Tabla de contenidos para 2022-02-18 en Cape Times

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…

Nicola Daniels nicola.daniels@inl.co.za IT HAS the potential to contribute even more to the country’s growth domestic product (GDP), create much-needed jobs and stimulate the country’s economic growth. But windy weather, port congestion struggles, slow ship repairs, and outdated equipment have all had a ripple effect on the efficiency of Transnet’s Cape Town port terminal operation, resulting in major backlogs. Other major port challenges include berth-depth limitations to vessel sizes. Last year alone, they had birthing delays of 1 450 hours, while for this financial year there had already been 629 hours lost in terms of berthing delays. Last year, the local terminal also lost 60 days (two months) of productivity due to bad weather-related challenges. They described the situation in January as scary, because they managed to work productively for…

Chevon Booysen chevon.booysen@inl.co.za SALDANHA Bay Tourism Organisation (SBTO) former employees have not yet been paid their Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) awards after a finding that they had been unfairly dismissed. SBTO has since closed its doors with former chairperson Vallerie Murphy at the centre of allegations relating to the misappropriation and abuse of funds while she held office, which had also led to a Special Investigations Unit (SIU) complaint being lodged. Former employees Shaun Visser, Annelie van der Merwe and Diona Carolus said despite each receiving an award by the CCMA, they are yet to get any payment for their unfair dismissals. The Cape Times had sight of and has been furnished with the award orders. Visser served as STBO tourism manager for about a year between…

Chronicles Of A Reluctant Widower Gerry Pelser Loot.co.za (R185) Blue Weaver IMMEDIATELY in the aftermath of his wife Andrea’s death, Gerry Pelser began documenting his thoughts and feelings about his life as a “reluctant” widower on social media as no one wants to be an “enthusiastic” widower. Semi-daily snippets of candid and raw expressions of grief, fear, and confusion – punctuated with unexpected humour – went up on Facebook for the world to see. Several posts went viral, and messages of support poured in from strangers as far away from India and New Zealand. Many encouraged Gerry to publish his posts as a book. In a surprisingly funny and heartfelt manner, Gerry breaks the fourth wall and tells his tale directly to the reader in a way that puts them…

Reviewer: Orielle Berry Defending Britta Stein Ronald H Balson Loot.co.za (R292) St Martin’s Press WHEN a seemingly upstanding Danish citizen of Chicago has graffiti spray-painted on the outside wall of his restaurant with the words “liar; traitor; betrayer” and “Nazi collaborator” denouncing him it sets off an unprecedented chain of events. Little does Ole Henryks know that in instituting legal proceedings against Britta Stein for emblazoning the defamatory words on his property he, the man who has made others believe he saved dozens of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Denmark and is the popular and well-loved proprietor of the restaurant, The Melancholy Dane, will open a hornet’s nest. Both protagonists involved are nonagenarians but are certainly feisty characters – Stein in unhesitatingly defending her case for writing these words,…

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…

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 met 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.…

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…

Siyabonga Mkhwanazi siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za MPs will have to have sittings outside Parliament as the institution makes plans for alternative venues. Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said Parliament planning to hold some of the sittings in outside venues would come at a cost. EFF MP Natasha Ntlangwini warned should any of stakeholder charge Parliament an arm and a leg, MPs should use available venues in the parliamentary precinct and rotate attendance. Parliamentary counsellor to Deputy President David Mabuza Hope Papo said he agreed with her that MPs use Parliament on a rotational basis. Parliamentary officials are due to meet at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) today to discuss using the venue for future sittings until Parliament has been rebuilt. The City Hall was also considered after Parliament held the State of the…

Baldwin Ndaba baldwin.ndaba@inl.co.za The court case between the EFF and AfriForum was almost turned into a personal fight between the party’s leader Julius Malema and the lobby group’s lawyer, advocate Mark Oppenheimer, who mistakenly accused Malema of saying the Oppenheimer family also colonised South Africa. The tensions intensified in the Equality Court sitting in the South Gauteng High Court in Joburg when Malema said white “settlers” came as visitors in South Africa in 1652 and subsequently decided to steal local minerals and land belonging to black people in the country. During his testimony, Malema maintained that the majority of arable land was still under the control of white people but that response appeared to irk Oppenheimer. In his line of questioning, Oppenheimer insinuated that those that robbed the land centuries…

Okuhle Hlati okhule.hlati@inl.co.za AN UNREGISTERED locum doctor is expected to appear in the Stellenbosch Magistrate’s Court today, while the medical practitioner who is alleged to have employed him for about three months faces misconduct charges. Felix Yuma, 45, was arrested on Tuesday after the Health Professions Council of SA’s (HPCSA’s) inspectorate office inspected the practice where he was working. This came a day after HPCSA inspectors nabbed two locum doctors who were allegedly practising in Delft without having registered with the council. The medical practitioners who employed them are also facing misconduct charges. The HPCSA’s head of corporate affairs, Christopher Tsatsawane, said Yuma, a Congolese citizen, was not registered with the council, yet was practising and had been employed at the facility since November. Yuma was arrested and detained at…

Chevon Booysen chevon.booysen@inl.co.za IN ANOTHER victory for small-scale fishers along the Wild Coast, petroleum giant Shell has lost its bid to appeal against an interim interdict for seismic survey operations. The judgment, in which Shell’s application was dismissed, was celebrated by environmental and human rights organisations after it was handed down in the Eastern Cape High Court. The Green Connection congratulated fishers and civil society for “standing together and fighting environmental injustices”. Four environmental and human rights organisations – the Border Deep Sea Angling Association, the Kei Mouth Ski Boat Club, Natural Justice and Greenpeace Africa – supported by environmental law firm Cullinan & Associates, successfully filed an urgent interim interdict during December last year to prevent Shell from conducting the seismic survey. Judge Gerald Bloem in his judgment yesterday…

THE MEMORY BIBLE Gary Small Loot.co.za (R561) HACHETTE HAVE you gone into a room and momentarily forgotten why you went there? How often have you forgotten where you left your cellphone? These memory lapses only become more and more frequent as we get older. In his new book, The Memory Bible, Dr Gary Small says that these moments don’t have to happen, and he suggests that one’s memory and mental capacity can be improved. The book is a guide to mitigating memory loss and keeping the brain young. “The scientific research described in this book revealed that initiating certain lifestyle habits, including regular exercise, healthy diet, stress management and mental stimulation, can not only slow or stop memory loss in its tracks, it can help restore prior losses.” The Memory…

LOVE AND ABOVE Sarah Bullen Loot.co.za (R215) Tafelberg JOURNALIST Sarah Bullen and her film-maker husband Llewellyn seemed like a golden couple, with successful careers and two lovely children. But then Llewellyn discovers that he has a brain tumour. As he pursues a shamanic path to fight the cancer, they are catapulted into a world of ritual and ceremony. With hospitals, surgery and treatments comes a wilder journey of spiritual searching. Then the impossible happens: she falls ill. While in a coma, Sarah travels through near-death and into other realms and worlds. She comes back with a message and a spark to follow – to choose joy over fear. It becomes a roadmap to allow her to write a new life story and call in a new way of living rooted…

WITH President Cyril Ramaphosa reeling, Parliament was a stormy place at the State of the Nation Address (Sona) debate last week. The impact on the president’s fate was minutely scrutinised. As a result, a separate exchange in the background during that session has had less attention than it deserves. On February 16, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, the Speaker of the National Assembly, once more declined the African Transformation Movement’s (ATM) latest request for a secret ballot on the proposed motion of no confidence against Ramaphosa. This ATM’s latest request follows the ruling of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in December 2021 in which the court set aside the previous decision of the Speaker to decline the request for a secret ballot due to the flawed process followed in arriving at the…

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.…

Kandahar: Rescuers were desperately scrambling yesterday to reach a nine-year-old boy trapped for two days down a well in a remote southern Afghan village. The operation comes less than two weeks after a similar attempt to rescue a child from a Moroccan well gripped the world – but ended with the boy found dead. Video shared on social media, showed a boy named as Haidar wedged in the well, able to move his arms and upper body. “Are you okay my son?” his father can be heard saying. “Talk with me and don’t cry, we are working to get you out.” “Okay, I’ll keep talking,” the boy replies in a plaintive voice.…

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…

Marsha Dean Marsha.Dean@inl.co.za WOMEN and the girls are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and in many instances are more dependent on natural resources for their livelihood. This was one of the issues discussed during a round-table discussion ahead of the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, yesterday. Ilitha Labantu, a non-profit organisation based in Gugulethu, together with the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, African Women’s Independent Forum and UN Women SA hosted the event, to discuss how to achieve equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change and environmental and disaster risk-reduction policies and programmes. Deputy Minister of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Maggie…

Odwa Mkentane odwa.mkentane@inl.co.za THE mother of a Grade 4 pupil at Willows Primary School in Heideveld says her daughter has been left traumatised after she was allegedly assaulted with a pipe by a teacher. The pupil has allegedly been repeatedly beaten by the teacher since last week, the mom said. On the first occasion, she was allegedly beaten by the teacher with a pipe for making noise and being absent from school for almost a week. On Wednesday, she was allegedly beaten for tearing apart a piece of paper from her homework book. The mother said the school principal called her yesterday and suggested that the learner be moved to another class. “I don’t know how taking her to another class will change the fact that she was abused…

Odwa Mkentane odwa.mkentane@inl.co.za NYANGA grandmother Nombuso Rubushe, 63, has detailed the pain of having to wake up early in one of the country’s most dangerous townships to queue for hours on end at Masincedane Clinic, only to be turned away. She had gone for a normal check up on Monday when she could not get the help she needed for a disease she was diagnosed with six year ago. The clinic has come under the spotlight from residents who accused nurses of providing poor services, with no action been taken against them. Visiting the clinic during the morning and afternoon is always a life gamble because anything could happen and it becomes worse for her health when not being assisted, said Rubushe. “Sick people are made to stand in the…

Marsha Dean marsha.dean@inl.co.za DELAYS in DNA profiling has left Klawer mother Gertrude Diergal in anxious limbo, as human remains found along the N7 between Klawer and Vanrhynsdorp could be that of her daughter. It has been more than three years since then 8-year-old Jeneva Diergal, who lived with disabilities, mysteriously disappeared. A captain at the Vredendal Police Station was assigned to investigate and assess Jeneva’s missing person case. The officer is said to have contacted Patriotic Alliance deputy provincial leader, Sammy Claasen, with information that the police found bones, or a human skeleton, at the end of August last year. The captain apparently said they were unable to do DNA tests, and were currently busy constructing the facial identity of the skeleton. Gertrude said all she could do was to…

TWO TONS O’ FUN Fred Khumalo Loot.co.za (R205) Umuzi A CHARMING coming-of-age novel set in a Johannesburg township. A car has collided with a Coca-Cola truck in Alexandra. The overturned trailer is spilling its contents, which residents are carrying off in their plastic “Shangaan Gucci” bags. With two other bystanders, Lerato Morolong, 14, helps the injured truck driver. The woman who drives them to hospital is Professor Ngobese, matriarch of the family at Number 80, the only house in the neighbourhood with a street address, aka Those White People. Here begins Lerato’s relationship with the Ngobeses – Auntie Gugu and her daughter Janine, who becomes Lerato’s bf and one half of the dancing duo, Two Tons o’ Fun (because life’s too short to spend in a tent dress). As Lerato’s…

SPOILT BALLOTS Matthew Blackman, Nick Dall Loot.co.za (R210) Penguin IF YOU paid a moment’s attention during high-school history lessons, you probably know that 1910 brought about the Union of South Africa, that the 1948 general election ushered in apartheid, and that the Rainbow Nation was born when Madiba triumphed in the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. Spoilt Ballots dishes the dirt on these pivotal events in our history. But it also sheds light on a dozen lesser-known contests, starting with the assassination of King Shaka in 1828 and ending with the anointing of President Cyril at Nasrec in 2017. Spoilt Ballots is as much about the people who voted in some of our most decisive elections as it is about those who didn’t get to make their mark. It…

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 policewoman is then seen putting her knee on the back of the young man, while the male police…

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.…

TEHRAN: A gas leak in the Iranian capital Tehran yesterday caused an explosion and building collapse, resulting in nine deaths, the Iranian Tasnim news agency reported. According to the media, an explosion caused by a gas leak in an apartment and the subsequent collapse of the building occurred in the Rabat Karim neighborhood and left nine people dead. Nine others were injured, Shahin Fathi, the managing director of the Red Crescent Society of Tehran Province, told Iran’s Labor News Agency. Emergency services have completed a rescue operation to remove the victims from the debris, with the injured being transferred to local hospitals.…