Indice dei contenuti per 2022-06-23 in Star

SOUTH Africa is experiencing an epidemic of deaths among the youth due to road crashes as more than 8 500 perished in crashes in three years, the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) said. The RTMC has issued a clarion call to the young people of South Africa to prioritise road safety as the youth engage in Youth Month festivities. This comes after the corporation revealed yesterday that a total of 8 547 young people between the ages of 21 and 34 died on South African roads in the three-year period between 2019 and 2021, according to statistics collected by the RTMC. “The worst-affected category is among those aged 30 to 34, with 3 661 of them dying because of road crashes in the three-year period,” the corporation said. The province…

ATM president Vuyo Zungula has called on law enforcement authorities to suspend all police officers implicated in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm saga. This follows reports of a cover-up and their complicity in an unlawful criminal investigation involving South Africa and Namibia. Zungula wrote to Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) boss Jennifer Ntlatseng asking her to investigate police officers alleged to have gone to Namibia to trace individuals suspected of breaking into the Waterberg, Limpopo farm, where they allegedly stole huge amounts of cash. The complaint follows a police case in which former State Security Agency head Arthur Fraser deposed an affidavit detailing the burglary that took place in 2020. Ramaphosa has not denied that there was a burglary, but has disputed a reported amount of $4 million, stating…

CHAOS reigned at the City of Joburg’s council meeting in Braamfontein yesterday as opposition parties demanded that an ActionSA councillor accused of corruption be removed from the meeting. Opposition parties sang and offered countless points of order in protest of MMC Nkululeko Mbundu participating in the council meeting while under investigation concerning interference in the city’s procurement processes. This is not the first time that Mbundu has been involved in allegations of corruption. Earlier this year Mbundu, who is the MMC for Economic Development, was involved in a bribery scandal that saw a city official being suspended for allegedly trying to bribe him with a bottle of whiskey and R3 000. Mbundu had accused the official of trying to convince him that the Metropolitan Trading Company should be retained as…

What better way to bring a fun experience than to include a dash of kasi vibes to the mix? This weekend the Night Embassy with Jagermeister will present Kaofela Kaofela, an event by Kombonation, the Ambassadors of the Night Embassy. Kombonation is a pre-to-post-production start-up based in Soweto that specialises in real and raw visual storytelling. The creatives are set to bring a party dubbed “Kaofela Kaofela” to Soweto from today to Sunday at Uncle Tom’s Community Centre in Kumalo Street, Orlando West. This nightlife experience boasts other renowned artists such as Focalistic, Bonj, Deniece Marz, Mam Thug, Teedo Love and Kombonation themselves, as well as Skate Contests, their latest T-shirt drop and photography exhibitions at the iconic Uncle Tom’s Community Centre. One of the founders of Kombonation, Kgotso Selomah,…

MULTI-award-winning rapper Focalistic has touched down in South Africa after a successful tour in the US and has events lined up to grace them with his stellar performances. His recent tour included dates in Atlanta, San Diego and New York City. Lethabo Sebetso, fondly known as Focalistic, also has tours booked for Canada and Australia later this year. The Ke Star hitmaker is fired up after his recent spectacular collaboration with global Afrobeat star Davido (with Abidoza) on CKay’s new fire single Watawi. Among many places which he will grace this week, Focalistic will be a special guest along with Tumisho and Kmat at the BudXLab at the Venue Thirteen Rooftop Bar. From June 22 to July, Budweiser will be presenting Mixmag Lab, a long line of interesting events that…

INEQUALITY is a favourite word bandied about by the ANC, with the blame squarely laid on certain sections of the population. But a latest media report refers to exorbitant pay packages for CEOs in charge of SOEs and other government departments. A number of them earn more than the president. One word immediately comes to mind: disgusting. Do these so-called top 10 sleep at night when they consider the parlous state of the nation and that millions of their fellows go to bed on empty stomachs – that’s if they have beds and roofs over their heads? And most of them are unemployed. As things stand, the situation is worsening by the day. Had the SOEs and departments been flourishing entities and making big profits, one could almost excuse their…

THE recent events in our country have left many citizens wondering whether the politics of representation has provided us with the kind of public representatives that we require as a nation. The report by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo on the state of State Capture, the allegations against President Cyril Ramaphosa by Arthur Fraser and the bemoanable response by our legislators are matters of grave concern, especially as it applies to representation. In its heydays, in the city of origin, Athens (Greece) from the middle of the 5th century BCE to the middle of the 4th century BCE, democracy meant that the citizens themselves participated in the political processes. If the Zondo Commission report is anything to go by (it is a judicial commission of inquiry), how represented are we as…

May was Africa month. This article shares some reflections as belated celebration of important, but often overlooked historical development of relations between Africa and China. China is Africa’s biggest trading partner, after notching more than $220 billion, to overtake the US in 2014. According to the Quartz Africa, exports from such countries as Libya and Benin to China went up by more than 400% in 2021, while Togo, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, and Eswatini doubled their exports. South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Egypt, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo continued to be the top five largest African trading partners for China in 2021. There are reportedly more than 1 million Chinese citizens doing business and working in Africa and more than 200 000 Africans living…

A powerful earthquake struck a remote border region of Afghanistan overnight killing at least 1 000 people and injuring hundreds more, officials said Wednesday, with the toll expected to rise as desperate rescuers dig through collapsed dwellings. The 5.9 magnitude quake struck hardest in the rugged east, where people already lead hardscrabble lives in a country in the grip of a humanitarian disaster made worse by the Taliban takeover in August. “People are digging grave after grave,” said Mohammad Amin Huzaifa, head of the Information and Culture Department in hard-hit Paktika, adding that at least 1 000 people had died in that province alone. “It is raining also, and all houses are destroyed. People are still trapped under the rubble,” he told journalists. The death toll climbed steadily…

Geneva: An international coalition of journalists, editors and publishers demanded yesterday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be released from a UK jail and that all espionage charges against him be dropped. Organisations from six countries gathered in Geneva for the “call to free Julian Assange in the name of press freedom”, and for Swiss authorities to facilitate his release. The British government approved Assange’s extradition to the US. Assange, 50, is wanted to face trial in the US for publishing military and diplomatic files in 2010, and could face up to 175 years in jail if found guilty. | AFP…

London: Britain’s exit from the EU will further slash workers’ wages in coming years, a study concluded yesterday as the nation already faces a cost-of-living crisis from soaring inflation. The research, from the Resolution Foundation think tank and the London School of Economics, was published as official data showed UK inflation hitting a new 40-year peak at 9.1% And the report claimed that Brexit had hit the UK economy’s competitiveness abroad. The report forecast that Brexit would cause a 1.8% drop to earnings adjusted for inflation by the end of the decade. That equated to a loss of £470 (R9 180) per worker a year. | AFP…

Singer Beyoncé surprisingly dropped her new single Break My Soul three hours before the announced release time from her forthcoming seventh solo studio album Renaissance. Also in the writing credits are Jay-Z, Adam Pigott, Freddie Ross, a.k.a Big Freedia, and the writers of Robin S’s 1993 hit Show Me Love, which is prominently sampled in the song, reports Variety. For her part, Beyoncé is on message with both her return and the disco theme of the song: The title is flipped by saying “You won’t break my soul”. It’s filled with dance floor-friendly lines like: “Motivation/I’m looking for a new foundation/ I’m on that new vibration/ I’m building my own foundation” and a repeated exhortation of “Everybody”. In an apparent slight to major streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music,…

ALMOST five years since the announcement of a plan to build five-star mega film and television studios right in the middle of Durban, KZN, the progress of this highly anticipated project remain uncertain. The move to re-purpose a Durban World War II army site into a film studio was recently welcomed after the eThekwini Municipality invited public comments for its plans to rezone the old Natal Command Site on North Beach into the eThekwini Film City. Early this year, the move to speed up the development of a KZN-based film and television studio to rival the Cape Town Film Studios received another boost when Videovision Entertainment director and film producer Anant Singh announced an investment of R7.5 billion for the development of film and television studios and related sectors in…

A trio of researchers, supported by their institutions, have conducted the first successful rooting of the critically endangered South African Mutavhatsindi (yellow peeling plain) tree, which has been under extreme threat due to harmful harvesting of its mature tree parts for medicinal purposes. This work was done by South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi conservation horticulturist and tree expert Mpendulo Gabayi from the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, KZN National Botanical Garden horticulturist Mpho Mathalauga, and Millennium Seed Bank Partnership seed collector Ntsakisi Masia from the Thohoyandou National Botanical Garden. Gabayi said the harmful harvesting of mature tree parts was severely threatening the Mutavhatsindi, scientifically known as Brackenridgea Zanguebarica, and inevitably resulted in the poor regeneration of the new generations of its trees. “Mutavhatsindi is highly sought after for its medicinal…

All those who thought they could make a quick profit by buying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, have been screwed over – by their own greed. No one fully understands how this multi-layered and equally complicated, mathematical binary system works... yet, billions have invested in this theoretical money-making scheme. At the forefront of this acquisitive avarice is the need to make more and more money... It was intoxicatingly attractive, as people began to believe the BS, spun by the inventor, that they could mine profits in cyberspace. This has to go down as the biggest, believable con perpetrated by criminal minds. We will never know the full extent of the losses ... but here are a planet full of intelligent people investing in this “get rich quickly” scheme.…

The inaugural season of the United Rugby Championship (URC) has been completed and boy, was it a doozy; and its beginning and end could be no further part, or as diametrically opposed. At the start, the four South African franchises were the underdogs – strangers in a strange, new land; aliens walking the streets of Dublin, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Parma – to name but a few; and the end, the established order of what had come before in ProRugby, had been smashed. As much as it pains me to say so, the Stormers are worthy champions and have been gracious in victory. Their post-match ceremony was all class and a bit of emotion if you were a neutral, while the genuine sense of celebration transmitted up the N1 has been…

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine hits its fourth month and the consequent global food and oil crisis deepens, world leaders are all looking for ways to end the conflict sooner rather than later. One of the early options on the table was the blacklisting of so-called Kremlin allies, Russian oligarchs, and many Western countries jumped on the bandwagon immediately. For instance, the UK sanctioned the assets of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, while the US, similarly, seized $5.3 million (about R84m) from Konstantin Malofeyev’s US-held bank account. Despite apparent blacklisting, the war has not diminished, and Russian oligarchs appear to still roam the world. A new option that has been put on the table by members of the European parliament is blacklisting territories that have become safe havens for Russian…

Los Angeles: A jury in California found this week that entertainer Bill Cosby sexually assaulted a teenager at the Playboy Mansion almost five decades ago. Judy Huth, now aged 64, was awarded $500 000 (R7.9 million) in damages after the jury in Santa Monica determined that Cosby had molested her in 1975 when she was just 16 years old. The case is one of the few remaining legal actions against Cosby, 84, who has been accused of assault by dozens of women. He was jailed in Pennsylvania in a separate criminal case in 2018, but was freed last year when his conviction was overturned on a technicality. | AFP…

Stroe: Thousands of farmers on tractors gathered in central Netherlands yesterday to protest against the government’s plans to cut nitrogen emissions, which could see livestock reduced by almost a third. The Netherlands, the world’s second-largest agricultural exporter, is one of the top greenhouse gas emitters in Europe, especially nitrogen, with much of this blamed on cattle-produced manure. The government plans to cut nitrogen by 70% to reach climate goals by 2030. For farmers this means a 40% drop in emissions, which would require 30% fewer cattle. | AFP…

IF South Africa wants to develop in a football sense, it needs to create its own identity rather than trying to emulate systems from Europe and South America. Yes, Europe and South America have won all the men’s World Cups so far and generally are far more successful than SA when it comes to development. But trying to copy systems from those continents will not work as SA has its own set of nuances which are unique and require their own systems. Trying to emulate other models in SA actually may harm our football and this could be happening at the moment. In SA, the reality is that players of 26 and 27 are still considered relatively young and still developing while in Europe and South America, players at this…

AFTER 13 years, queen of gossip Wendy Williams has officially ended her TV run of The Wendy Williams Show. Williams, whose health took a turn for the worse, had to be sidelined from her show since July 2021. Hosts have filled in for her. TV personality and comedian Sherri Shepherd filled in during most of season 13 and hosted the grand finale last Friday, which Williams did not appear on. Despite Wendy’s absence, a montage of highlights from her 13-year run was aired for her fans and a shot of her famous purple chair, empty, was posted symbolically to Williams’ social media accounts. The caption read: “We love you for watching.” From the comments it appears Williams’ fans are not impressed by Shepherd, nor the fact that Williams was…

l Report ‘leaves much to be desired’ More than R1 billion later and after eight million pages of documentary evidence, 75 000 pages of transcribed oral evidence and over 800 witnesses, the final chapter of the Commission of inquiry into State Capture led by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has finally arrived. Last night, President Cyril Ramaphosa received the final Zondo Commission Report, which comes after a series of delays and extensions amid the Phala Phala Farm and the Glencore scandals directly linking the president as a person of interest in state capture. The final instalment which was supposed to reach the president last week was extended to Monday, and then subsequently moved forward to last night. This in turn has set tongues wagging, with many accusing the president and the…

ANYONE involved in trophy hunting has some level of moral disconnect, so the fact that President Cyril Ramaphosa was potentially involved in other crimes was not surprising. This is the view of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), a non-profit animal rights organisation, in reaction to criminal investigations into Ramaphosa after millions of US dollars “concealed” in furniture on his Phala Phala farm in Limpopo were stolen – allegedly by a gang of Namibian nationals with the assistance of his domestic worker. Ramaphosa is being investigated for alleged money laundering, defeating the ends of justice and kidnapping the suspects who were allegedly interrogated and breaching the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, no 121 of 1998 (“Poca”) and the Prevention of Corrupt Activities Act No12 of 2004 (“The Corruption…

News that the new Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema, has or is about to authorise the setting up of an Africom military camp in Zambia is indeed very disturbing news for Africa, and the SADC regional body in particular. This will mark the first time in the SADC region that actual US military boots will be on the ground. My hope is that patriotic forces in Zambia and indeed the entire region will intervene to halt the move. One hopes, too, that the AU will take decisive steps to prevent the continent from being used as a fertile ground for America’s military. No individual country has the prerogative to decide on issues that affect the whole continent and the entire SADC region. This decision should be a collective decision that should…

It’s horrible that Moreblessing Ali’s murder is symptomatic of attempts to instil fear in opposition supporters, which have been increasingly evident. It hurts that the history of political violence, abductions and murder is sadly a long one in Zimbabwe. It is painful for a pregnant woman to carry a child up to nine months, then you are told your daughter or son is missing, and then his or her body is found torn. It causes cruelty that Ali was kidnapped on May 24, allegedly by her estranged boyfriend, Pius Jamba, only to be found dead on June 11. Her mutilated body was found in a well in the Nyatsime area. The opposition has called for an independent investigation following this horrific incident, but the clueless, careless and corrupt President Emmerson…

SOUTH Africa’s biggest canning factory faces closure, threatening 4 500 jobs, not just at the factory but the adjacent industries supporting it, at the worst possible time. If you’ve ever been to the Langeberg, you’ll know that agriculture and agri-processing is the biggest jobs creator in the area and this news will strike the local economy like a hammer blow. Recently Tiger Brands started a consultation process with its workforce that it was planning to close down the Ashton factory, a facility which has been a vital cog in ensuring South Africa was ranked seventh globally in canning fruit, by production. Two years ago the company had announced it would divest itself from the facility but, seemingly, without any takers, it has now decided to wind up a business that’s…

LONDON: Prince William yesterday unveiled a new national monument to the “Windrush” generation of Caribbean migrants who moved to Britain following World War II, praising their “immense contribution” to national life. The 3.65m bronze statue, which depicts a man, woman and child standing on top of suitcases, will greet millions of rail commuters at London’s Waterloo station. “Every part of British life is better for the half a million men and women of the Windrush Generation,” said William. The decision to erect a monument followed a scandal that first emerged in 2017 when campaigners revealed that thousands of Britons of Caribbean origin, who arrived legally between 1948 and the early 1970s, had been wrongly detained or deported under the government’s hardline immigration policies. The government then announced Windrush Day would…

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis yesterday condemned the killing of two Jesuit priests and a lay person in Mexico, saying it was a shocking reminder of the level of violence in the country. The state prosecutor’s office in Chihuahua, along the US border, said three people were killed in the town of Cerocahui after a man took refuge in a church to protect himself from an attack. Two of them were Jesuit priests, the same religious order to which the pope belongs. The two priests worked at the church in the small town in the Sierra Tarahumara mountain chain, the site of cartel violence. | Reuters…

THE Springbok Women’s team know that another landslide victory for them is guaranteed against Namibia today in the Rugby Africa Cup and the best thing they can do is focus on polishing up the details of their play. The South Africans have already put 108 points past Zimbabwe in this tournament and they should again be too strong for their opposition in this Pool A match at City Park in Cape Town. Babalwa Latsha, who will lead the team onto the field against their African neighbours in a second-round match, said if their processes are followed, the score will reflect that, as their mission is a simple one. “We need time on the field to improve and this is yet another opportunity for us to do so,” said Latsha. “The…