Indice dei contenuti per 2021-09-02 in Mercury

IMRAN KEEKA | DA KZN spokesperson on education A video clip being circulated on social media, allegedly showing pupils from Ilanga Secondary School from KwaDabeka, Clermont, viciously attacking another pupil, is sickening to the core. Worse still, there is more than one pupil involved in this vile and detestable assault, while others are despicably jeering and recording the incident on the side lines. This is a criminal act and those responsible for the assault must be criminally charged. A strong message was sent earlier this year when the perpetrator of another horrible school bullying act was met with the might of the law. This should be a lesson for all. The DA strongly believes that the book must be identically thrown at the perpetrators of this odious…

IAN LLOYD | Durban North NOW that the Afghanistan debacle is nearly over, fingers are being pointed about where the responsibility lies. Let us look at history. As the US is involved, we need to first look at its war in Vietnam. That country suffered under the French when it was Indo China and then under the Japanese in World War II until that war ended. Then, the French thought, mistakenly, that they could move back in and take over again, but the people had had enough of colonisation, deciding they wanted their country back and to run it themselves. They fought the French for nearly 10 years and defeated them at Diem Bien Phu in 1954. As the new administrators of North Vietnam had a communist…

TRUSTWORTHY, good people, show you who they are. The untrustworthy do, too. These indications are by no means foolproof, because people can use the good to disguise their ill purposes. General guidelines: Good people don’t cheat, even in the most trivial matters. They do not take advantage if others make mistakes. Good people treat servers well, they tip well, they’re kind, they do not regard servers as being beneath them. Good people don’t take advantage of their positions, their status, or of whatever power they think they may have. Good people are aware of the apparently forgotten – they give to the poor, they listen to the elderly, and they have an eye out to protect the vulnerable. Good people do not have to win arguments. They know that straining…

The permanent closure of liberation monument, Liliesleaf Farm, has triggered frustration and anger towards the government for its failure to keep the country’s heritage alive. The announcement comes, ironically, at the start of Heritage Month. This, political analyst Sanusha Naidu said, was indicative of the government’s lack of respect for the country’s heritage. Liliesleaf Farm, in Johannesburg, served as the secret headquarters of the ANC, SACP, uMkhonto weSizwe and the Congress Alliance between 1961 and 1963. It was at Liliesleaf Farm that the overthrow of the apartheid regime was discussed. A police raid in 1963 saw the arrest of the core of the underground liberation movement’s leadership which set in motion the Rivonia Trial. Post apartheid, Liliesleaf was home to exhibitions that told the story of the journey to democracy…

Zelda Venter zelda.venter@inl.co.za FOLLOWING a failed marriage of 24 years and a pending divorce, a father has to cough up and ensure that while he is still living in comfort, his estranged spouse and children also still enjoy their comforts. The wife took her husband to the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, to ensure that he continued to maintain their two children at university, and that he increased her maintenance, as her expenses a month ran up to R111 096. The wife said this left her with a shortfall of R56 628.13 each month. She complained that her husband continued to live in luxury all by himself in their four-bedroom matrimonial home, with a full-time domestic worker and gardener. These are all luxuries that she and the children do not enjoy,…

Samkelo Mtshali samkelo.thulasizwe@inl.co.za AT THE reopened inquest into the 1977 death of dentist Dr Hoosen Haffejee while in police custody, yet another forensic pathologist has told the Pietermaritzburg High Court that police claims that Haffejee committed suicide can reasonably be excluded. During her virtual testimony before Judge ZP Nkosi yesterday, Dr Shakeera Holland told the court that the initial evidence of the cause of death as “consistent with hanging” was incorrect. Holland holds a specialist qualification in forensic pathology from the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa and a Master’s of medicine in forensic pathology from Wits University. She is one of the forensic pathologists the National Prosecuting Authority has tasked with re-examining the initial medical evidence in the immediate aftermath of Haffejee’s death. Holland told the court there were…

IT HAS not taken long for the impact of the Digital Vibes scandal to be felt by South Africans, judging by the vaccine hesitancy that continues to be a major stumbling block. The scandal has not only cost the country financially, but the company’s failure to communicate the government’s message on the pandemic, especially on vaccines, has become evident since more jabs have arrived. First, there were vaccine shortages, and now that issue has largely been addressed, the roll-out has been marred by scepticism and a rise in disinformation and misinformation. In all, the government’s assumption has been that more vaccines will lead to more vaccinations – this, however, is proving to be inaccurate, according to political economist Siseko Maposa. He aptly states: “Seemingly, growing vaccine scepticism has caught the…

Venezuela’s main opposition parties announced an end to their three-year boycott of elections organised by the government of President Nicolás Maduro, abandoning one of the main tactics of their long struggle to oust the authoritarian socialist. The opposition, whose candidates in past elections have been harassed and banned by Maduro’s government, has acknowledged the likelihood that the local and regional elections in November would again be rigged against them. They portrayed the decision to field candidates as a last-ditch effort to restore democracy to the beleaguered South American nation. Maduro’s government has sought for months to cajole opposition candidates to run, seeing their participation as key to rebuilding international legitimacy. Opposition officials now say joining the elections could lay the groundwork for future presidential and legislative elections, as well as…

LONDON: Piers Morgan has been cleared of any wrongdoing in his comments about the duchess of Sussex on Good Morning Britain. Broadcast watchdog Ofcom branded attempts to silence the 56-year-old presenter a “chilling restriction on freedom of expression” after it received over 57 000 complaints, including from Meghan herself, when he said he “didn’t believe a word” the former Suits star had said in her controversial interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this year. Ofcom said Morgan was entitled to “rigorously challenge” comments made by Meghan and Prince Harry in the interview, including that the duchess felt suicidal and questions had been raised by an unnamed royal about the colour of their unborn baby’s skin. It ruled: “Mr Morgan was entitled to say he disbelieved the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s…

Bijnor (India): A convict who has been released early for good behaviour continues to languish in jail because his family is not willing to take him back. The family has refused to furnish a “guarantee” for him. Sanjay Kumar, Bijnor district probation officer, said that a guarantee is a signed affidavit given by kin which acknowledges handover of the inmate and vouches to inform the probation officer in case of any wrongdoing. Inmate, Keshav Sharan, 62, has served 15 years in prison. He is unmarried and has two brothers in Bijnor but both have refused to take him in as his release will have a bad influence on their children.…

Stuart Hess stuart.hess@inl.co.za THE Sri Lankan and South African teams could do with the distraction of playing an actual match today. Both teams have been beset by controversy off the field. A break from that - and the strict bio bubble - would be nice, but how much play is possible in today’s opening one-day international at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo is in the hands of Mother Nature. At best it appears that the first match will be a fractured affair, because of the weather. Rain has been forecast for most of today in the Sri Lankan capital, and whatever breaks there will be, are likely to be brief. Enough time for a match? That remains to be seen. Preparation has not been easy. The Covid-19 restrictions in place…

EDWARD WEST edward.west@inl.co.za THE IMMEDIATE outlook for listed property remained uncertain as new variants of the Covid-19 virus were being identified, with possible further waves of the pandemic potentially leading to stricter lockdowns, Rebosis Property Fund said yesterday. Recovery remained dependent on an expedient roll-out of vaccines, the property fund that invests in early stage regional dominant shopping centres and large, single-tenanted office buildings in South Africa said in a pre-close update. The company is burdened with a relatively high level of debt with loan-to-value (LTV) at 72.2 percent at the end of February – generally, the market is comfortable LTVs of 50-40 percent – but in April it announced negotiations were under way with undisclosed, local and offshore parties on a potential transaction that could take LTV to…

Thami Magubane thami.magubane@inl.co.za A 12-point plan to prepare Grade 12 pupils for their end-of-year exams has been unveiled by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education, and it seeks to enlist the help of motivational speakers to work on the pupils’ psyches. However, the plan has been slammed by teacher unions and political parties who yesterday warned the department not to expect improved performance as a result of motivational talks. The department has described the matric class of 2021 as “examination unfit” due to the learning time lost because of Covid-19, which has disrupted two critical learning years. The plan called “12 Focus Point Improvement Acceleration Plan” was crafted by the department after noting that there were no guarantees about the availability of teaching and learning time as a result of Covid-19,…

THYAGARAJ MARKANDAN | Kloof “Hey, mighty man, you think you are so intelligent and superior? You were so quick to find a vaccine to fight me. But I am always one step ahead of you. I keep mutating, leaving you baffled and frustrated, gasping in your tracks. “As small as I am, you have met your match. I’ve got you stumped. You see, what you don’t seem to realise is that there are too many of you on Earth. You have become so powerful and greedy, you lay waste the Earth. You want everything for yourself. You build so many towns and cities and drive out all creatures, big and small from their habitats. “Look at what you have done to this beautiful Earth. Forests are disappearing fast,…

ALLAN WOLMAN | Israel THE Department of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco) issued a press statement on July 28, condemning the AU for granting Israel observer status. Clayson Monyela, the Dirco spokesperson, wrote that his government was “appalled” by the AU’s action. The minister in charge of Dirco, being a woman herself, has been conspicuously silent this past week as the Taliban is set to take over Afghanistan and, in all likelihood, revert back to its old ways. The same ANC minister saw fit to fill half a page in a newspaper, in an attack on the AU, but not a word about the plight of Afghan women. One wonders if Naledi Pandor is as concerned about the predicament of women in Afghanistan as she is about Palestine.…

ITUMELENG MAFISA THE sugar industry has warned that another sugar tax will result in thousands of people losing jobs and losses for sugar producers. The government last imposed a sugar tax in 2018 which resulted in about 17 000 job losses and a monetary loss of more than R200 million. To make matters worse, sugar cane farmers were among those affected by the unrest, with many sugar cane farms being set alight in KwaZulu-Natal. The chairperson of the SA Canegrowers Association, Andrew Russell, says the calls by some public health scholars and the Healthy Living Alliance for the national government to double the Health Promotion Levy (HPL) shows zero regard for the impact this tax hike would have on the 1 million people who rely on the sugar industry…

THE families of five teenagers aged between 16 and 19 are demanding justice after an off-duty Clanwilliam police officer allegedly assaulted them with a hockey stick. According to the mother of one of the boys, the off-duty officer had jumped a fence at around 2am on August 22 into a yard, where he hit her son over the leg with the hockey stick, breaking his leg, and asaulting the four other boys as well. Police spokesperson Joseph Swartbooi said the an incident was under investigation. | Mercury Correspondent…

Lack of convictions in sexual crimes points to a lack of justice Walking home from school in a village outside Mthatha in the Eastern Cape, 15-year-old Lindiwe* was attacked and raped by a man who emerged from the nearby bushes. This traumatic incident was reported by Lindiwe’s distraught mother to the local chief and then to the closest police station. Upon discovering that Lindiwe was pregnant a few months after the rape, her family refused to have her terminate the pregnancy as this is against their religious beliefs. Lindiwe was forced to miss one year of schooling during her pregnancy and is today the mother of a little boy. Most concerning is that, two years later, Lindiwe and her family have given up on the arrest and conviction of the…

A senior board member of Afghanistan’s central bank is urging the US treasury and the International Monetary Fund to take steps to provide the Taliban-led government limited access to the country’s reserves or risk economic disaster. The Taliban took over Afghanistan with astonishing speed, but it appears unlikely that the militants will get quick access to most of the roughly $10 billion in assets held by Da Afghanistan Bank, which are mostly outside of the country. US president Joe Biden’s administration has said any central bank assets the Afghan government has in the US will not be made available to the Taliban, and the IMF has said the country will not have access to the lender’s resources. Shah Mehrabi, an economics professor at Montgomery College in Maryland and a member…

California firefighters battled gusty winds yesterday to keep a raging wildfire out of the resort town of South Lake Tahoe as evacuation orders spread into Nevada. Crews were mostly able to steer the Caldor Fire away from homes and cabins nestled along the southern shore of the lakeside paradise that thousands had fled just a day before. “We don’t have any tools out there to stop the fire so we resorted to herding the the fire away from structures and away from people,” said Eric Schwab, a division chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, during a public briefing. The blaze had damaged some structures on the outskirts of South Lake Tahoe, he said. Officials braced for another difficult day with gusty winds, but said firefighters should…

Dubai: Human Rights Watch has called on Saudi Arabia to stop laying off Yemeni employees, warning that this could force them to return to the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn country. Yemen has been embroiled in conflict between the government, which is backed by a Saudi-led military coalition, and the Iran-allied Huthi rebels since 2014, creating what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Saudi authorities in July began “to terminate or not renew contracts of Yemeni professionals”, HRW said. “Saudi authorities should suspend this decision and allow Yemenis to remain in Saudi Arabia,” said the group.…

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za INDUSTRIAL activity in the South African manufacturing sector returned to strong growth in August following a record single-month decline in July. The Absa Purchasing Manufacturers Index (PMI) more than recovered from last month’s steep decline, rising to 57.9 points in August from a very low 43.5 points in July. In July, the PMI reading fell to the lowest level since May 2020 as the manufacturing sector suffered severe supply chain disruptions due to civil unrest and lockdown restrictions. Absa said both the output and new orders sub-indices recorded solid improvements during the month. Absa senior economist Miyelani Maluleke said the recovery was always on the cards in August due to normalisation of demand and output for businesses affected by July’s looting, and a further boost…

Mayibongwe Maqhina mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za FORMER health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize may have committed acts of criminality before he stepped down. This emerged when Special Investigating Unit (SIU) head Andy Mothibi briefed the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) yesterday, saying that they were sure that Mkhize resigned before action was taken against him. However, he said they were in a process of ensuring that accounting authorities and executive authorities were held to account where the corruption-busting unit found irregularities. Mkhize stepped down after being implicated in the irregular awarding of a contract to Digital Vibes that was linked to people with whom he worked in the department, the ANC and the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department. The SIU found the R150 million communication contract for Covid-19 and National Health Insurance…

KEVIN GOVENDER | Shallcross AYN Rand wrote in her 1957 book Atlas Shrugged: “When you see that in order to produce, you need 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 and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – You may know that your society is doomed.” While Rand must be praised for her powers of perception, even white apartheid rulers like HF Verwoerd and PW Botha grudgingly lamented that the transfer of power to the…

A HOMILY comes this way on the importance in marriage of balance and mutual respect. A woman is shopping. At the cash counter she opens her purse to pay. The cashier notices a TV remote in her purse. “Do you always carry your TV remote with you?” “Not always but my husband wouldn’t come shopping with me today because of a football match, so I took the remote to punish him.” Moral: Accompany and support your wife in her hobbies. The cashier laughs and starts taking back all the items she’s bought. She asks what he’s doing “Your husband has blocked your credit card.” Moral: Always respect the hobbies and interests of your husband. She takes her husband’s credit card from her handbag and swipes it. Unfortunately, he didn’t block…

ITUMELENG MAFISA SAA has denied that it is experiencing any problems with its private equity partners Takatso consortium. This comes after news broke on social media that Global Airways, which makes up part of the consortium, had pulled out of the deal. SAA had denied that this was true and said the deal would continue as planned. SAA spokesperson Vimla Maistry said SAA would launch this month without any funds from Takatso after months of SAA aircraft being grounded. This received much criticism from some unions, who questioned why SAA would relaunch without funds from the private equity partner. “Yes – following the BR (business rescue) process, the company is solvent and SAA has working capital to resume services,” Maistry said. She added that the airline had noticed that…

Sakhiseni Nxumalo sakhiseni.nxumalo@inl.co.za WOMEN’S Month in KwaZulu-Natal ended on a tragic note, after the lifeless body of a 25-year-old student was discovered on the side of the road in Nongoma, northern KZN, on Monday. According to the police, it was alleged that on Monday morning, Thandeka Mbatha’s body was found on the pathway, by a passer-by after she had been strangled to death, at Dayeni area, in Nongoma. KZN Police spokesperson Captain Nqobile Gwala said a case of murder was being investigated by Nongoma SAPS. She said the circumstances surrounding the incident were being investigated. Mbatha was completing her second year towards a Bachelor of Education degree at Unisa’s Durban campus. Speaking to The Mercury yesterday, Mbatha’s older sister Phakamile (Mbatha) said that the family was still finding it hard…

Sakhiseni Nxumalo sakhiseni.nxumalo@inl.co.za FIVE people were killed in a bloody mass shooting in uMlazi on Tuesday night, bringing the total number of people slain in Durban’s largest township to 11 – in the past five days. According to the police, five counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder have been opened at the uMlazi police station. KwaZulu-Natal provincial police spokesperson Brigadier Jay Naicker said the incident took place just after 8.30pm. Naicker said 13 people were inside a house on Eduardo Mondlane Road in uMlazi W-Section when they were attacked by three unknown people. He said the suspects opened fire, fatally wounding five men, aged between 33 and 40, in the head. Three injured victims, aged between 27 and 29, were rushed to hospital for medical attention. “Five…

Geneva: Weather-related disasters have rocketed over the past half-century, causing far more damage even as better warning systems have meant fewer deaths, the UN said yesterday. A report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) examined mortality and economic losses from weather, climate and water extremes between 1970 and 2019. It found that such disasters have increased fivefold during that period, driven largely by a warming planet, and warned the upward trend would continue. “The number of weather, climate and water extremes are increasing and will become more frequent and severe in many parts of the world as a result of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. In total, there were more than 11 000 disasters attributed to these hazards globally since 1970, causing more than 2 million deaths…

Rio de Janeiro: Football legend Pele has reassured fans he is fine after being taken to hospital in Brazil. The 80-year-old’s wellbeing was the subject of speculation on Tuesday after it was revealed he had been admitted to the Albert Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo. “Guys, I didn’t faint and I’m in very good health. I went for my routine exams, which I had not been able to do before because of the pandemic,” Pele said on Twitter. The three-time World Cup winner has rarely been seen in public since undergoing hip replacement surgery in 2012, Xinhua reports. |…

Singapore’s high court ordered two bloggers to pay Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong a combined S$160 000 (R1.7 million) in damages yesterday, over an article about the home of his late father and the city-state’s modern-day founder, Lee Kuan Yew. The premier sued writer Rubaashini Shunmuganathan and editor Xu Yuan Chen, also known as Terry Xu, over an August 2019 article on The Online Citizen (TOC) that included references to a Lee family disagreement about what to do with the property. Judge Audrey Lim said the article “impugned Lee’s reputation and character” by alleging that he was dishonest. “This struck at the heart of Lee’s personal integrity and could severely undermine his credibility, not just personally but also as the prime minister, and call into question his fitness to govern…

Vatican City: Pope Francis said the idea of resigning following his surgery earlier this year “didn’t even cross my mind”, in an interview broadcast yesterday. Rumours that the 84-year-old pontiff was considering stepping down were recently reported in Italian media, seemingly sparked by his hospitalisation following an operation on his colon in July. “I don’t know where they got it from last week that I was going to resign!” he told Spanish radio Cope in a lengthy interview, saying that “it didn’t even cross my mind”. Francis underwent an operation on July 4 after suffering from a type of diverticulitis.…

MIKE GREENAWAY mike.greenaway@inl.co.za SPRINGBOK coach Jacques Nienaber says that playing the All Blacks and Wallabies without having warmed up against their players in Super Rugby will make no difference to his team’s chances of beating the Antipodean sides. When Super Rugby was paused in March last year as the world went into lockdown, it ultimately meant the end of the competition in the format that had run since its inception in 1996, with South Africa aligning with the northern hemisphere for its future provincial competitions, and New Zealand and Australia doing their own things. Nienaber said from Brisbane —where the Boks are preparing to play the Wallabies next Sunday — that it is of little consequence that his players have had no interaction at provincial level with their counterparts from…