Inhaltsverzeichnis für 2022-02-18 in Mercury

Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za ASSURANCES by the board of Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP), a state-owned producer of vaccines for the livestock industry, that it was putting its house in order comes as cold comfort for red meat producers and equestrian sectors as a crippling shortage of vaccines, some unavailable for over a year now, is already resulting in some animal deaths. The industry is apprehensive about the shortage of vaccines, especially for waterborne diseases, which are escalating after a strong rainy season raised the presence of mosquitoes and other insect carriers. An official of the National Animal Health Forum, which comprises the Red Meat Producers Organisation (RPO), the African Farmers Association of South Africa, AgriSA and the South African Poultry Association, said reports emerged at a liaison meeting yesterday that horses…

Dieketseng Maleke dieketseng.maleke@inl.co.za SOUTH32 achieved a record operating margin and a significant improvement in its underlying earnings for the six months to end-December, its results showed yesterday. The diversified miner said net profit came to just over $1 billion (R14.9bn), an increase from $53 million in the previous six months. The Australian-headquartered South32 reported an operating margin of 44 percent and an outstanding 638 percent, improvement in its underlying earnings, following a broad recovery in commodity prices. The company said its board resolved to pay a record $405m ordinary dividend for the period. “The board has also resolved to expand our capital management programme by $110m to $2.1bn, leaving $302m to be returned,” it said. Guidance for the financial year 2022 had been revised higher at the majority of its…

Sibusiso Mboto sibusiso.mboto@inl.co.za THE National Freedom Party (NFP) has called for Zulu King Misuzulu kaZwelithini to be granted a platform to address the province during the opening of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature next week. The call comes as the KZN Legislature gets ready to host the State Of the Province Address (Sopa) to be delivered by Premier Sihle Zikalala next Thursday. The NFP said its call was in line with its appreciation and support for traditional leadership as an important pillar of society. It has been customary in KZN for the legislature opening to be held over two days, with the first day reserved for the address by the Zulu king, and the second for the Sopa. However, this year things are more complex as while Misuzulu is the de facto…

YUGEN MOODLEY | Community Activist-ADeC Durban It is public knowledge that the eThekwini Municipality has about 13 days’ cash on hand, but previously it had about two years’ cash on hand. What went wrong? No need to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Apart from the looting, there seems that more than half of the 28 000 municipal employees are not fit for purpose but are being paid exorbitant salaries and benefits. This group of lazy, incompetent and unskilled officials has not been employed by the municipality, but were hired in cadre deployment. In other words, these cadres don’t have to know the job that they are employed to do as long as they are politically connected, no one can touch them. This is…

T MARKANDAN | Kloof Eish! Another blow for Zuma! Is this the final blow that knocks out Zuma? The Pietermaritzburg High Court has dismissed his leave to appeal application related to his bid to have state advocate Billy Downer recuse himself from the Zuma trial and for him to be acquitted for the corruption charges that have been hanging over his head for 20 long years. In a carefully worded 60-page ruling, Judge Piet Koen divided Zuma’s application into eight different sections and went through each one in a methodical manner, dismissing all of them. In his refusal to grant Zuma leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal, the judge said such an application would be premature. What if Zuma is not found guilty and the…

H LODETTI | eManzimtoti There is now a drive by municipalities to cut off electricity supply to those that have been in arrears for a very long time, judging by the billions that are owed, especially by commercial establishments. Surely, each municipality has a credit control department? What have these departments been doing over the years? Definitely not collecting revenue, it appears. Gone are the days when, if a resident was more than a month or two in arrears with paying their lights and water, their service was cut off, just like that. How is it possible that consumers can now be years in arrears? Does it not make sense to disconnect services timeously rather than leaving the debt to accumulate into a massive sum with very little…

Loyiso Sidimba loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za Senior government officials will receive salary increases as well as adjustments of 1.5% backdated to April last year. According to the Public Servants Association (PSA), members of the senior management service (SMS) will receive a non-pensionable cash allowance of R1 695 for salary levels 13 to 15 while salary level 16 will get R1 818. Additionally, the top public servants’ salary scales will be adjusted by 1.5% effective from April 2021, which the union said was in line with the SMS normal pay progression adjustment date. “The PSA believes that the salary adjustments and non-pensionable gratuity will not only assist the employees to mitigate price increases including fuel, food, electricity and the repo rate, but will also partially address the narrowing gap between salary level 12 and…

Karen Singh karen.singh@inl.co.za South African and international organisations have stepped in to assist 18 crew members on board abandoned ships in the Port of Durban. In a statement yesterday, the South African Maritime Safety Authority (Samsa) said the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) had declared three ships abandoned in January. According to Samsa, these include the Tanzanian flagged PSD2 and PSD104 sister offshore supply vessels and the MT Fairy Tale, which is a Belizean registered tanker. It said the MT Fairy Tale and the PSD2 had been in the port of Durban for over five years while the PSD104 had docked at the port in January 2022. The stranded seafarers include 11 Indians, an Iranian and six Bangladeshi nationals. They had not been paid salaries for several months and were running…

| Zama Ngcoya The men accused of forcefully attempting to take over the Durban High Court construction site will be back in the dock of the Durban Magistrate’s Court today for a bail decision to be handed down. Khayelihle Gcaba, 34, Khayelihle Nzuza, 29, Nduduzo Msezane, 36, Phelelani Mhlongo, 22, and Sandile Dludla, 28, were apprehended on February 1 after attempting to forcefully take over the construction site on Margaret Mncadi Avenue (Victoria Embankment). The suspects face charges of intimidation, violating the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority Act and tampering with, or damaging, the main gate of the building. Provincial police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Nqobile Gwala said it was alleged that security guards and construction workers were attacked by a group of people at the site. “The suspects chased,…

The triennial high-level summits between the EU and the AU are often criticised as being photo opportunities without substance. Nevertheless, even photo opportunities are important. They show European leaders are willing to receive their African counterparts on par. This is important given the increasing competition with other summits, such as China-Africa and Russia-Africa. It is also important given the colonial legacy of a number of EU countries and a host of African countries. Nothing underscores the continued patterns of colonial power more than the issue of money. The outcomes of all the summits between the two blocs are usually dominated by announcements about the aid and investment that should flow to the continent. This year, the EU will be able to boast €150 billion (about R2.5 trillion). But…

RIO DE JANEIRO: The death toll from mudslides in Brazil’s city of Petropolis rose to 104 and was expected to increase further, with the local morgue being forced to use a refrigerated truck as back-up as more victims were found. More than 500 rescue workers, along with neighbours and relatives, were still searching for possible survivors, the emergency services said. A preliminary tally suggested at least 35 more people missing. “Working overnight, with poor lighting and soggy ground, is always a challenge. But I’m determined to work tirelessly in our search for survivors,” Rio de Janeiro’s civil defence head Leandro Monteiro said. At least 13 children were among the dead, officials said. They said the authorities were releasing the first bodies for funeral proceedings as families faced the devastation…

ISLAMABAD: Microsoft Corp co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates visited Pakistan yesterday and with Prime Minister Imran Khan to discuss polio eradication in one of the last two countries of the world where the virus is endemic. “This is the final, and hardest, phase of the eradication effort, but by keeping up the momentum and staying vigilant, Pakistan has an opportunity to make history by ending polio for good,” Gates said. “Pakistan’s commitment to ending polio is inspiring.”…

The Dutch army systematically used “extreme violence” against Indonesian freedom fighters with tacit government support, a study said yesterday in the latest bid by the Netherlands to review its colonial past. Dutch forces torched villages and carried out mass detentions, torture and executions during the 1945-49 Indonesian independence war, said the four-year study by Dutch and Indonesian researchers. The findings contradict the official Dutch viewpoint held for decades that excessive violence was used only in exceptional circumstances. Prime Minister Mark Rutte was due to react yesterday. “The research shows that the vast majority of those who bore responsibility on the Dutch side – politicians, officers, civil servants, judges and others – had or could have had knowledge of the systematic use of extreme violence,” the researchers said. “There was a…

Maputo: Ex-president Armando Guebuza yesterday took the witness stand in Mozambique’s biggest corruption scandal, defending his government’s decision to contract huge secret loans that triggered an economic crisis. The country, ranked among the poorest in the world, illicitly borrowed $2 billion (R29bn) in 2013 and 2014 from international banks to buy a tuna-fishing fleet and surveillance vessels. The government masked the loans from parliament, but the debt came to light in 2016, prompting donors including the International Monetary Fund to cut off financial support.…

THE summer fishing has been hot! The sand sharks have been the one of the main targets along with the bigger flatfish like the honeycomb or back-breaking thorntail. The north coast has been blowing hot and cold with the varied conditions we are having. The north-east wind has not been cooling the water down as much as usual so an extra day of proper NE wind has been needed to get the fish feeding. Mackerel and red-eye have been the most productive baits for most of the inedibles. Try make a bait with a lot of smell and scent. If the peckers are an issue then wrap your bait with some chokka to make it last longer. The gullies are fishing very well on the north coast with a host…

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za THE rand strengthened to a three-month high yesterday, dipping below the R15 mark to the US dollar and buoyed by a rally in global commodity prices on continued geopolitical risks. The domestic currency firmed to R14.96 against the greenback, the strongest it has been since October 26, as tensions between Russia and Ukraine re-escalated. The rand first broke below the R15/$1-level overnight after headline inflation for January was lower at 5.7 percent, while retail sales for December were up 3.7 percent. “A sustained break of this level could see further strength to the 200-day moving average at R14.90 levels,” said André Cilliers, a currency strategist at TreasuryONE. “Trading could, however, be choppy as the situation between Russia and Ukraine develops …” The markets were…

Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za GRINDROD Shipping Holdings, the Nasdaq and JSE-listed global provider of mainly dry-bulk maritime transport services, has declared an interim quarterly cash dividend of $0.72 (R10.76) per ordinary share, the results for the three months and year to December 31, 2021 showed yesterday. Some $10.2 million of shares were repurchased in the quarter, equivalent to $0.55 a share, which means the company will return capital equivalent to a total of $1.27 per ordinary share to shareholders. For the full 2021, cash dividends totalling $1.44 per ordinary share were declared, and shares worth $11.9m were repurchased. Chief executive Martyn Wade said 2021 was a transformational year for Grindrod Shipping, as it recorded financial results in the fourth quarter and full year overall, while concluding several important initiatives. “We…

Thami Magubane thami.magubane@inl.co.za MORE than 100 striking workers in the Durban Solid Waste (DSW) unit in the eThekwini Municipality will be fired today if they do not return to work. That was the warning from the head of the DSW unit, Raymond Rampersad. He said if the municipality went ahead and fired the workers because they had embarked on an illegal strike, it would be the first time that the city had taken such action. He added that if the workers returned to work, they would still have to face disciplinary processes. He said there are more than 100 workers who were taking part in the strike. The workers are based in the Newlands, Phoenix and Springfield depots. The strike had been going on since Monday and the municipality has…

Baldwin Ndaba baldwin.ndaba@inl.co.za The court battle between the EFF and AfriForum nearly turned into a personal fight between Julius Malema and the lobby group’s lawyer advocate Mark Oppenheimer yesterday. The tensions intensified in the Equality Court sitting in the South Gauteng High Court in Joburg when Malema said white “settlers” came as visitors to South Africa in 1652 and subsequently decided to steal local minerals and land belonging to black people in the country. In his line of questioning, Oppenheimer insinuated that those that robbed the land centuries ago have since passed, saying the current generation should not be categorised as “land thieves” but Malema was uncompromising. “Yes they stole our land and passed it on to their children. Those children are also guilty of possession of stolen goods. Those…

REMARKABLY simple, thoroughly life-changing concepts when understood, embraced, and implemented: Blame has no good return for the person choosing it. No matter how poor a job our parents may have done, continuing to blame them, or anyone, and hold resentment against them, or anyone, will be unhelpful and will impact the future for generations to come. Each of us has to make our own lives work and be successful – or not – no matter what hand we have been dealt. Resentment is emotional cancer. It eats the host alive and usually has little or no impact on the resented person. He or she is scot-free while the host continues to stew in resentment’s toxic acids. Unforgiveness darkens the outlook and twists perceptions on everything, not only on the target…

PAT PARKS | email FIRST, I would like to commend The Mercury on its determination to present both sides of a debate. A dying art, if you follow other mainstream news. I have followed Dr Duncan Du Bois’s letters with much interest and find that his information bears out much of what I have gleaned from outlets that were not afraid to ignore the narrative. It is painful to see how many people presume they have all the answers, because their TV says so, and they are unwilling to think and research for themselves. These are the ones quick to silence people like Dr Du Bois, yet offer no facts, nor even a decent debate. They would rather stoop to sneering or name-calling. World-renowned doctors, lawyers and scientists…

SAMKELO MOKHINE | Joburg The apportioning of blame on the SABC by the ANC for its losses in the 2021 local elections is cause for concern. Most disconcerting is that these accusations were followed by threats to the lives of SABC news journalists in the Free State. A burglar subsequently broke into the SABC Bloemfontein offices and attacked armed security guards, who shot him. The SABC, as the public broadcaster, is mandated to cover news, and news about poor service delivery at local municipalities is no exception. The lived reality of residents within local municipalities who experience poor service delivery daily is there, irrespective of whether the SABC or other media cover it. These residents update each other by word of mouth and on social media about…

Thami Magubane thami.magubane@inl.co.za THE damage caused by the purging of municipal officials in some municipalities where political leadership changed hands after the local government elections has led to calls for the rules governing appointments to be tightened to prevent a similar occurrence in future. Thando Tubane, the head of the KwaZulu-Natal Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) department, said the recent purges had led to the loss of institutional memory and destabilised municipalities. In an opinion piece written in his personal capacity, Tubane said even the call by Cogta MEC Sipho Hlomuka for the purges to stop was ignored. Tubane said Cogta should consider tightening legislation and setting up a body to safeguard the rights of the workers to ensure that the issue does not arise again. Following the local…

Racial gaslighting and micro-aggressions experienced at Stellenbosch University Anonymous “The spirit of oppression still lingers,” I heard someone once say, but is this really a fair and just view of Stellenbosch University today? As the institution undergoes a comprehensive facelift (external and online), showcasing its newly designed logos, multicultural posters and banners as a mark of progressiveness, looking to shed any remnants of its contentious history, the ugly face of oppression still rears its head today, even though passively. Note that this piece is meant to raise awareness and shed some much-needed light on issues involving micro-aggressions and racial gaslighting in the workplace. It is also meant to enlighten those who fail to recognise the struggles and perils that people of colour continue to face in the workspace, even in…

British lawmakers yesterday called for urgent action over one of the biggest miscarriages in the country’s legal history. Hundreds of postmasters and postmistresses across the country were wrongly accused of fraud in what was known as the Horizon IT scandal. In a hard-hitting interim report, the House of Commons business select committee said the Post Office must take urgent action to speed up the process of fully compensating wrongly convicted sub-postmasters. Over a 14-year period starting in 2000, more than 700 postmasters and postmistresses were prosecuted based on information from a new IT accounting system installed and maintained by Fujitsu. A group of them won a landmark High Court victory when a judge ruled that the Horizon system contained a number of errors and defects. Some of those prosecuted served…

WASHINGTON: After almost a week of silence, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has responded to a new court filing submitted by Special Counsel John Durham, who has been looking into the FBI’s “Russiagate” investigation to determine whether this probe was legal. In the 11 February filing, Durham alleged that Hillary Clinton paid cybersecurity experts to hack into Donald Trump’s election campaign to back her false claim that he “colluded” with Russia to defeat her in the 2016 presidential election. The former first lady tweeted this week that “Trump & Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones”. “So it’s a day that ends in Y. The more his misdeeds are exposed, the more they lie. For those interested in reality, here’s a…

BERLIN: Tens of thousands of households were left without electricity after hurricane Ilenia swept over the German federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria, the media reported. According to German tabloid Bild, 54 000 and 10 000 households were left without electricity in respectively North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria. In most cases, power outages are caused by trees falling on power lines, the media added. The German railway company Deutsche Bahn yesterday announced the suspension of the movement of long-distance trains in seven federal states of the country at once due to the bad weather.…

MIKE GREENAWAY mike.greenaway@inl.co.za IN the biggest coup yet for the Sharks under CEO Ed Coetzee and the Sharks’ American partners, Bok bruiser Eben Etzebeth has signed a five-year deal that will see him playing out his career at Durban’s Hollywoodbets Kings Park. The Sharks have lacked a genuine enforcer in their pack for many a year and the 30-year-old Etzebeth fills a significant gap in the Sharks’ engine room. Etzebeth, who has played 97 times for the Springboks, will play out the French season with Toulon and join up with the Sharks in July and will remain in their ranks until the end of 2027. Hot on the heels of the contracting of Springbok captain Siya Kolisi and Bok starting hooker Bongi Mbonambi, the signature of one of the most…

ORLANDO Pirates co-coach Fadlu Davids says they are pleased with the decent start that they’ve made to the second half of the season as they try to ensure that they have a strong finish to the term. Bucs finished the first half of the campaign second on the log but their title pursuit was floundering as they trailed log leaders Mamelodi Sundowns, who had played two games more, by 14 points. After finishing the year with two wins in as many matches in the league, Pirates took that form into 2022. They progressed to the Nedbank Cup last-16 by beating AmaZulu – to keep their chances of winning a domestic trophy alive. They also took that form into continental football as they beat JS Saoura in their first CAF…

Sibusiso Mboto sibusiso.mboto@inl.co.za ANC MP Mervyn Dirks said yesterday that while he was disappointed with the governing party’s decision to block President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appearance before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), he was not surprised. He was commenting a day after attempts by opposition party members, including the DA and EFF, to have Ramaphosa appear before the committee were thwarted by ANC MPs who used their majority to block the proposal at a meeting on Wednesday. Six ANC MPs voted against Ramaphosa appearing, while four opposition parliamentarians insisted on his appearance. Dirks had initiated the move in December to have Ramaphosa explain himself to Scopa regarding what he knew about the use of public money to fund ANC activities. This after an ANC NEC meeting discussion was leaked…

| Reuters Rising temperatures are causing plants in the UK to flower almost a month earlier than they did over more than two centuries to the mid-1980s, potentially posing risks to wildlife, scientists said on Wednesday. Researchers led by Ulf Buentgen, a Cambridge University geography professor, scoured more than 419 000 recordings of first flowering dates of 406 plant species between 1753 and 2019, and compared them with historical temperature records which have shown the climate getting warmer. The biggest shift to earlier flowering – 32 days – was found among herbs which have high levels of genetic adaptation, a change that Buentgen said was “huge”. Earlier flowering could increase the risk of frost damage and also threaten insects, birds and other wildlife that depend on the flowering of…

YESTERDAY, we discussed the fact that Stonehenge, that prehistoric circular ruin of giant stones and connecting slabs standing mysteriously on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, is the greatest drawcard for tourists in Britain. Stonehenge was built between about 3 000 and 300BC. It began as an ancient burial ground and is today a focal point for modern-day Druids. The monument is orientated towards the sunrise on the summer solstice. Its mainly eerie atmosphere and mystery make it well worth a visit. Yet there are other places of eerie atmosphere and mystery. Take Dirty Dick’s, a pub near Liverpool Street station in London. This is a place with a sawdust floor and where the cobwebs hang about a metre from the ceiling, never having been swept away in more than 300 years.…

COUNCILLOR NICOLE GRAHAM | DA leader in eThekwini THE recent disconnections conducted by the City of Tshwane has shown South Africans what should happen when you don’t pay for your municipal services – you lose access to them! EThekwini is in a serious financial predicament. Like Tshwane and the City of Joburg, the city is owed R17 billion and has dwindling cash on hand. Many of the big debtors are not people who genuinely cannot afford to pay, but rather government departments and parastatals who have got used to preferential treatment. The solution is simple: bill properly, offer relief for those who genuinely need it and then disconnect people who don’t pay. EThekwini could collect millions overnight if it got serious about issuing disconnection notices and switching people…

Ntombi Nkosi ntombi.nkosi@inl.co.za SUSPENDED ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule expressed appreciation to the eBuhleni Shembe Church in Joburg which over the past few weeks has held prayer sessions for him ahead of his corruption trial on Monday. Magashule this week attended a thanksgiving service hosted by the church where its members could be seen embracing and welcoming him. He was invited ahead of his court appearance at the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court. He is facing 21 charges of fraud and corruption related to the R225 million asbestos removal tender during his tenure as premier. He is currently out on R200 000 bail alongside his co-accused. “Magashule feels humbled by the gesture of the church movement who are supporting him in prayer, because he knows that what is being accused of needs…

A 48-year-old woman was arrested yesterday in Bedfordview, Johannesburg, after she was found in possession of 29 rhino horns with an estimated street value of R6 million. According to Captain Ndivhuwo Mulamu, police were following up an ongoing investigation related to a Kempton Park case in which suspects were arrested after they found in possession of rhino horns in September 2021. Mulamu said the investigation led the Hawks to a residential estate in Senderwood, Bedfordview, east of Johannesburg. “Upon arrival, police searched the premises and inside the garage, suitcases were discovered wrapped in plastic. Police searched the luggage and inside (there) was grocery items and brown boxes as well as scrap laptops.” Inside the boxes, police recovered rhino horns wrapped in heavy foil. Among other seized items, were 29…

THE Springboks have a long history with the All Blacks, dating back to 1921. The two rugby giants have faced each other in 101 matches, with the latest instalment on Australian soil last year, during the Rugby Championship. On that Saturday, October 2, Siya Kolisi’s team triumphed 31-29 on the Gold Coast, having lost 19-17 a week earlier in Townsville. Since Rassie Erasmus took charge of SA Rugby’s playing affairs in 2018, four out of the six Tests between South Africa and New Zealand have had a two-point victory margin for either side. The rich rugby history between the two nations is one to savour and preserve, as there is mutual respect between the Boks and All Blacks. But the continuation of that bond could be placed in jeopardy…

A video of US police violently tackling a black teenager during a fight with a young white man has sparked outrage, prompting the state governor to condemn what appeared to be “racially disparate treatment”. The video – posted by the platform Storify and picked up by ABC, CBS and CNN – shows a fistfight between two teenagers at a shopping mall in Bridgewater, New Jersey, a suburb of New York city. After about 10 seconds, two police officers arrive and forcefully separate the teens. But while the black teenager is violently thrown on the floor by the police officer, the young white man is simply made to sit on a sofa. A police officer is then seen putting her knee on the back of the young man, while the male…

KIEV and Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern district of Lugansk traded allegations of an escalation in fighting yesterday after the US claimed Moscow was seeking a pretext to invade. Ukraine has been in conflict with pro-Moscow rebels in the east of the country since 2014, in a war that has cost thousands of lives, but the latest reports risk intensifying fears of Russian intervention. The Ukrainian military’s command centre in the east alleged that Russia-backed forces had, “with special cynicism”, fired heavy artillery at the village of Stanytsia-Luganska. “The shells hit a kindergarten,” it said. “According to preliminary data two civilians were injured. Public infrastructure was also damaged. Half of the settlement was left without electricity.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba did not mention any injuries but condemned the alleged…

BEIRUT: Lebanon has awarded France’s CMA CGM a contract for the management, operation and maintenance of the container terminal in the port of Beirut for 10 years, Public Works and Transport Minister Ali Hamie said yesterday. A huge explosion at the port in 2020 killed more than 200 people and damaged entire neighbourhoods, deepening Lebanon’s worst political and economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. “The contract includes $33 million (R493m) that will be paid by CMA CGM to develop the work inside the port,” Hamie said. CMA CGM is controlled by the French-Lebanese Saade family.…