Table of contents for 2022-02-21 in Mercury

There is an age-old saying: People who live in glass houses should not throw stones . It means that people who have faults should not criticise other people for having the same faults. The raging battle between Dr Survé and his 200 companies under the Sekunjalo Group of Companies, on the one hand, and Nedbank and the other banks, on the other hand, calls to mind this age old saying. The story begins when a young boy, growing up in the southern surburbs of Claremont/Kenilworth, from humble beginnings, used to sell newspapers, The Argus and The Cape Times, to earn extra money, and assist his struggling family. He rose, by his own bootstraps, to qualify as a specialist doctor, practised for a while, built a community health facility, in the…

Sibusiso Mboto sibusiso.mboto@inl.co.za POLICE recovered drugs, illegal firearms and stolen items in uMgungundlovu district, one of KwaZulu-Natal’s crime hot spots, at the weekend. This came days after Premier Sihle Zikalala raised concerns that the province was becoming the murder and rape capital. The raid, headed by provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, and comprising police officers from different police stations and units, targeted several areas and resulted in 81 people being arrested. The uMgungundlovu district includes Pietermaritzburg and the Midlands. According to the quarterly crime statistics presented by Police Minister Bheki Cele on Friday, Inanda, uMlazi and Plessislaer police stations were among the top four stations for the highest number of murders. Cele released the crime statistics for the third quarter of the 2021/2022 financial year, covering the period October…

PAT PARKS | email The WHO (World Health Organization) wants countries to sign a new Covid-19 treaty in about two months. This treaty would have the “WHO Constitution” take precedence over a country’s Constitution during natural disasters or pandemics. This would allow them to make their “guidelines” mandatory to the public of all countries who sign. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the second highest donor to the WHO, after the US government. We know how this would end. Dr Astrid Stuckelberger, who worked for the WHO for 20 years, says that every country should send a public letter of protest to the WHO, saying that their people do not accept a signature of their minister of Health.…

VA VOLKER | Pietermaritzburg MY IMPRESSION of the attitude of many of the new elite and semi-elite is that they appear to be more interested in rapidly personally owning expensive cars, expensive houses, expensive suits, expensive wrist watches; a lot of money etc – hence the widespread corruption. Rather than using their position of authority to concentrate on uplifting the ability and social welfare of the underdeveloped masses. This is in direct contrast to how the Afrikaners after the Anglo Boer War – and especially in the 1930s – went about improving the education and living conditions of the many impoverished Afrikaners after they had been victims of the concentration camps and the scorched earth policy during the Anglo-Boer war. It took many decades of efforts by both…

A BOOK comes this way that will be of great interest to the old boys of Durban High School (DHS), Maritzburg College, Northwood and Estcourt High School (old boys and girls), and, and, and … The Old Red Brick Building by Jeremy Oddy is a nostalgic look back in the DHS-era, before the Victorian building was demolished in 1971, and replaced with the modern edifice that stands today. It also brings to us the cross-pollination between DHS, Maritzburg College and other schools across the province by teachers with a background at the first two, who have moved on elsewhere. (Oddy himself personifies this. He spent the first two years of his schooling at College before moving on to DHS.) The book brings us some delightful personal reminiscence from the colonial-era,…

Zelda Venter zelda.venter@inl.co.za A PAIR of Mont Blanc sunglasses and a 2019 Range Rover with personalised number plates became the subject of a fierce legal battle in the Western Cape High Court. The applicant said her estranged husband and her father-in-law had deprived her of the possessions. The car was subsequently returned to the woman. She is identified only as PM in the judgment as divorce proceedings are pending between her and her husband, RM. Her husband and her father-in-law, identified as GMM, denied they had her designer sunglasses. The dispute started when the husband and her father-in-law took her Range Rover from outside a mall where she was shopping. PM said she had a pair of sunglasses and cash, among other items, in the car. The applicant brought an…

| African News Agency (ANA) The Pretoria Special Commercial Crimes Court has convicted a former State Security Agency (SSA) finance clerk Kgaogelo Bopape, 53, for theft of R170 000. North Gauteng regional spokesperson for the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, Lumka Mahanjana, said some of Bopape’s responsibilities within the SSA involved making funds available to members of the agency for their various operations. “On April 7, 2020, Bopape withdrew R500 000 under the false pretence that she would make the funds available to the members of the SSA operations. She then kept the funds in a lockable safe in her office and later took R170 000 and used it for her benefit,” said Mahanjana. She said when the finance manager of the division was doing a spot-check audit, he discovered…

Thami Magubane and Yogashen Pillay AN EThekwini Municipality employee was shot multiple times shortly after leaving an ANC branch meeting in uMlazi on Saturday. Thulani Shusha, a leader of one of the ANC branches in the uMlazi area, died in a hail of bullets near uMlazi’s Baker Road when four men opened fire on him and other ANC activists. Provincial police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Nqobile Gwala said two men died in the shooting. “A man, 51, and another man, 35, sustained multiple gunshot wounds. Others managed to flee. Both were declared dead at the scene. The motive for the killing is yet to be established.” The second person who was killed has yet to be identified but is believed to be an ANC member. Shusha was also a SA Municipal Workers’…

ATHENS: A passenger on a ferry, which caught fire on Friday off the Greek island of Corfu, was found alive and rescued yesterday, Greek authorities said. Ioannis Plakiotakis, Greek minister of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy, confirmed the rescue of a 21-year-old man from Belarus. The man seemed to be in good condition, according to TV footage. “I am alive. I didn’t see other survivors, I only heard screams,” he told rescuers before being transferred to a local hospital, according to SKAI. A total of 280 people were rescued from the vessel on Friday, and 11 people are still missing as the rescue operation continues.…

Thami Magubane thami.magubane@inl.co.za UMNGENI Municipality has warned of strict collection methods to recover close to R230 million owed to it by residents. The municipality said it had noted the collection tactics that had been employed by the Tshwane Municipality in Gauteng and threatened to employ the same methods. Both municipalities are run by the DA. Tshwane has netted millions of rand in collections following a disconnection drive of entities that owed the city. It has disconnected businesses and government buildings and universities that are said to be in debt with the municipality. The drive has also drawn criticism from those affected, some of whom claim they have been unfairly disconnected. UMngeni mayor Chris Pappas said residential property rates were the biggest debt for the municipality and electricity theft was…

Mercury Reporter THE Durban University of Technology (DUT) has said that lectures for annual students and semester students will commence today. This comes after violent protests at the university last week in which four vehicles, belonging to staff, and a security guard house were torched. Students told The Mercury last week that they wanted in-person registrations as they were struggling with the online process. They also said they were not happy with DUT’s Covid-19 vaccination policy. In a statement yesterday, DUT said it was continuing with late online registration which commenced on Saturday. For first-year students, registration would end on March 11 while late registration for returning students would end on Friday. It added that no walk-ins or on-campus registrations were taking place. The university said that through its Department…

PETER FIELDING | Scottburgh SO MUch has been written in The Mercury over the past years about the deterioration of our beautiful country. There are many who reckon that all is well, but the vast majority believe that we have lost our way. In 1957, Ayn Rand captured our situation so well in her book Atlas Shrugged. She wrote: “When you see that in order to produce, you have to obtain permission from men who produce nothing. When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours. When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you. When you see corruption being rewarded…

COLIN BURGER | Assagay I must commend Mr Yugen Moodley, community activist – ADec – in Durban, for the piece he wrote in The Mercury (February 18). Mr Moodley has described perfectly the challenges facing our once great and beautiful city. Lazy and incompetent cadre-deployed ANC members have brought this city to its knees in more ways than one. I too have witnessed the mess that bedevils our city brought about by sheer lack of interest by these “not fit for purpose” employees, who do what they like, when they like, with no fear of consequence or accountability. I agree wholeheartedly that the only way around this pending disaster is a rates boycott. Why are ratepayers forking out a great deal of money every year for no return?…

Duncan du Bois | Bluff Interesting historical contrasts between Watergate and Hillary Clinton are set to play out as the findings of US Special Prosecutor John Durham begin to drip out (The Mercury, February 18). Although espionage is the common link between the two, their intentions differ significantly. Nixon’s paranoia about the tactics of his political enemies led to the establishment of what he called an “attack group” which, by the presidential election year of 1972, came to be known as the “Plumbers”. The amateurish attempt by the Plumbers to bug Democratic Party National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington DC failed to yield any information, thanks to prompt police action. Nixon never ordered the break-in and when he first read about it in the Miami…

Gauteng police and the British High Commission in Pretoria remain tight-lipped about the death of British Airways cabin crew member Robert Gay. The 52-year-old man was found dead earlier this month following a night out with friends hours after flying from Heathrow to Johannesburg. Gay joined colleagues for food and drink following the 11-hour flight from London but was somehow separated from his friends during the course of the night. His body was found on the pavement in Whiteley Street in Melrose. Police spokesperson Captain Mavela Masondo said Gay was found unconscious and paramedics attempted to resuscitate him but he was declared dead at the scene. “Police were called to a scene at Whiteley Street in Melrose on February 5 at 4am. On arrival they found paramedics attending to a…

Thami Magubane thami.magubane@inl.co.za STRIKING workers in the eThekwini Municipality’s Durban Solid Waste Unit are expected back at work today. Last week the municipality had threatened to fire them unless they returned to duty. The unions said yesterday the strike was over, the workers had returned to work and they would continue to engage with the municipality over the concerns that had been raised. The Mercury understands that some of the workers who were on strike had returned to work by Friday. The striking workers were in the northern depots that include Phoenix and Newlands. More than 100 staff members had taken part in the strike, crippling services. The workers downed tools last week after a grievance complaint they had filed against one of their managers had not gone in their…

Experts have predicted that after the Omicron wave, Covid-19 will return but the pandemic will not. The suggestion is also that the extraordinary measures by the government and societies to control transmission will come to an end. It is now time to put in place plans to have an epidemic response unit in the country, and to create foundations in biotechnology and build a unit that can create a vaccine from scratch, and not just to test other people’s vaccines. The announcement by the World Health Organization to start an mRNA Hub in Africa will realise the potential to establish Covid-19 manufacturing sites in low- and middle-income countries in the midst of vaccine inequality. The mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub will be based in South Africa, and will help…

Firefighters were struggling to put out a fire that broke out on a vessel carrying thousands of luxury cars, which is adrift off the coast of Portugal’s Azores islands, a port official said at the weekend. The Felicity Ace ship, carrying around 4 000 vehicles including Porsches, Audis and Bentleys, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday. The 22 crew members were evacuated on the same day. “The intervention (to put out the blaze) has to be done very slowly,” João Mendes Cabeças, captain of the nearest port in the Azorean island of Faial, said. “It will take a while.” Lithium-ion batteries in the electric vehicles were “keeping the fire alive”, Cabeças said, adding specialist equipment to extinguish it was on…

BUENOS AIRES: The number of people who had died in the Brazilian town of Petropolis north of Rio de Janeiro as a result of heavy rains and subsequent landslides had increased to 152, media reported yesterday. On Saturday, media reported 136 victims. The Brazilian Institute of Forensic Medicine said that 27 minors were among the dead. According to the G1 broadcaster, 165 more people remain missing, 967 were left homeless. Heavy rainfalls hit Brazil on Tuesday, triggering deadly landslides and flooding. Governor of Rio de Janeiro Claudio Castro calls the rainfall the heaviest since 1932…

THE appointment of Enoch Godongwana as finance minister in August last year was roundly welcomed by big business and the markets. His inaugural Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement delivered on November 11, 2021 was received with a cautious thumbs up by the markets, with the rand gaining ground against the dollar on the day. As a show of confidence in the budget statement, the yield on the benchmark 10-year bond fell 20 basis points to 9.235 percent, indicating that the statement wasn’t “populist”. Even the equity markets, which are often less sensitive to such statements, the JSE All Share Index rose by a percentage point on the day. All this should have come as very welcome news indeed for the president, the new minister, government, the ANC and alliance partners. This…

Yogashen Pillay yogashen.pillay@inl.co.za THE Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) has approached the Electoral Court for a postponement of the by-election in ward 13 in uMdoni municipality on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast. The by-election was set to take place on Wednesday. This comes after concerns were raised by the DA about voters being registered to vote in ward 13 that are not living in the ward. Dean Macpherson, DA chairperson in KZN, said that the party welcomed the undertaking it had received from the IEC that they would approach the Electoral Court today to have the by-election postponed to at least March 3. “The by-election was going to take place after the former DA councillor won the ward from the ANC by 37 votes in the November 2021 elections and then…

The pink Marilyn Monroe-style dress worn by pop star Madonna in her 1984 Material Girl music video is among items set to go under the hammer at a music memorabilia auction in California. The Madonna lot, consisting of a pink satin dress with bustier top and oversized pink satin bow, satin opera gloves and rhinestone bracelets, is estimated to fetch between $100 000 (R1.5 million) and $200 000 in May in a “Music Icons” auction by Julien’s Auctions. “We have Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ ensemble that she wore in the video Material Girl in 1985, where she was channelling Marilyn Monroe from the 1950s film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” said Darren Julien, the founder and CEO of Julien’s Auctions. “It’s one of the most historic and iconic pieces of Madonna,” he added.…

KEN CRITCHLOW | Kloof HORRENDOUS, pathetic, totally abysmal are just some of the words that come to mind, after watching the unbelievable batting collapse in both innings by the Proteas in the Test match against New Zealand. Not to mention poor bowling, and fielding that made us look like a second-class side. How on earth we can go to play the world champions in their own country with a second string team makes one wonder if the selection committee have lost it altogether? It really is time for Elgar (Dean) to call it a day, now into his thirties he still has not learnt to leave the bad balls and I’m afraid he never will. Markram (Aiden) promised so much, but after the Indian tour should never…

WENDY ILLING | Ballito THE article “Raped teen charged with baby’s murder” refers (The Mercury, February 16). Stories like this sicken me to the very pit of my stomach. Does anyone think this 15-year-old girl chose to be raped? Wanted to fall pregnant? Wanted to become a “mother” when she was barely a child herself? Can she be blamed for reaching the end of her tether and eventually murdering the child in utter desperation and despair? Is she supposed to be grateful that, although murder carries the death penalty in Malaysia, being a minor, she may instead serve a life sentence?…

I REGRET TO inform a valued reader from last week that there is no “failure to communicate” in the dating relationship that is causing you heartache. The man you are “seeing” – or trying to see – is not lacking in communication skills and he cannot be accused of not communicating with you. People are communicating round the clock. We cannot stop communicating. Try it. You cannot. Go ahead and hide from the world, turn off your cellphone, stop talking to the people around you. The message you send with such odd behaviour will be loud and clear to others even if it is totally misunderstood and misinterpreted. The core failure labelled “no communication” rests in the unwillingness to hear, read or believe what it is that is being communicated.…

Murphy Nganga murphy.nganga@inl.co.za The future of South African teachers is not on a sure footing, according to the inaugural 2030 Reading Panel report. The report has urged “fundamental reforms” in the education system that will close the gap due to teachers expected to retire in the next 10 years. The report summarised some of the challenges ahead as the country seeks to reach the 2030 goal of ensuring that all children read for meaning by the age of 10 by 2030. Due to the ageing of public school teachers, 45% of employed teachers in 2020 and 2021 are reaching the age of retirement, the report said. The report suggested that an immediate action plan needed to be implemented by increasing the number of teachers to 44 000 per year by…

THE SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) is to recommence its national investigative hearing today into the July unrest that rocked parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. The probe is in its second leg of the hearings, and will focus on events as they unfolded in Gauteng during the unrest in July last year, and will also feature the continuation of evidence from the KZN sitting that took place last year. The panel is due to hear further testimony from survivors, community members, industry players in commerce, private security role players and state officials. The country erupted into chaos in July after the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma, following his refusal to appear before Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo at the State Capture Commission of Inquiry. There was widespread looting of…

BEIRUT: Once the economy’s crown jewel, Lebanon’s banks are shutting branches and laying off employees in droves, resizing to the bleak reality of a crisis they are widely blamed for. Before the onset in 2019 of a financial collapse deemed one of the world’s worst since the 1850s by the World Bank, the small Mediterranean country had an oversized but prosperous banking sector. The capital Beirut was a booming regional financial hub, attracting savers keen to profit from high interest rates and banking secrecy laws. But more than two years into the crisis, the reputation of Lebanese lenders has been shredded. A dizzying currency collapse, coupled with banks imposing strict withdrawal limits and prohibiting transfers abroad, has left ordinary depositors watching on helplessly as their savings evaporate. And yet bankers…

ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopian chief negotiator and adviser on Transboundary Rivers Seleshi Bekele announced yesterday the launch of the first turbine of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile River and the beginning of power generation. “Congratulations to All #Ethiopians & Friends. Efforts of over a decade in building #GERD started delivering result. The 1st turbine with generating capacity of 375MW inaugurated today by HE PM Dr Abiy Ahmed,” Bekele wrote on Twitter. The official said when completed, the dam would become the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa with 5 150MW capcity and annual energy of 15.76TWH.…

Eshlin Vedan eshlin.vedan@inl.co.za AmaZulu play their first DStv Premiership game of 2022 when they host relegation candidates TS Galaxy at the Moses Mabhida Stadium tomorrow night. Usuthu enter the game sixth on the log but just four points behind second-placed Orlando Pirates. With the title out of reach, the best that they can aim for is a repeat of last season’s second place finish that earned them a historic berth in the CAF Champions League this season. Galaxy are currently on a high, having won their last two games in all competitions against Kaizer Chiefs in the Nedbank Cup and Swallows FC in the league. The Rockets’ win over the Dube Birds took them out of the relegation zone and a strong run of form now can take them firmly…