Sommaire pour 2022-07-08 de Cape Times

LONDON - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, visibly frustrated but unduly subdued, finally caved in to the demands from the majority of his Conservative (Tory) Party parliamentary colleagues and announced his resignation yesterday outside the famous black door of Number 10 Downing Street in London. Johnson merely resigned as leader of the Conservative Party and remains the de facto prime minister until a new Tory leader is chosen. There are those across the political spectrum who prefer to see him resign as prime minister immediately instead of acting as a caretaker for at least three more months because the once iconic Johnson “brand” has become so toxic and tainted by a litany of scandals, trust and integrity issues, including among long-standing loyal Tory voters in the shires. His fall from…

AFTER dedicating her life to helping others and always sharing a smile with those who needed it the most, Petronella Magdalena Pastor, 95 – the first person of colour matron in Cape Town – has died peacefully in her home surrounded by the love of her family. Born in Graaff-Reinet in 1927, Pastor left for Cape Town when she was 16 to pursue nursing training. She worked at Somerset Hospital in Green Point, which has now been declared a provincial heritage site. In 1961 she became a matron at the hospital – the first person of colour to hold such a position. The Cape Times reported that year about Pastor’s appointment, highlighting that she had first worked as a nurse at the hospital in 1951, before becoming a Sister in…

The Hawks in Mpumalanga have hailed the arrest of a scrapyard owner who allegedly created a market for thieves specialising in stealing Eskom cables, plunging residential areas into darkness. According to Eskom, the country loses more than R2 billion per annum due to the growing trend of cable theft. Mpumalanga Hawks spokesperson Captain Dineo Lucy Sekgotodi said investigators acted on a tip-off. The team, involving investigators from the Hawks, the Serious Organised Crime Investigation, Witbank DSO, CPI Transnet, Nelspruit Crime Intelligence and Eskom, arrested Beatrice Geldenhys, 40, who owns Monkey Scrap Metal in Middelburg. “The acting provincial head of the Directorate For Priority Crime Investigation Brigadier Gregory Gaillard hailed the multidisciplinary approach by the team from different stakeholders. “He warned the community to refrain from stealing Eskom equipment as…

Her Silent Screams Busisekile Khumalo Loot.co.za (R215) Protea Boekwinkel SET IN HILLBROW, Parktown, Joburg, Cape Town and Nigeria, Her Silent Screams by Busisekile Khumalo follows the story of Fatima Farrah Omar, a mute Muslim girl who gets bullied for being different and for catching the eye of the rugby captain, Banzi. Falling in love with Banzi is easy, but she never expected him to love her back with the same intensity and slowly peel her away from the shadows. Farrah blossoms, coming into herself, and just when all the stars are aligning, ghosts from Nura, her mother’s past come knocking, leading to their abduction and hell in the Nigerian jungle. | OWN Correspondent…

Final Spin Jocko Willink Loot.co.za (R240) Macmillan FINAL Spin is a story of brotherhood, suffering, happiness and sacrifice – a story about life. Johnny shouldn’t be in a dead-end job. Shouldn’t be in a dead-end bar. Shouldn’t be in a dead-end life. But he is. It’s a hamster-wheel existence. Stocking warehouse store shelves by day, drinking too much whisky and beer by night. In between, Johnny lives in his childhood home, making sure his alcoholic mother hasn’t drunk herself to death, and looking after his idiosyncratic older brother Arty, whose world revolves around his laundromat job. Rinse and repeat. Then Johnny’s monotonous life takes a tumble. The laundromat where Arty works, and the one thing that gives him happiness, is about to be sold. Johnny doesn’t want that to happen,…

I FIND it very strange that our traditions and belief systems are so strong that they deny us entertainment and pride. The national women’s soccer team has been delivering results that all South Africans should be proud of. However, very few people follow the team’s progress. They are producing outstanding results that come with great special performances. They qualified for prestigious tournaments, and are currently at the African Women’s tournament in Morocco. They have just beaten the defending champions, Nigeria, in their opening game of the competition. You watch the game knowing that Banyana could win, lose, or draw. This is not the case with the men’s team because they are guaranteed to lose. Watching the likes of Kgatlana, Seoposenwe, Matlou, Jane and others one could see how seriously they…

Haiti yesterday marked one year since president Jovenel Moise was shot dead in his private residence, with the investigation stalled and no mastermind or motive for the attack yet identified. Moise was assassinated on July 7, 2021, when a commando entered his bedroom at the house in Port-au-Prince and shot him 12 times. Haitian police arrested about 20 people within hours, including 18 former Colombian soldiers presumed to be hired as mercenaries. But that initial speed has been followed by a glacial legal process in Haiti and the US. The challenges have deepened in recent weeks as the prosecutor’s offices in the Haitian capital have been invaded by one of the gangs plaguing the country. The UN office in Haiti issued a statement on the anniversary, expressing concern over “lack…

Washington: Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk had twins last year with an executive at one of his companies, according to Texas court documents. The babies’ mother, Canadian Shivon Zilis, 36, is an executive at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-implant maker. She and Musk filed a petition with a Texas court in April for the children to “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name”. Musk has fathered 10 children, one of whom died after birth. Last month, one of his children who turned 18 filed a petition to change her name and gender identity to female. | AFP…

Genoa: Nearly 60 defendants went on trial in Genoa yesterday, accused of manslaughter and undermining transport safety over the collapse of a bridge in the Italian city that killed 43 people four years ago. The Morandi bridge, part of a key highway connecting France and Italy, gave way in torrential rain in August 2018, sending dozens of vehicles and their passengers tumbling into the abyss. The tragedy highlighted the state of Italy’s transport infrastructure. Autostrade per l’Italia, which runs almost half of the country’s motorway network, is accused of failing to maintain the bridge that was inaugurated in 1967. | AFP…

BATON ROUGE: A new study on the global impact of a nuclear war has concluded that any conflict would plunge the world into darkness and wipe out much of the world’s sea life. Researchers at Louisiana State University ran multiple computer simulations to assess the impact of nuclear conflicts on the oceans. They found that in all scenarios, firestorms would release soot and smoke into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun and forcing temperatures to fall by an average -10.5°C in the first month. Sea ice would expand blocking major ports. Changes to Arctic sea ice would likely last thousands of years, describing the event as a “nuclear little ice age”. | Washington Post…

Hospitals across the country are increasing theatre times and even providing theatre services during weekends to wipe out a 107 818 surgery backlog emanating from the delays caused by Covid-19 pandemic. In a response to a parliamentary question, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said the Western Cape was leading with the highest number of surgeries at 77 139, followed by Gauteng with 13 433. The backlogs in the Eastern Cape stood at 5 373 while North West had 5 531, Limpopo 4 229, Free State 1 923 and Mpumalanga 190. Those of KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Cape were not given because the department was “waiting for response”. Phaahla was responding to parliamentary questions from EFF MP Susan Thembekwayo, who asked the total number of backlogs on surgeries at hospitals across the country…

THERE have been no new cases of monkeypox reported in South Africa since two patients were diagnosed in Cape Town and Gauteng. None of the 11 close contacts traced to the two laboratory-confirmed monkeypox cases had picked up the virus, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said yesterday. Since June 22 to July 6, there have been two unlinked laboratory-confirmed monkeypox cases in South Africa – one from Gauteng and one from the Western Cape, both men aged 30 and 32 years. The first local case was announced mere hours after Covid-19 restrictions were completely relaxed and masks were no longer mandatory. The NICD said: “No recent international travel history was reported in either cases. Public health response measures were initiated; with 11 close contacts (five for the case…

ECO-JUSTICE organisation Green Connection said they would continue to oppose the government’s “worrying offshore oil and gas aspirations” and have called on TotalEnergies Exploration & Production South Africa (TEEPSA) to withdraw their Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) application for exploration well drilling off the West Coast. The organisation, on behalf of coastal communities who are affected by exploration well drilling, said they were against plans to pursue more offshore oil and gas because of the threats to the ocean, their livelihoods and way of life. Green Connection said they had made comments on the Draft Scoping Report (DSR), as part of the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) process being undertaken in respect of an application for authorisation to undertake exploration well drilling in Block 5/6/7 off the West Coast of…

In what the DA has celebrated as an important marker on the road to the 2024 elections, the party achieved a victory in the Matzikama municipality after claiming ward 7 in Vanrhynsdorp from the Patriotic Alliance (PA) following a by-election. The DA won with 62% of the votes followed by the ANC with 31%, PA with 6% and the EFF with 1%. Wednesday’s by-election was held after the resignation of Christo Boks as a PA councillor in May. Boks is now a DA member. DA provincial leader Tertuis Simmers said voters had kept the “corrupt and inept ANC from creating more problems in Matzikama”. He accused the ANC and its coalition partners of receiving 2 000 solar panel geysers from the national government and hiding them in a storeroom in…

The Dance Tree Kiran Millwood Hargrave Loot.co.za (R240) Pan Macmillan STRASBOURG, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest. As she is joined by hundreds of others, the authorities declare an emergency. Musicians will be brought in to play the Devil out of these women. Just beyond the city’s limits, pregnant Lisbet lives with her mother-in-law and husband, tending the bees that are their livelihood. And then, as the dancing plague gathers momentum, Lisbet’s sister-in-law Nethe returns from seven years’ penance in the mountains for a crime no one will name. It is a secret that Lisbet is determined to uncover. As the city buckles under the beat of a thousand…

Honestly Elliott Gillian McDunn Loot.co.za (R 354) Bloomsbury ELLIOT is having a tough year. His ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder) makes it hard for him to pay attention in school, and he sometimes forgets to do his homework. His best friend is away for a year, and Elliott is so sloppy and disorganised no one wants to team up with him on school projects. Fortunately, Elliott has a happy place: the kitchen. He hopes to be a chef someday, like his favourite food channel star. His mother is enthusiastically supportive, but his intense, ambitious father and stepmother, Kate ... not so much. They won’t even let him cook in their spotless kitchen. To complicate matters, Dad and Kate are expecting a baby boy. Elliott is sure this baby will be the…

Boris Johnson resigned yesterday as leader of Britain’s Conservative party, paving the way for the selection of a new prime minister after dozens of ministers quit his government over 48 hours of frenzied political drama. “It is clearly the will of the parliamentary Conservative party that there should be a new leader of that party, and therefore a new prime minister,” Johnson said outside 10 Downing Street. The timetable for a Tory leadership race will be announced next week, he said, after three tumultuous years in office defined by Brexit, the Covid pandemic and non-stop controversy over his reputation for mendacity. Johnson, 58, said he would stay on as prime minister until a replacement is found. He had fought hard against a cabinet revolt and said he was “sad to…

Fresh clashes between M23 rebels and soldiers erupted in eastern Democratic Republic Congo (DRC) yesterday, officials said, as the militia declared that it was not bound by a ceasefire agreement. M23 spokesperson Willy Ngomasaid that the deal brokered between the Congolese and Rwandan presidents in Angola this week was irrelevant. “If there’s a ceasefire, it can only be between us and the Congolese government,” he said. Talks between the DRC’s leader Felix Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame in Angola initially raised the prospect of a ceasefire between the M23 and the Congolese government. Violence between the mostly Congolese Tutsi rebels and the DRC’s army has flared in recent weeks. The DRC has accused Rwanda of backing the M23, a charge the small central African country has always denied. The M23’s…

Sydney: The UN Security Council has failed in its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said yesterday describing Moscow’s role as “morally bankrupt”. Ardern, who has long argued against the Security Council veto powers held by the five permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the US, reiterated her call for reform of the body. The UN’s “failure” in Ukraine was caused by Russia’s position with a veto in the Security Council, she said. Russia had used its place on the council to take a “morally bankrupt position in the wake of a morally bankrupt and illegal war”, she said. “We must reform the UN so that we don’t have to rely on individual countries imposing their own autonomous sanctions. Russia must be held…

BEIJING: Heavy rain battered China’s north-eastern rust belt yesterday, triggering floods that trapped buses, swamped roads and disrupted commuters in cities, with more storms forecast for the coming days. In Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, its 7.6 million residents were caught off-guard by the heavy rain. Residents woke up to public messages on their phones telling them to delay heading to work and call off any non-essential activities because of “extreme weather”. Staff from the power utility were called out after reports that a pedestrian had been electrocuted in a pool of water at an intersection. Police data showed 52 waterlogged sections of roads. | Reuters…

ACTING Public Protector Kholeka Gcaleka has stuck to her guns over the funding of some of suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s court battles, saying the decision to withdraw their participation from all Mkhwebane’s pending litigation was in the best interest of the chapter 9 institution. Gcaleka informed the registrar of the Western Cape High court, Mkhwebane, Parliament, the DA and President Cyril Ramaphosa of her intention to deliver notices of withdrawal of the application for leave to appeal and amended notice of motion. In a statement yesterday she confirmed that the organisation would not fund Mkhwebane’s appeal against the recent Western Cape High Court decision where she sought to obtain an urgent interdict to prevent her suspension. Mkhwebane will also have to fund the rescission application pending before the Constitutional…

A LEIDEN family in Delft are at their wits’ end and without electricity for more than a month after Eskom staff removed their meter box and allegedly never returned as promised. The family said that instead they have been sent from pillar to post and were later accused of illegally tampering with the box that was removed. Chanté Manuel, 28, who lives with her chronically ill mother and two brothers, said: “Eskom electricians came to take the box some time last year after we (noticed) there was something wrong with it. While at the house, the electricians also confirmed it seemed faulty, and took the front part of it; the back remained. “They claimed it was already too late for them to travel and fetch another one at their warehouse.…

On the rocks: memoir of a high-functioning alcoholic Thando Pato Loot.co.za (R205) Melinda Ferguson If you have a drinking problem and have wondered about it, a book you may want to pick up is Thando Pato’s On The Rocks: Memoir of A High-Functioning Alcoholic (published by Melinda Ferguson Books). Pato lets us in on how she navigated her way to sobriety from a life consumed by alcohol. Living in total denial about her drinking, on the surface, her life looked aspirational – great job, apartment and snazzy car. But behind the façade she harboured a dark and shameful secret – she couldn’t control her drinking. To the outside world, she looked like a woman who loves having fun, always with a wine glass in her hand. But alone at home,…

The House Of Fortune Jessie Burton Loot.co.za (R240) Picador IN THE GOLDEN city of Amsterdam, in 1705, Thea Brandt is turning 18, and she is ready to welcome adulthood with open arms. At the city’s theatre, Walter, the love of her life, awaits her, but at home in the house on the Herengracht, all is not well – her father Otto and Aunt Nella argue endlessly, and the Brandt family are selling their furniture in order to eat. On Thea’s birthday, also the day her mother died, the secrets from the past begin to overwhelm the present. Nella is desperate to save the family and maintain appearances, to find Thea a husband who will guarantee her future, and when they receive an invitation to Amsterdam’s most exclusive ball, she is…

Land should be in people’s hands, not colonised or allotted according to spatial planning MINISTER Lindiwe Sisulu became the first South African minister to be invited to address the House of Lords. This address took place last week at the invitation of the Parliamentary Committee on South Africa in Britain. The lords acknowledged the historic nature of the moment. The meeting took place at the end of last month, a month now also stained by the tragic death of teenagers in a tavern at Scenery Park, an event that exposes how the nation has yet to learn how to protect her young. June, however, is still a month that reminds us of youth agency, where young people grabbed hold of their tomorrows. Young bodies were broken as they broke apartheid…

UkrainiaN forces raised their national flag on a recaptured Black Sea island yesterday in a symbol of defiance against Moscow, but Russian forces consolidated gains in eastern Ukraine and probed the defences of potential new targets. Moscow responded to the flag-raising ceremony fast. It said one of its warplanes had struck Snake Island shortly afterwards and destroyed part of the Ukrainian detachment there. The tiny island, about 140km south of the Ukrainian port of Odessa, is strategically important as it guards sea lanes. Russia abandoned it at the end of June in what it said was a gesture of goodwill – a victory for Ukraine that Kyiv hoped could loosen Moscow’s blockade of Ukrainian ports. Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, suggested the moment was one that would…

Soaring global food and energy prices have forced 71 million people into poverty in the world’s poorest countries, according to a UN Development Programme report published yesterday. The rise in the developing world’s poverty rates over the past three months “is drastically faster than the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic”, said the UN, blaming the price surges in part on the war in Ukraine. It also warned that as central banks raise interest rates to tackle inflation, “there is a risk of triggering further recession-induced poverty worldwide”. The report examined 159 countries, and found the situation most critical in the Balkans, the Caspian Sea region and sub-Saharan Africa. | AFP…

JERUSALEM: Israel’s regional co-operation ministry said yesterday that it had asked Saudi Arabia to admit direct flights from Tel Aviv for Muslim pilgrims, pointing to a possible new accommodation by Riyadh before next week’s visit by US President Joe Biden. Israel has also been seeking expanded permission for its airlines to fly over Saudi soil to Asian destinations. Saudi Arabia does not recognise Israel and has said nothing of possible bilateral developments. Saudi Arabia has admitted Muslim pilgrims from Israel, but they must travel through third countries at a cost of about $11 500 (R193 000)for a week-long stay. Pilgrims from nearby Arab countries pay around half that. | Reuters.…

Strasbourg: The European Parliament yesterday voted to urge the EU to make abortion a basic right, in reaction to a US ruling overturning it in America. MEPs voted 324 in favour, with 155 against and 38 abstentions, of a resolution calling on EU member states to include an article saying that everyone has the right to safe and legal abortion. The June 24 decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that had enshrined the right to abortion in the US, was condemned. While the parliament’s vote was non-binding, the EU’s charter of fundamental rights is. But to amend it, all 27 member countries need to agree.…