Table of contents for 2021-06-10 in Cape Times

Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za SANLAM, South Africa’s biggest insurance company, closed stronger on the JSE as the market cheered the group’s strong operational performance for the four months ended April compared to a year earlier. Among the highlights for the period was the 20 percent increase in new business volumes, up 81 percent in the Value of New Business, the more than doubling in net fund inflows, and the strong performance of the African General Insurance business. Sanlam said the current rate of new business growth had received a boost from improved savings due to the Covid-19 pandemic shifting spending patterns. “In due course we would expect this supportive situation to normalise and therefore expect the growth in new business volumes to moderate at some point,” Sanlam said. Net…

From page 1 within Eskom have now evaporated. “There can be no more excuses, nor will any future promises of recovery be believed. All those who can take steps to permanently sever their dependence on what used to be the best electricity-generating system in Africa, should do so. Those who brought Eskom to its knees have brought shame on the country and put thousands out of work.” Vice-chair of the Long Street Association Grandt Mason said load shedding was devastating for any business, but especially for the hospitality industry, which had already had to suffer under the lockdown regulations. “It is unacceptable that 13 years on, and after the wastage of hundreds of billions of rand, Medupi and Kusile power stations still don’t work and probably never will operate to…

Okuhle Hlati okhule.hlati@inl.co.za THE interim interdict application against the SABC that has brought the auctioning of its Rocklands property in Sea Point to a halt is expected to be heard next week. The cash-strapped public broadcaster attempted to sell the property last month to the highest bidder. However, just a few hours before the action, the human settlements department and the Housing Development Agency (HDA) obtained an interdict stating this move made it difficult for people to access well-located and affordable housing opportunities. This was after housing lobby groups staged a protest against the sale. In court papers, the department and the HDA argued that the auction and sale of these properties were in conflict with the government’s mandate to redress spatial segregation and associated inequitable access to land by…

Kailene Pillay kailene.pillay@inl.co.za THE NATIONAL Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has set its hopes on the recently signed extradition treaty, with the United Arab Emirates, to give its cases a major boost, especially as South Africa pursues the Gupta brothers. A statement issued yesterday by the UAE’s ambassador to South Africa, Mahash Alhameli said the agreement on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters and extradition was ratified in April. The Agreements on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters and Extradition, between South Africa and the United Arab Emirates, were signed in 2018 – around the time the Guptas allegedly fled to Dubai, as criminal investigations into their alleged corruption were celerated. “These agreements have been and remain key to the UAE in promoting judicial and legal co-operation with South Africa, and strengthening…

Staff writer IN DETERMINING the damage to fresh produce transported from producers to supermarkets, scientists at the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Engineering 4.0 research facility are using 3D-printed avocados on a ship from South Africa to the Netherlands with microsensors inserted. According to Professor Wynand Steyn, head of the department of Civil Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology, “this is a flagship project of Engineering 4.0 which focuses on smart transport, infrastructure and cities”. Steyn said the researchers have made use of the department’s smAvo and smaTo sensor platforms, which are used to monitor the entire value chain, from farm to fork. “The department has experience in determining the impact of transportation conditions on agricultural products, and optimising these conditions to ensure that products…

Nicola Daniels nicola.daniels@inl.co.za HUNDREDS of people gathered at St George’s Cathedral in the City yesterday before marching to Parliament to hand over an open letter calling for a better police service and an end to the “systematic hounding out” of dedicated and committed police officials. At 12.55pm, Imam Rashied Omar from the Claremont Main Road Mosque, said a prayer, after which the church bells rang and a diverse group marched past the Iziko Slave Lodge, down Spin Street, towards Parliament where they were met by representatives from the Presidency and Speaker’s office who received the letter. The march stemmed from the dismissal of Major-General Jeremy Vearey last month over Facebook posts that were found to be “derogatory, offensive, insulting and disrespectful”. The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) said…

Glen Mashinini The 2021 municipal elections are taking place in the most unprecedented and abnormal circumstances in our history as our country faces the onslaught of a third wave of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic. Over the past 18 months, this pandemic has devastated the world and our country, infecting over 170 million people globally and more than 1.7 million South Africans to date. The death toll globally is approaching 4 million. This includes 57 000 of our countrymen and women. As well as the loss of life and illness, the pandemic has ravaged our economy, leading to the loss of millions of jobs, and thrown our social norms, customs, traditions and religious and cultural practices into disarray. Notwithstanding this, we cannot allow the pandemic to change our values, our…

A cemetery in southern Tunisia for migrants who drowned crossing the Mediterranean in the hope of a better life in Europe is already half full – even before it is formally opened. Jardin d’Afrique, French for Garden of Africa, is for those who were “the wretched of the sea”, said Rachid Koraichi, the Algerian artist and Sufi Muslim who built the cemetery. The migrants, many of whom drowned after boarding flimsy and overloaded boats while facing extortion from “gangsters and terrorists”, deserve a dignified resting place, he said. “I wanted to give them a first taste of paradise,” Koraichi, 74, added. His art includes sculptures and ceramics embellished with calligraphy, and has been exhibited from Venice to New York. In 2018, he bought a plot of land to host the…

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said yesterday that he regretted having to take all the flak for holding the Summer Olympics during a pandemic as his government was reported to favour allowing domestic spectators into stadiums to watch. Tokyo 2020, already postponed by a year, has faced strong opposition from the public, medical experts and some former athletes amid a fourth wave of infections. And Suga’s comments appeared to illustrate tensions bubbling to the surface as the government bolsters its assurances to the world that the games will be safe when they start on July 23. He was speaking in response to comments at a parliamentary session from an opposition lawmaker, who said the prime minister had been coming under attack over holding the Games during the Covid-19 pandemic when…

MOSCOW – Three people were killed yesterday in a blaze that broke out at a Russian hospital treating patients with Covid-19, the authorities said, with one official suggesting a faulty ventilator was to blame. Since the start of the pandemic, Russia has reported several fires at intensive care units that doctors said were caused by malfunctioning ventilators. The city of Ryazan’s governor, Nikolai Lyubimov, told state television that a ventilator in the ward had overheated and caught fire, the Interfax news agency reported. Nurses attempted to extinguish the blaze, but were unsuccessful, with some of them sustaining severe burns, the governor said.…

EDWARD WEST edward.west@inl.co.za African Equity Empowerment Investments (AEEI), the diversified majority black-owned investment group, yesterday denied that a call option claimed by investee partner company BT Communications Services South Africa was capable of being exercised. AEEI, which is controlled by Sekunjalo Investment Holdings, is an indirect shareholder in BT Communications Services South Africa (BTSA) through its 100 percent shareholding in Kilomix Investments, which owns 30 percent of BTSA. AEEI’s denial of the call option comes after BTSA said it wished to terminate its relationship with Seku- njalo through the call-option, after an alleged misrepresentation to Parliament’s standing committee on finance. In terms of the shareholders agreement entered into between BT Limited (BT) (formerly British Telecom), BTSA, Kilomix Investments and AEEI on November 4, 2008, BT had a call…

From page 1 “They were told that any more meetings of LGBTQI+ students are prohibited,” the petition read. According to a statement issued by the school governing body (SGB), the principal, in consultation with members of the SGB, decided not to grant the request for the celebration, as it could lead to “tension and division” within the school. This observation was based on the “tension that learners are already experiencing in terms of the pandemic and experienced academic pressure”, the SGB said. “The principal suggested to the learner that there may be other events, such as celebrating Youth Month, which is more inclusive. “However, some learners decided to do a ‘sit-in’ during breaks. “As the school anticipated, this led to a group of learners making unacceptable remarks. These remarks were…

Lisa Isaacs lisa.isaacs@inl.co.za THE eighteen swift terns relocated to Robben Island at the weekend will be kept in an aviary for a few days to become acclimatised. The National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) on Sunday assisted the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob) to relocate the birds. Sanccob spokesperson Ronnis Daniels said the organisation has annually admitted swift tern chicks in February when Cape Town experiences its hottest day. “The recent large admission was of chicks rescued after falling from the Nelson Mandela Gateway building and the Waterfront’s Pavilion in February and March this year,” Daniels said. Parent birds fly off to cool down from the extreme heat and their chicks follow them but cannot fly yet, so they have fatal falls or suffer dreadful injuries,…

Siphokazi Vuso siphokazi.vuso@inl.co.za ALLEGATIONS of homophobia are being investigated at DF Malan High School in Bellville after a group of learners, who were celebrating Pride Month at the school, claimed they were “surrounded, threatened and intimidated”. A pupil, who would like to remain anonymous, said that on Monday they planned a gathering with all the learners of the LGBQTI+ community and those in support of the community during their break time. “We decided we should all gather, eat our lunches together and just introduce ourselves to form better strength because sometimes we have quite a homophobic atmosphere. “Most of the break time we were just sitting and a few boys showed up and they intimidated one girl by saying she took photos of them and she should delete it, but…

MUCH has been made recently of the use of by-laws in the City of Cape Town to address homelessness. A legal case has been brought against the City by 11 people experiencing homelessness over the constitutionality of fines they received for by-law infringements. In response the City has circulated a complaints form for residents and businesses to record the nuisance caused by people experiencing homelessness. By-laws are not in and of themselves wrong, and the case brought by the 11 people experiencing homelessness against the City of Cape Town is not asking that by-laws per se be scrapped. Instead, the case spells out clearly how applying the by-laws to people experiencing homelessness is unconstitutional, discriminatory, and doesn’t help with the stated aim of “controlling homelessness”. That street homelessness is a…

Okuhle Hlati okhule.hlati@inl.co.za LESS than a week after the special national executive committee (SNEC) of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) called for an urgent review and an increase in danger allowance for its members, an off-duty police officer was shot and killed in Mfuleni. Phindile Vutula, 33, was shot dead at about 4.10pm on Tuesday, along with another man, while sitting in the back of his silver Ford in Olifant Street, Extension 6. A third man who was a passenger escaped with a wound in his hand while the person who was sitting on the driver’s seat escaped unharmed. About sixteen 9mm cartridge cases were found at the scene. Police spokesperson Andrè Traut said the circumstances surrounding the double murder were being investigated. “One of the victims…

Makhotso Sotyu THE science is clear that action to address the causes and impacts of climate change by a single country or small group of countries will not be successful. Climate change is a global problem as the world shares one atmosphere, therefore we will have to solve this problem together through the concerted and co-operative efforts of all countries. This is a global problem requiring a global solution. The debate on whether climate change is real is long over. Scientists are in consensus that humankind is the cause. The biggest question we should be asking is how much of the impacts will take place and how do we adapt. Climate change is a measurable reality and along with other developing countries, South Africa is extremely vulnerable to the…

The Colombian government should tackle “egregious” police abuse of protesters and embark on a law enforcement reform, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. Since late April, the Latin American country has been gripped by protests against tax hikes, which continue despite the authorities abandoning the initiative. Originally declared peaceful, the protests have led to an increase in violence in the country. President Ivan Duque has since ordered army units to assist the police. Even though he has said that his government would take steps to transform the police, changes have not occurred. Human Rights Watch claims that police abuse of authority and lack of respect for human rights have become commonplace in Colombia. It said it could confirm 34 deaths that occurred during protests. The Ministry of Defense says that over…

maputo: Armed groups plaguing parts of northern Mozambique for the past three-and-a-half years abducted dozens of children during raids in 2020, British charity Save the Children said in a report yesterday. It said “at least 51 children, most of them girls” had been captured in Cabo Delgado province, where Islamist attacks have displaced about 700 000 people since 2017. In March, militants launched a co-ordinated assault on Palma town, killing dozens and forcing more than 67 000 to leave their homes. Nearly half of those displaced are children. Save the Children called for the release of all abducted children and for the perpetrators to be held to account.…

Brussels: Greece’s minister for migration and asylum yesterday defended his country’s use of “sound cannons” to deter migrant crossings, as a senior EU official called their use “strange” and legally questionable. “I will not talk about operational issues that affect the Hellenic (Greek) police,” Notis Mitarachi said in Brussels after a meeting with the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson. “What the police does they have to do it in their own way.” Brussels, though, is uneasy with Athens’ plan to deploy two truck-mounted Long Range Acoustic Devices to blast high-decibel sound waves at migrants at its Evros border post to prevent river crossings there from neighbouring Turkey.…

MIHLALI BALEKA KAIZER Chiefs management did not need a public relations expert to announce Stuart Baxter as the new man in charge at Naturena. The coach has delivered trophies at the club before and he sure can deliver on the marketing front as well. Baxter spoke of Chiefs’ need to rediscover their identity and he is aware of the expectations that come with the job. The team has been in decline since he left but he vowed to work hard and ensure they return among the best in the elite division. In his first stint at the club between 2012 and 2015, Baxter won four trophies, including two league titles. Since his departure Chiefs endured a six-year domestic trophy drought. Four coaches were hired and fired during this time.…

EDWARD WEST edward.west@inl.co.za MOTUS Holdings said yesterday that it expects headline earnings per share to be more than 1 000 cents for the year to June 30, compared with 296 cents last year when it traded through the pandemic. Earnings per share for South Africa’s biggest distributor of vehicles was expected to be more than 1 000 cents versus 165 cents in the 2020 financial year. The share price was up 2.27 percent to R95.35 yesterday afternoon, with the price well up from R33.23 at the same date a year before. “The new vehicle markets in the geographies in which we operate continue to be affected by weak macroeconomic environments. Vehicle sales are under pressure as consumers postpone purchases and, in South Africa specifically, trade down to…

Chevon Booysen chevon.booysen@inl.co.za THE anti-gang unit member accused of working for alleged underworld figure Nafiz Modack has implicated another top cop in corrupt criminal activities. This emerged when Modack and his co-accused, former rugby player Zane Killian, Jacques Cronje, Ricardo Morgan and Anti-Gang Unit (AGU) member Ashley Tabisher, appeared in the Blue Downs Magistrate’s Court yesterday. According to court documents, a corrupt relationship existed between Modack, Amaal Jantjies (another accused and associate of Modack who is also before court with her co-accused Jenick Adonis) and Tabisher who were to let Modack know when the AGU would be coming to his address as he wanted to be “ready for them” in November 2019. The State alleges Tabisher had been corrupted as a police official after he was convinced by Jantjies to…

Siphokazi Vuso siphokazi.vuso@inl.co.za THE health system needs to “urgently” prepare for a corresponding increase in hospitalisation over the coming weeks, experts say, amid a rapid spike in Covid-19 infections. This, as Premier Alan Winde said he was concerned by the increase in the province on Tuesday, adding that the number of active infectious cases has increased by more than 60%, from 3 000 to 5 000, in under three weeks. “It’s up to each of us to prevent the third wave and flatten the curve. We can do this by practising the important and life-saving behaviours that we have learnt over the past year,” Winde said. The SA Medical Association (Sama) recently warned that the coronavirus was spreading rapidly across the country through travel and social gatherings. The University of…

Devereaux Morkel devereaux.morkel@africannewsagency.com Decuplets dad Tebogo Tsotetsi said he was overwhelmed by the support the family had received, and assured South Africans that his babies did exist. “I feel blessed and I am happy for the support I am getting,” he said in Cape Town yesterday, and spoke about the overwhelming support they had received since the news broke of the Guinness World Record birth. On Monday, Tsotetsi’s wife Gosiame Thamara Sithole, 37, gave birth to seven boys and three girls – two more than the eight children doctors had earlier detected during medical scans – at a hospital in Pretoria. The father of 16 said the journey had not been easy and that he cried when he heard of the additions to the family. “There’s not many words I…

Okuhle Hlati okhule.hlati@inl.co.za MZIMHLE Jikwana, the man convicted of kidnapping and killing 2-year-old Oyingcwele Zokufa by poisoning and strangling the toddler, has been sentenced to life imprisonment plus a further eight years. The life term was for premeditated murder and the eight years were for kidnapping. The sentences will run concurrently, said Western Cape High Court Judge Monde Samela. The judge remarked that Jikwana had shown no empathy throughout the ordeal and had stated that he would rather die with the truth, and decided not to testify in his defence. He declared the 32-year-old unsuitable to work with children in terms of the Children’s Act, and unfit to possess a firearm in terms of the Firearms Control Act. “The accused is evil, a clear danger to children, and needs to…

YESTERDAY morning, I woke up nauseous. Even threw up a bit. Fatigued. Bloated and generally pregnant with disgust at the latest South African media tomfoolery. At some point, we must hit pause and sigh collectively at our dishevelled quest to be credible sources of news in this country. A women gives birth to 10 babies. One newspaper scoops this and plays its cards close to its chest until the day of publication. Today, that is. An entire head of government communications, possibly gunning for a leader’s photo-op with babies, then casts aspersions on the credibility of the story by stating: “We have spent a better part of today tracing the story of @IOL of a woman having given birth to 10 babies! @IOL can you please help the public where…

SOUTH Africans and the world have every reason to celebrate the birth of 10 babies by Gosiame Thamara Sithole, who also broke a Guinness World Record. At a time when Covid-19 has claimed so many lives and livelihoods, the birth of these decuplets has brought so much joy not only to the Sithole family, but to the country and afar. South Africans have started to open their hearts and pockets donating the little they have as the children’s parents are unemployed. Survé Philanthropies has committed at least R1 million to the family, to be paid over a period of four years. Speaking to the Pretoria News, the 37-year-old Sithole told editor Piet Rampedi that she and her husband Tebogo Tsotetsi cannot afford the financial and emotional demands. In a true…

At least eight members of Syrian government forces and their allied militiamen were killed after Israeli airstrikes on central and southern Syria, a monitoring group said yesterday. The Britain-Based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said those killed included members of the “National Defence” forces. The Israeli strikes hit posts east of the village of Khirbet al-Tin in the countryside of Homs. An ammunition depot thought to belong to the Lebanese Shia movement, Hezbollah, was also hit in the same area. Explosions occurred near the Dabaa Military Airport.The official Syrian news agency Sana had first reported that Israeli fighter jets hit targets in Syria late on Tuesday night. It said the rocket attacks hit central and southern areas of the country. According to a Lebanese security source, the Israeli planes…

New York: A worldwide internet outage affecting major websites was caused by a “customer configuration change” which triggered a “bug” in a key delivery network, the technology firm at the centre of the mishap said yesterday. Nick Rockwell of US-based tech firm Fastly said in a blog post that the outage was “broad and severe” after the glitch resulting from “a valid customer configuration change.” The outage lasting about an hour took down media and government websites, including the White House, Britain’s government site, the New York Times, Reddit and Amazon. “We are conducting a post-mortem of the processes and practices we followed.”…

MOSCOW: Russia believes the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals’ (IRMCT) conviction of Ratko Mladic is hypocritical amid acquittal of other participants of Yugoslav wars, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said yesterday. On Tuesday, judges of the Appeals Chamber of the IRMCT affirmed the life imprisonment sentence of the former commander of Bosnian Serbs Mladic. “The conviction looks hypocritical amid the acquittal of other participants in the conflict of those years, such as Croatian General A (Ante) Gotovina, Kosovar R (Ramush) Haradinaj and field commander N (Naser) Oric.”…