nozizwe.hlatshwayo@inl.co.za AN elderly resident of Folweni, south of Durban, says she has to fork out at least R20 daily for water to drink and to enable her to cook and take her medication. This means that 67-year-old Mavis Mkhize spends more than R500 each month for water. The is due to the water outages that the community has had to endure for nearly five years. Mkhize said buying water at R10 a bucket put a strain on the family’s finances because no one was employed and they lived on her old age grant and her daughter’s social grant. “We have had no running water in our taps for a very long time. I have high blood pressure and diabetes, and I have to eat before I…

Siyabonga Mkhwanazi siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za The South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) has said that R119 million was stolen during the looting and violence in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. This was after hundreds of ATMs and branches were vandalised by people involved in the violence and looting in July. Sabric said yesterday that it was concerned that not all notes were dye-stained when stolen and that this money would be circulated back into the economy. The country was gripped by violence over several days in the two provinces which led to President Cyril Ramaphosa deploying the army to quell the violence. “Sabric can now confirm that between July 9 and 17, at least 1 227 ATMs and 310 bank branches were vandalised or destroyed in the unrest. Of the 1…

Samkelo Mtshali samkelo.thulasizwe@inl.co.za THE second day of the reopened inquest into the August 1977 death of 26-year-old Pietermaritzburg dentist Dr Hoosen Haffejee saw the legal counsel for the Haffejee family and the State conduct an inspection in loco of the Brighton Beach Police Station cell in which he died. Yesterday, Advocate Anwar Suleman Jessop, who forms part of the triumvirate of legal eagles, which also includes advocates Howard Varney and Zak Suleman, representing the Haffejee family at the inquest alongside the State’s evidence leader advocate Dernardo Macdonald, were at the inspection in loco at the police station on the Bluff. Jessop said that this was for one of the key witnesses, who had been present at the time when Haffejee was being interrogated and later transferred to cell number two…

THE ANC’S failure to officially commemorate the Marikana massacre says a lot about the ruling party’s attitude towards the suffering of the widows and families who lost their breadwinners at the hands of the state. It’s a worrying picture for a once proud liberation movement. The Mandelas, Tambos, Sisulus, Bikos and many others must be turning in their graves when today’s ANC is so out of touch with reality that it fails to lead. The organisation deems it appropriate to issue a media statement on the killing of 34 mineworkers on August 16, 2012. In the statement issued by spokesperson Pule Mabe on Monday, the ANC said: “We reiterate our call to the government to move with speed in implementing programmes that will help alleviate the plight of affected families…

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian king has ruled that the next prime minister would have to face a confidence vote in parliament to confirm his backing by the majority of lawmakers. On Monday, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s government resigned over a loss of trust from lawmakers caused by the negative economic consequences of Covid-19 lockdowns. Outgoing Muhyiddin was appointed a caretaker prime minister until his successor is named. On Tuesday, party leaders agreed to a new, “peaceful” political landscape to better cope with Covid-19 challenges.…

Survivors in Haiti scrambled for shelter, food and medical supplies overnight as a tropical storm hampered efforts to rescue tens of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed in Saturday’s massive earthquake. Heavy rainfall on Tuesday battered temporary shelters set up since the weekend, drenching people stranded by the 7.2-magnitude earthquake. Some slept out in the open. Officials raised the death toll on Tuesday to 1 941, though that figure was expected to rise. Flooding and mudslides cut off some roads, blocking aid deliveries and residents still searching for victims in the rubble. Unicef has estimated that the powerful earthquake affected about 1.2 million people, including 540 000 children. Schools, bridges and medical facilities collapsed. Unicef’s representative in Haiti, Bruno Maes, shared a video, saying “countless Haitian families who have…

MIKE GREENAWAY FOR long periods of this game, it looked like the plucky Pumas would bring the Bulls crashing down to earth in Nelspruit but the champions showed true grit to find a way back from a 26-14 deficit with 15 minutes to go to triumph 33-26. The Pumas had undergone 11 changes from the side that had drawn with Western Province at Newlands on Sunday but their depth did a fine job in stretching the Bulls to their limit. The Bulls could do no right at the breakdowns and felt the full blast of referee Aimee Barrett-Theron’s whistle — again and again. In the first half, the Bulls were penalised eight times, all of them at the breakdown, either for holding on or the tackler not rolling away. So…

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za THE SOUTH African Reserve Bank (SARB) is expected to keep interest rates on hold next month, as headline consumer inflation softened for a second month in a row last month. Data from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) yesterday showed that the annual rate of the Consumer Price Index edged lower to 4.6 percent year-on-year in July, from 4.9 percent in June. This was in line with market expectations and slightly above the 4.5 percent midpoint of the SARB’s inflation target range of 3 to 6 percent. Core inflation moderated to 3 percent year-on-year, from 3.2 percent in June, mainly because of the increase in water and other services inflation. Last month, the bank’s monetary policy committee said its implied policy rate path indicated an increase…

THE PHARMACEUTICAL sector has been flagged by numerous government initiatives and workstreams as a priority sector for localisation, which means that all public sector entities that enter into procurement processes for pharmaceuticals must look to local manufacturers and prioritise their spending in South Africa. The public sector is the largest procurer of pharmaceutical products in the country, with the capacity to order in volumes that could be critical for local producers, their economies of scale and the recovery of factories. However, through a tender process that is fundamentally prejudiced against local manufacturers, the government is, in all likelihood, set to import a large amount of pharmaceuticals, if the awarding of the current tender for antiretrovirals (ARVs) goes the way Pharmisa (Pharmaceuticals made in South Africa) fears. The local pharmaceutical landscape…

Vernon Mchunu vernon.mchunu@inl.co.za THE continued force majeure at Richards Bay Minerals (RBM) was a major threat to jobs at the mining giant, according to organised labour, who are demanding an immediate resumption of operations. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is planning industrial action next week in an attempt to demand the restoration of operations that have been put on hold. In June, the parent multinational, Rio Tinto, said it had declared force majeure on customer contracts at RBM, citing “an escalation in the security situation at the operations” and saying the situation had led to the decision to cease operations until the safety and security position improved. Yesterday, NUM KwaZulu-Natal regional secretary Muzikayise Zakwe said a shop stewards’ council meeting, which was followed by a mass general meeting, had…

| Bang Showbiz A guitar Keith Richards once allegedly shot a hole in is estimated to fetch $250 000 (R3.7 million) at auction. New Jersey’s Gotta Have Rock and Roll auction house has already had a starting bid of $150 000. According to Keith’s Rolling Stones bandmate Ronnie Wood’s ex-wife, Jo Wood, the 77-year-old rocker fired a hole through the Gibson 1952 SJ Southern Jumbo Sunburst Acoustic Guitar – which he used to perform Shine a Light on tour – after a row with Ronnie, 74, over him playing the instrument in 1995. The listing reads: “Richards asked where Wood got the guitar from, and Wood said he borrowed it from Mick Jagger. Richards was so mad that they took his guitar, sandwiched it between two pillows, took out a…

LOGAN GOVENDER | Educational psychologist and former circuit manager and head of special needs education WITHIN the Department of Education (DOE), it’s the men and women at school level who do the “heavy lifting”. Arguably, these are mainly the classroom practitioners. They represent the “cradle of the nation”, often working against daunting odds in their efforts to mould productive citizens. Covid-19 and the recent riots, both unexpected and frightening, have created a recipe for post-traumatic stress (PTS) for teachers. PTS could be described as “normal” or expected human reactions to abnormal situations. But manifestations, for example fearfulness, sleep disturbances, impeded concentration, tendency to panic, a sense of hopelessness or feeling ignored, demotivated or unsupported, could have major negative effects on the well-being of this group. If PTS is…

TONY BALL | Gillitts CYRIL Ramaphosa’s recent admission that there were no minutes kept of ANC cadre deployment meetings must rate as the biggest insult of all to his “fellow South Africans” and confirms the contempt in which he views us citizens. Even the smallest club or organisation keeps minutes of its meetings, and the only reason that the ANC failed to do so was to ensure that there would be no repercussions in later years. Of course, many people realised years ago that any pronouncements or promises by anyone in the government – be it worker or politician – is meaningless and forgotten moments after the words have left the mouth. The fact that Western civilisations and systems keep proper records must be inconvenient for those who…

Zelda Venter zelda.venter@inl.co.za ABOUT 108 doctors who trained overseas have been blocked by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) from practising in South Africa because of certain policy guidelines. The doctors – some who have been in limbo since 2019 – will seek an interdict in the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria at the end of the month. They want to stop the HPCSA and the Medical and Dental Professional Board from invoking the provisions of the New Pathway Policy Guideline for foreign-trained doctors, adopted in June last year, which prevents them from writing their qualifying exams. The group said the HPCSA could not hold them to those guidelines because another judge in a similar application had set aside the provisions. The doctors said in court papers…

Sakhiseni Nxumalo and African News Agency TEACHER unions and education portfolio committee members in KwaZulu-Natal have lambasted the provincial Education Department for its failure to fill vacant teachers’ posts. The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) picketed on Tuesday because of the issue. Sadtu spokesperson Nomusa Cembi said: “Some of the issues have got to do with the fact that there are many teacher posts that have not been filled and that is frustrating a lot of our members because they cannot teach effectively.” Cynthia Barnes, general secretary of the National Teachers’ Union, said in KZN there were several teachers who had succumbed to Covid-19, but they were yet to be replaced. She said the union had been raising the issue of the high number of vacancies with the department.…

We can all agree that July was a tough month, especially for those in the health-care sector. Not only were we dealing with a level 4 lockdown and the ravages of the Covid-19 Delta variant driving a deadly third wave that put the health system under severe pressure, we also experienced unprecedented riots and looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng which caused untold economic destruction, anxiety, and loss of life. Even the South African National Blood Service (SANBS) was not immune to the violence and destruction. It was unbelievable watching the SANBS donor centre in Queensmead being looted live on TV during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s July 12 address. The shock of seeing this soon turned into despair and a sense of helplessness because a centre that is there purely to…

MELBOURNE: Australian Aboriginal groups will be consulted more widely but gain no veto over development projects on their traditional lands, under proposed changes to laws in the state where miner Rio Tinto destroyed ancient rock shelters last year. Rio’s destruction of the sites at Juukan Gorge was legal. But it sparked a public outcry, cost top executives at the global mining firm their jobs and prompted a national review of industry practices and Australia’s heritage protection laws. The state government is briefing groups on the draft legislation over the coming days.…

Paris: A 1987 treaty to repair a thin layer of ozone in the atmosphere that shields life on Earth from cancer-causing ultraviolet rays probably had the unintended benefit of preventing runaway climate change, even if that danger persisted for other reasons, researchers said yesterday. If the Montreal Protocol had not banned the man-made gases that dissolve naturally occurring ozone, by 2100 they would have heated up the planet’s surface 2.5ºC above and beyond warming caused by the carbon pollution humanity is struggling to curb today, they reported in the journal Nature. An increase of barely 1ºC since the mid-19th century has seen climate change amplify deadly heatwaves, rainfall, and coastal storms made more destructive by rising seas. Even if nations manage against all odds to cap global warming below the…

GENEVA: Circulation of the Delta variant in areas of low vaccination is driving transmission of Covid-19 around the world, World Health Organization officials said yesterday. “Many of the places where Delta is surging – even in countries that at a national level have high levels of vaccination coverage – the virus, the Delta variant itself, is really circulating in areas of low level of vaccine coverage and in the context of very limited and inconsistent use of public health and social measures,” WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said. Vaccines are clearly preventing increases in severe illness and death from the Delta variant, she said.…