Indice dei contenuti per 2023-06-09 in Cape Times

THE extension of the validity of Zimbabwean exemption permits by a further six months will enable them settled in South Africa to apply for substantive work visas and also help avoid bureaucratic and legal chaos for Pretoria. Dr Stephen Chan, a professor of world politics, said: “The permit extension saves chaos in Zimbabwe which is going to the polls to choose a new administration in August. “Zimbabwe is also tipping deeper into economic chaos, with prices rocketing, and its local unit of exchange free-falling after the country’s reserve bank adopted a ‘market determined’ exchange rate regime this week. “The permit extension means no huge influx of returnees before the election. An extra six months, that is, until the end of 2023, basically to avoid bureaucratic and legal chaos. “But that…

THE COVID-19 Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (Ters) saved at least two million jobs at the onset of the pandemic, but not without several unintended consequences. In a paper titled Wage Subsidies and Job Retention in a Developing Country: Evidence from South Africa, researchers have discussed how, in a country characterised by extreme unemployment, the Ters was arguably South Africa’s most important labour-market intervention during the pandemic. The Ters was a wage subsidy – a predominant policy used by governments worldwide to save jobs threatened by the pandemic. The policy subsidised the incomes of workers who remained employed but had suffered income loss as a result of a full or partial closure of their employers’ operations. Subsidy amounts primarily depended on a worker’s usual wage and any employer payments to them,…

THE perspective of women we get from the media, particularly telenovelas, is not true to the definition of a contemporary woman. Most women celebrated on our screens are not the good role models we want for ama2k (millennials). Some of the women we see on our screens are painted with the same ancient patriarchal brush. In 2023, we still see women who are secondary to men and whose lives are defined by the men. They are portrayed as people whose livelihood, sustenance, and success wholly depended on the men. Ama2k need to hear and see the true reflection of contemporary women they can look up to as role models. One contemporary woman that comes to my mind is Thina Maqubela from Motherwell township in Gqeberha. I had the privilege of…

The Wind Knows My Name Isabel Allende Loot.co.za (R279) Bloomsbury Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is 6 years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht – the night their family loses everything. As her child’s safety seems ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi- occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin. Cut to Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. However, their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and 7-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to…

A VITAL prerequisite for safe living is adequate sanitation facilities, yet South Africa’s sewer system is on the verge of collapse. The country is facing a cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal, north of Gauteng. In February, the country reported its first two cholera cases following outbreaks in the two most seriously impacted neighbouring nations, Mozambique and Malawi, as per the reports from the UN. According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, the most recent cholera outbreak in 2008–2009 resulted in over 12 000 cases and 65 fatalities. The difference, however, between the 2008/09 outbreak and the one currently plaguing northern Gauteng is that the former was on the back of an outbreak in Zimbabwe, which spread to South Africa, while the latter has been exacerbated by lack of infrastructure and…

The HIV/Aids treatment centre in Kampala is almost empty, days after Uganda enacted one of the most draconian anti-gay laws on Earth. The usual daily influx of around 50 patients has all but dried up, say staff. Antiretroviral drugs pile up unused. Andrew Tendo, resident medical officer at the US-funded clinic, warned that new waves of HIV infections were forming even as vulnerable people stayed away from treatment centres, afraid of being identified and arrested under the new laws. “The LGBT community in Uganda is on lockdown now,” he said. “They don’t have preventive services. They cannot access condoms ... they cannot access ARTs (antiretrovirals).” Under the bill, which President Yoweri Museveni signed into law last week, gay sex is punishable by life in prison while “aggravated homosexuality”, which includes…

MANILA: The Philippines raised the alert level at the popular Mayon volcano by a notch yesterday, after detecting volcanic earthquakes and hundreds of rockfall events. The 2 462m volcano in central Albay province “is exhibiting magmatic eruption,” the state volcanology agency said in a statement. At “alert level 3” on a scale of 5, Mayon has increased chances of lava flows and explosive activity within weeks or even days. The agency said people within a 6km radius of the volcano should be evacuated while pilots should avoid flying their aircraft close to the volcano’s crater. Mayon has erupted over 50 times in the past four centuries. | Reuters…

WESTERFORD High School is investigating the source of racist posts on social media purporting to come from a pupil at the Rondebosch school. The account, under the name Grade8a_2023, posted images of black slaves and tagged some pupils at the school, with a caption reading: “I found your family”. Among other posts is a picture of a Khoisan person accompanied by a caption identifying the person as a teacher at the school. Another image of black slaves chained at the hands and neck is captioned, “who wishes all these black people could leave our classes and go back to where they came from”. In a statement, the school said it was aware of the matter. The statement said: “In view of the fact that the posts seem to have originated…

THE Knysna municipality commemorated the sixth anniversary of the devastating Knysna fires by honouring the lives lost and reflecting on the resilience of the community this week. The fires that ripped through Knysna in June 2017, engulfed homes, businesses, and surrounding forests, resulting in the evacuation of thousands of residents. At least seven people lost their lives and many others were left injured. Animals were carried in blankets, carriers and backpacks. While the government declared the incident a provincial disaster and mobilised resources to support the affected communities, it is believed that the fire was likely started by someone burning pine cones. People opened their hearts, donating clothing, furniture and food and even including messages of hope in some of the items, and companies across South Africa donated money…

Mamkhize: My World My Rules Amanda Ngudle Loot.co.za (R651) African Perspectives Shauwn “Mamkhize” Mkhize is a larger than life personality who, like her father and brother before her, is loved and misunderstood in equal measure. Her combination of political and business acumen runs in her family, and so does her ability to garner the sometimes-grudging admiration of those who have followed her rise to fame and fortune in the democratic dispensation. In her memoir, Mamkhize: My World, My Rules, she shares the details of her cloistered but privileged childhood, which was torn asunder by the assassination of her father and the subsequent quest by her brother to avenge his death. She tells the story of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from her vantage point, as a family member of a…

A DARK and devastating secret lies at the heart of Megan Choritz’s debut novel, Lost Property. Choritz is a South African-born playwright writer and director. An extract from the book offers hints of the descriptive passages within its pages: It is a rare sunny winter’s Sunday. I am scratching around in the tiny patch of garden. Snails have eaten what was left of the flat leafed parsley, leaving silver trails along the grass and wall. Mark sits on the wooden bench up against the front of the house. He is on his laptop, but not really into it, calling out to me to come and look at this cute puppy video, at that silly cat thing. He is waiting for the Grand Prix to start and then I will lose…

THE 96th Comrades Marathon takes place this weekend and it is a down run from Pietermaritzburg to Durban. More than 18 000 runners will line-up for the annual 87.7km gruelling race between the two KwaZulu-Natal cities. Among the participants are 2 354 international athletes from 84 nations. The lion’s share of international runners comes from India with 403 athletes, followed by Zimbabwe with 255, United Kingdom with 224, USA with 173 and Brazil with 142. Gauteng has the biggest number of South African participants at 7 398, with the host province of KwaZulu-Natal coming second with 3 491, in third is the Western Cape with 1 517 and the Eastern Cape at 1 141. The rest of the provinces have under 1000 runners. The Comrades Marathon remains one of the…

A Syrian refugee suspected of stabbing six people in the French Alpine town of Annecy yesterday did not appear to have a “terrorist motive”, the local prosecutor told reporters. Line Bonnet-Mathis said that of the four children injured in the assault, one was aged just 22 months, two were 2-year-olds, and the eldest was three. The suspect is a Syrian in his early 30s who was granted refugee status in Sweden in April, a police source said. He was arrested at the scene. In a video, the attacker can be heard twice saying “in the name of Jesus Christ” in English. The assailant was wearing a cross when he was arrested after the attack in Annecy, a town 30km south of the Swiss city of Geneva. Two of the young…

London: The family firm that turned the parents of Princess Catherine, the wife of the heir to the British throne, into millionaires left debts of nearly £2.6 million ($3.2 million) when it collapsed last month, a report by insolvency specialists has revealed. The unpaid bills left by the pandemic-hit firm’s collapse include over £600 000 in unpaid tax. Party Pieces, a celebration paraphernalia mail order business, was built up by Catherine’s parents Carole and Michael Middleton. Since their daughter’s marriage in 2011 to Prince William, they have become close to the royal family and are regularly invited to royal events and gatherings. The firm was launched in 1987 after Carole Middleton, 68, searched for ideas for her daughter’s fifth birthday. It grew into a successful business and generated significant wealth…

A convicted rapist who admitted to the rape and assault of a six-year-old girl left in his care has been unsuccessful in his application to appeal against his life sentence in the Western Cape High Court. The 26-year-old man was arraigned in the Paarl Regional Court on charges of rape and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm where, according to the charge sheet, the offences were committed in May and June 2022, respectively, on the same victim. The High Court judgment by Judge Constance Nziweni also ordered that the judgment be shared with the Department of Social Development “to investigate promptly if the child is not a child in need of care and protection” as she may be at risk. The man – a biological father to two…

Ntshavheni refuses to disclose reasons for wanting to keep panel report secret MINISTER in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has indicated that the government was ready to defend its decision to classify as confidential the independent panel inquiry’s report into the Russian vessel Lady R that docked in Simon’s Town. But she would not be drawn into giving reasons for the move, citing legal threats made by some parties. “Immediately (when) there are legal challenges, it becomes difficult to have a conversation on the matter but this is not the first report to be classified,” she said. President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed Judge Phineas Mojapelo to lead the inquiry investigating US Ambassador to South Africa Reuben Brigety’s claims that weapons had been loaded onto the ship. After causing a diplomatic stand-off between…

Freezing Order Bill Browder Loot.co.za (R264) Jonathan Ball Bill Browder returns with another thriller chronicling how he became Vladimir Putin’s number one enemy by exposing Putin’s alleged campaign to steal and launder hundreds of billions of dollars and kill anyone who stands in his way. When Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to go after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step of that mission was to uncover who was behind the $230 million tax refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over. As Browder and his team tracked the money as it flowed out of Russia through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas, they were shocked…

‘Far-reaching reforms urgently needed to lift growth, create jobs and reduce poverty’ THE playbook is predictably familiar, as if the International Monetary Fund (IMF) enjoyed a Groundhog Day tryst with South Africa. The fund’s 2023 Article IV Consultation Report with South Africa, published on Tuesday, does not disappoint. Even the National Treasury’s response followed the script, almost to the letter: “The National Treasury appreciates the productive engagement with the IMF and is aware of the downside risks to economic growth, and the government is working on further measures in this regard.” International gatekeeper organisations such as the World Bank/IMF group, the UN conurbation, the OECD, the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision and Regulation, the Bank of International Settlements, and the World Trade Organization often come up against growing push back…

Countries are racing to prepare for extreme weather later this year as the world tips into an El Nino – a natural climate phenomenon that fuels tropical cyclones in the Pacific and boosts rainfall and flood risk in parts of the Americas and elsewhere. Yesterday, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) declared that an El Nino is now under way. The past three years have been dominated by the cooler La Nina pattern. Scientists say this year looks particularly worrying. The last time a strong El Nino was in full swing, in 2016, the world saw its hottest year on record. Meteorologists expect that this El Nino, coupled with warming from climate change, will see the world grapple with record-high temperatures. Experts are also concerned about what is…

Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh protested yesterday, demanding to be repatriated to Myanmar, so that they could leave the squalid camps they have lived in since fleeing a brutal military crackdown in their homeland in 2017. More than a million Rohingya have been crammed into the camps in southeastern Bangladesh, the world’s largest refugee settlement. Most fled the crackdown by Myanmar’s military almost six years ago, although some have been there for longer. During yesterday’s demonstrations across the sprawling camps, refugees, young and old, waved placards and chanted slogans. “No more refugee life. No verification. No scrutiny. No interview. We want quick repatriation through UNHCR data card. We want to go back to our motherland,” the placards read. “Let’s go back to Myanmar. Don’t try to…

WHEN Vladimir Kotov completed the 2012 Comrades Marathon in a time of 5:48:12 to break his previous masters’ (50-59 year olds) record from four years earlier by a good 30 seconds, it was generally agreed that the record would stay forever. They said no 50-year-old could ever run faster than that. They said the Belarusian was a man-machine. They were not exaggerating. After all, Kotov had won the Comrades three times. And all of those victories were as a veteran (40-49 year olds). So, after another splendid run to finish 28th overall in his 13th race, the former winner of both the Eindhoven and Belgrade Marathons had seemingly set a mark that would outlive him. The fastest anyone 50 and over has run since then was a 6:33:42 by Ronald…