Table of contents for 2024-01-09 in Mercury

The Employment Equity (EE) reporting period is under way and all designated employers needed to submit their annual 2023 EE reports by January 15, the Department of Employment and Labour said yesterday. The EE reporting season for both manual and online opened on September 1, 2023. For manual reporting, the closing date was October 2, 2023. The department said that the 2023 EE reporting process was based on the current EE Act, and not the controversial EE Amendment Act, 2022. The starting date of the EE Act Amendments was still pending (it had initially been touted for the end of September 2023) as the effective date was still awaiting President Cyril Ramaphosa’s signature, the department said. One of the chief critics of the EE Amendment Act, the DA, has threatened…

Lots of two-sided faces are being exposed during the Israel-Palestine massacre. Some hot-shot Zionist-friendly senators in the US have allegedly been offering thousands of greenbacks to other members of the Senate to stop condemning Israel for its ultra-violent and outlandish activities against the Palestinian civil population. In South Africa, the paucity of protests against the Netanyahu regime, especially from the non-Muslim Indian population and the white community, is clear. No protest against oppression is clearly tantamount to an “okay”. Even the Muslim populations of Durban and Johannesburg are guilty of this, in the main. Cape Muslims have been relatively headstrong and vehement in voicing their anger. Our narrow-minded, apathetic South African population view the position in Palestine as being a religious one. This plays right into the hands of…

“My wife has filed for divorce over the ‘festive’ season. This is new information for me. It’s ripped my world apart. She insists we meet with our children (boys, 8 and 11) and tell them very soon. I’m not ready. Please help.” Your wife has apparently been thinking about this for some time. You deserve time to think things through before meeting with your children. Ask your wife to give you, in writing, the 5 or 6 most important things she wants the children to know. Ask her to give you, in writing, what she wants you both to say as a couple. When you do meet I’d suggest some of the following points: We both love you each very very much. Adults don’t always get along even if they…

The Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) is cautioning members of the public about a fake TikTok account impersonating deputy minister, Pinky Kekana. According to the department, the TikTok account “Pinky_Kekana3” has been fraudulently using the deputy minister’s name and photos to promote fake trading lessons. “Disseminating untrue promises of teaching clients to trade and quickly make amounts ranging from R56 000 to R67 000, is intended to swindle and scam innocent citizens. For the record, Deputy Minister Kekana does not have a TikTok account and the Ministry and DPME do not offer any educational trading programmes about making money. “Therefore, the public and stakeholders are urged to desist from following or communicating with the TikTok account ‘Pinky_Kekana3’ to avoid falling victim to unscrupulous fraudsters,” the department said. This…

IT WAS a case of David versus Goliath when a Rwandan national and his wife entered the legal arena against the mighty Department of Home Affairs – and won their case. The applicant, identified only as Mr R, turned to the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, after the department refused to grant him and his wife refugee status in South Africa. The couple had to flee Rwanda as their lives were in danger there. Without even considering their reasons for fleeing to South Africa, Home Affairs officials here simply rejected their reasons for wanting refugee status as being “fraudulent and manifestly unfounded”. Desperate to be legally in South Africa and not having money to appoint lawyers to assist them, Mr R argued his own case before Judge Stanley Nyathi. “And quite…

AfriForum has written to the Legal Practice Council (LPC), demanding it reinstate Afrikaans exams, after it issued a notice in December that all exams would now be in English only. The decision applies to competency- based exams for candidate attorneys and those taking conveyancing and notarial practice exams. AfriForum has slammed the decision as short-sighted and called for the inclusion of more languages, instead of the exclusion of the Afrikaans language. The LPC notice said: “The LPC has resolved that, from the first sitting of the examinations in 2024, all examinations will be offered in English only. This is in line with the LPC-approved Language Policy, which was approved and adopted by council on 20 November, 2020. “In terms of the LPC Language Policy, English is the language of record…

With crime statistics showing a rise in home invasions, members of the public have been urged to invest in security for their properties and become more involved in neighbourhood watches in a bid to guard against becoming victims. This follows a disturbing video that has gone viral showing four men barging into a Newlands East home and holding a family of six at gunpoint. The latest crime statistics for the period July to September 2023, which were released in November, showed there was a 3.8% rise in robberies on residential premises compared with the same period in 2022. Aidan David, chairperson of the eThekwini district police board which oversees several community policing forums (CPFs), said criminals have become more desperate. “Their value for life or the thought of taking lives…

A woman was found dead in the driver’s seat of a car in Newlands East in Durban yesterday. Garrith Jamieson from ALS Paramedics said they responded to a shooting at the John Dory’s sports ground in Newlands East. “Paramedics arrived to find the SAPS already in attendance with the area cordoned off.” Jamieson said it was believed the shooting took place in the early hours of the morning. “Paramedics assessed a female in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, believed to be about 35 years of age and found that she had sustained multiple gunshot wounds to her body,” Jamieson said. “She was declared deceased on the scene.” Provincial police spokesperson Constable Thenjiswa Ngcobo confirmed a case of murder was being investigated. She said the motive for the murder was…

Anders Behring Breivik, the right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in 2011 and is now “suicidal” according to his lawyer, appeared in court yesterday in his lawsuit against Norway over his prison conditions. At the Ringerike prison where the five-day trial was being held, Breivik appeared with his head shaved. He refrained from making provocative gestures as he has done on previous occasions. The now 44-year-old has been held apart from other inmates in various high-security facilities for more than 11 years. He argues that his extended isolation is a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “inhumane” and “degrading” treatment. On July 22, 2011, Breivik set off a van bomb near government offices in Oslo, killing eight people, before gunning down 69 others,…

San Francisco: The alleged drug use of the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has left Tesla and SpaceX executives and board members worried, as his reported consumption of LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms can jeopardise his health and his businesses. A new report in the Wall Street Journal claimed that in recent years, some executives and board members at his companies “have developed a persistent concern that there is another component driving his behaviour – his use of drugs”. Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, said his client was regularly tested at SpaceX and had never failed a test. People close to the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said he was consuming ketamine. Musk said last year he had a prescription to use the drug as an antidepressant.…

London: The UK is the only G7 country where household budgets have not recovered to pre-Covid levels, trade union body the TUC said yesterday. The situation had “left millions exposed to skyrocketing bills”, pushing many Britons “deeper into debt”, it said. The TUC said in a report that household disposable revenue in real terms, taking into account rising prices caused by inflation, was 1.2% lower at the end of Q2 of 2023 than at the end of 2019. But over the same period, disposable income grew by 3.5% on average across G7 countries, it added. If households saw the same level of growth, they would receive an additional £750 (R18 000) a year. | AFP…

Vatican City: Pope Francis called yesterday for a global ban on surrogacy, saying the practice of a woman carrying another person’s child was “deplorable”. In his New Year’s address to diplomats at the Vatican, the pontiff, 87, said it was a “grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child”. In a speech dominated by calls for an end to conflicts around the world, he said: “The path to peace calls for respect for life.” This began “with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking”, he said. “A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.” | AFP…

FINANCIAL markets locally and glo- bally recovered strongly during November and December. The announcement by the Federal Reserve (Fed) on November 14, 2023, that the Fed would probably lower its bank rate by at least three times in 2024, as well as the increase in US unemployment in November, boosted share and bond markets worldwide. South Africa followed the bullish momentum to the end of 2023. However, growing concern of the effect of high interest rates during 2023 on the US economy turned equity markets around strongly since January 2, 2024. As a result, the rand exchange rate remains under pressure, trading between R18.30/$ and R18.80/$. On the JSE, the Alai gained 5 260 points from November 13, 2023, to December 31. This is an increase of 7.3%. The…

A FREIGHT company using a historical Indian burial site as its business premises, lost an interlocutory application it brought to challenge a legal bid questioning its use of the property. The company had argued that the concerned citizen who had raised the matter did not have the legal standing to launch the application. From a young age, Koobendran Samie has known the Cato Manor Indian Cemetery as a cemetery and an important heritage and historical site that reflects the history and culture of people of Indian origin. He said he had concerns over the manner in which the site was misused or neglected and had therefore, in his personal capacity and in the public interest, filed an application against Secona Freight Logistics CC. The closed corporation is occupying the land…

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula’s admission that the party ignored a Public Protector report to defend former president Jacob Zuma’s “fire pool” may have further dented the party’s renewal process ahead of crucial elections, according to some analysts. Mbalula’s remarks on Sunday ahead of the party’s 112th anniversary celebrations, have also raised questions about the stance the ANC took when it shot down a parliamentary inquiry report which found against incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa on the Phala Phala farm scandal. Mbalula confirmed that the ANC lied about the fire pool to protect Zuma in relation to the scandal which concerned R206 million in tenders for upgrades including the fire pool which the party at the time explained away as being part of security upgrades to the former president’s Nkandla residence. “In…

THANK you to the South African government for the historic decision and the moral step in the right direction to file a case against apartheid Israel before the International Court of Justice. It is the first time a country has decided to file a case against apartheid Israel before the International Court of Justice. Hence, the South African government needs to be commended for this bold and ethical leadership to protect human dignity and promote human rights. To this end, it is my humble request to one and all to make special prayers for a resounding success for the South African interdictory judicial efforts and all other measures to cease the genocide in Gaza and to end the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.…

The Boeing Company is under the microscope once again, as one of its aircraft splits open like a sardine can mid-flight. There is a pattern of poor quality standards emerging as hundreds of its products are grounded. Flying in a Boeing aircraft is like playing Russian Roulette. You do not know with certainty if you will reach your destination. The Federal Aviation Administration has once again had to step in as it attempts to establish the reason behind this near catastrophe. Is the American aviation industry fast becoming a supplier of sub-standard products? Flying European aircraft industries’ airbus is now the only option for a sensible flyer.…

As the first school term of 2024 draws closer, the Competition Commission has been inundated with calls by parents complaining about certain schools prescribing uniforms from exclusive suppliers – a practice which is against the law. In an interview with broadcaster Newzroom Afrika, the Competition Commission’s principal advocacy analyst Karabo Motaung said the practice of schools insisting on exclusive suppliers is against competitive conduct in the marketplace. “Most parents are complaining that they are being forced to procure uniforms from either a selected or appointed supplier or from the school’s shop. What this means is, as a parent, you are forced to procure from one supplier, you are not able to exercise your choice as a consumer. “It also means that the particular supplier knows for certain that every single…

A man allegedly linked to a spate of hijackings in the King Cetshwayo District on the KwaZulu Natal North Coast was arrested at a student accommodation at the weekend. Provincial police spokesperson Colonel Robert Netshiunda said following several incidents of hijackings which were reported in the district, the King Cetshwayo District Economic Infrastructure Task Team officers gathered intelligence about the suspects who were believed to be behind the crimes. “Intelligence led the officers to a student accommodation in Mtunzini-Dlangezwa area where a suspect was arrested on Saturday night. “He was found in illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.” He said the team proceeded to KwaMthethwa Reserve in Empangeni where two more suspects were arrested. “They were found to be in possession of a signal jammer, as well as an…

ENERGY experts say the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) outlining the powers of the Minister of Electricity has given him more capacity to address the issue of load shedding. With the rights and responsibilities clearer, they said, the minister could now move more swiftly in addressing this challenge. Last week the Presidency announced that President Cyril Ramaphosa had approved a MOU entered into by Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan and Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. The MOU aimed to better clarify the respective responsibilities of the two ministers with respect to Eskom and the resolution of the electricity crisis. While Ramokgopa was appointed almost 10 months ago, his roles and responsibilities had been unclear. The management of the country’s energy sectors overlaps between three departments – minister in the Presidency…

As the new academic year approaches, the police are urging parents and guardians not to fall victim to bogus tertiary institutions or fake accommodation offers. Free State provincial police spokesperson Sergeant Mahlomola Kareli said as the back-to-school rush has started, parents and guardians had to be vigilant when applying to or enrolling their children at various institutions. He urged parents to be wary about higher learning institutions that have no campus or classes or taking up offers of accommodation without physically visiting the properties. “Police in the Free State are pleading with parents or guardians not to deposit any cash into any account before they physically visit the school,” Kareli said. Parents and guardians have also been urged to check out the legitimacy of tertiary institutions. “To confirm if the…

Israel killed a Hezbollah commander in south Lebanon, reports said yesterday, amid rising concerns the war with Hamas will escalate into a wider Middle Eastern conflict. The senior member of the Iran-backed group was killed by a strike on his car, a security official said. In a statement, Hezbollah said its commander Wissam Taweel from the southern village of Kherbet Slim was killed in the fight against Israel. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli drone strike targeted a vehicle in Kherbet Slim. Photos on the news agency showed the charred vehicle on the side of the road. If true, this would be the second Hezbollah commander Israel had targeted in less than a week in Lebanon. Hamas also blames Israel for the killing of a top leader in…

At least five cops were killed and 22 people injured after a bomb went off near a police van carrying personnel to provide security to polio vaccination teams in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, officials said. The incident occurred in Bajaur district’s Mamund Tehsil. Civilians were among the 22 wounded, according to Bajaur police. “Twelve out of the 22 wounded are being treated at the hospital, while 10 others seriously injured have been referred to a Peshawar medical facility,” said Wazir Khan Safi, medical superintendent at Khar District Headquarters Hospital. Police spokesperson Israr Ahmed confirmed the personnel were on their way to provide security to polio teams carrying out vaccination campaign. “The polio campaign in the area has now been suspended. Seriously injured people will be taken to Peshawar…

LONDON: King Charles III’s disgraced brother Prince Andrew will reportedly reject any efforts to be evicted from his Windsor mansion by the king after his name was featured nearly 70 times in newly unsealed documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “The king can’t force him out. He has a cast iron lease that he has absolutely every intention of honouring,” a source said. Andrew has spent over £7.5 million (about R178m) on the estate and still owes more than $2m in repairs. | Sputnik…

NEW YORK: A US winter storm was yesterday on track to move from the Southwest, near the Gulf Coast to the Northeast, all the way to Maine. The next storm was forecast to begin today, bringing several centi- metres of rain last night into today for much of New England. The storm will also wreak havoc across the US, just east of the Rockies. Snow affected about 60 million residents in the Northeast at the weekend. Moderate to heavy snow is forecast for the central Appalachians and New England. Snowfall is expected to reach 15-30cm in places. More than 15 million Americans living across Texas to Florida are under severe storm threats. | Sputnik…

UNCERTAINTY over policy decisions in South Africa is forecast to continue to permeate throughout the economy due to a plausible wide range of 2024 election outcomes on the back of bleak growth in 2023. These are the findings of the North West University Business School Policy Uncertainty Index (PUI) for the fourth quarter of 2023 which was released yesterday. Although remaining well in nega- tive territory, the PUI showed a welcome easing to 65.5 points in the fourth quarter from 71.8 points in the third quarter (baseline 50 points). North West University said while negative factors shaping the PUI were still strong enough to keep the index highly elevated, there were enough positive factors to slightly reduce the PUI level in the fourth quarter. The PUI highlighted…

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) board chairperson Ernest Khosa and Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande have both slammed allegations that they received kickbacks from service providers who were contracted to do work for the NSFAS. These claims, made by the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), have led to calls for the pair to resign from their posts. Outa claimed it had voice recordings of meetings which allegedly revealed how service providers paid millions of rand in kickbacks to Nzimande and Khosa, and at least R1 million to the SACP. In an exclusive interview with The Mercury's sister newspaper The Star, Khosa, vehemently denied the allegations and condemned the purported recordings. He categorically denied any prior acquaintance with the service providers implicated in the controversy before the release of…

We are fortunate to have such a caring government. Load shedding was suspended for the entire festive period. It did not want to spoil the fun. We were so relieved. The government and Eskom patted each other on the back for a job well done. They had given the country 18 days of uninterrupted lights, the longest since load shedding made its dramatic appearance. But no sooner had we clinked our glasses and said cheers to the New Year, the dreaded load shedding was back, plunging our lives into darkness again. How we had been fooled! The same thing happened during the Rugby World Cup. We watched the World Cup in Paris without the lights going off. I predict it could happen again during this year’s national election. The government…

IS AN alarm bell clanging anywhere in world cricket? When a five-day Test (South Africa and India) ends on the second day – both sides skittled – does it not suggest that our top players have psychologically lost touch with the game in its purest and traditional form? Okay, the Newlands pitch was lively – but not fiendishly so. Has the limited-overs game, played with an inert white ball on plumb wickets, so taken over the game that it has more of the ethos of baseball than the time-honoured subtleties of traditional cricket? For some of us, that alarm bell has been ringing a while. Are they listening over at Lord’s and the other citadels of cricket? Teenage darts personality STAR off the World Darts Championship in Old Blighty was…

FORMER Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke has been appointed as an ad hoc judge to join the 15 regular judges of the International Court Of Justice (ICJ) to hear South Africa’s application for Israel’s military assault on Gaza to be declared a genocide. Judge Moseneke has the superb qualities needed to be our legal supremo at the ICJ. He is known to capture the people’s imagination like no other judge in our land and has spawned a fan following that can be the envy of a rockstar or screen diva. Judge Moseneke has litigated in cases that set the architecture of safeguarding the Constitution from desecration. His legal career, as an eminent jurist and a distinguished judge, can be characterised as one that is a commitment to ideals, and dedication…

Detectives at Masoyi, in Mpumalanga, have arrested a 41-year-old man for attempted murder and possession of an unlicensed firearm with ammunition after he allegedly discharged a firearm and shot his son. The father was apparently cleaning the firearm when the incident happened. Mpumalanga police spokesperson Brigadier Selvy Mohlala said the man was expected to appear before the White River Magistrate’s Court yesterday. “According to information, an incident occurred last year, in December, whereby an 18-year-old boy was allegedly shot by his father during the time he (the father) was cleaning a pistol,” said Mohlala. He said police further found that the firearm was not licensed. “They discovered that the man was not the lawful owner of the firearm, but rather the weapon belonged to his late father in terms of…

The eyes of the world are on South Africa as it hauls Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) this week. South Africa has assembled a formidable team of lawyers to take on the mammoth lawsuit at the ICJ under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention): advocates John Dugard SC, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC, Adila Hassim SC, Max du Plessis SC, together with Tshidiso Ramogale, Sarah Pudifin-Jones, Lerato Zikalala, Vaughan Lowe KC and Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC. The ICJ, known as the “World Court”, confirmed South Africa’s case would be heard through public hearings on Thursday and Friday. Malaysia, Türkiye, Jordan and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation have shown their support for South Africa’s application. On Friday, the Department of International…

Following rumours of his publicly denied illness, President Cyril Ramaphosa has returned to Mbombela, Mpumalanga just in time for the ANC’s 112th birthday celebrations and ahead of the party’s January 8 Statement event. On Sunday, Ramaphosa had to cut short some of his scheduled activities in Mpumalanga to return home to attend to an unspecified “emergency” which resulted in social media rumours suggesting the president had taken ill. These rumours were denied by Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya, who on Sunday “set the record straight” about the “real reasons” for Ramaphosa’s staying at home. Magwenya, taking to social media, described the rumours as “malicious”. “A malicious rumour has been doing the rounds about the president’s health and that he has been hospitalised. The president is fine, he was never hospitalised, and…

The first US lunar lander launched in more than five decades has experienced an anomaly preventing it from pointing its solar panels towards the sun, the company that built the robot said yesterday. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander separated successfully from United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket overnight from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, and quickly established communications with Nasa’s Deep Space Network of ground-based radio antennas. All its systems powered on as expected, and it “entered a fully operational state,” Astrobotic said in a tweet. But “unfortunately, an anomaly occurred which prevented Astrobotic from achieving a stable sun-pointing orientation. The team is responding in real time as the situation unfolds and will be providing updates as data is obtained and analysed.” Peregrine was meant to touch down on a…

A schoolteacher in Oregon has found part of an Alaska Airlines MAX 9 airplane door that blew out mid-flight, the US transport safety authority said Sunday, in a development that could help with the investigation. The emergency, which saw no major injuries, prompted airlines and safety bodies around the world to ground some versions of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets pending inspections, with dozens of flights cancelled. The chief of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said a schoolteacher found the door panel in his backyard in the city of Portland, Oregon. Alaska Flight 1282 departed from Portland International Airport and was still gaining altitude when the cabin crew reported a “pressurisation issue”, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said, with the plane quickly returning to Portland. | AFP…

KYIV: Russia has launched a new round of strikes against Ukrainian military targets, including military production facilities and a decision-making centre using Kinzhal missiles and other precision weapons, the Ministry of Defence has announced. The operation included missile, artillery and drone attacks against Ukrainian forces in 108 separate areas and against 113 artillery units and firing positions. They included a strike on a facility used as a meeting place by commanders of Ukraine’s 101st Territorial Defence Brigade. This follows reports yesterday of air raid sirens and explosions in Ukraine regions. Russia has ramped up its strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure. | Sputnik…

BERLIN: Farmers in Germany have used hundreds of tractors to block highways across the country, including in Berlin, as they accuse the government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz of declaring “war” on their industry. Queues of tractors were parked in front of the capital’s Brandenburg Gate amid protests over the government’s plans to slash agricultural subsidies as a cost-saving measure. The protest in Berlin is one of hundreds across Germany due throughout the week. They follow an announcement by the German government that it intended to slash diesel subsidies and tax breaks for vehicles used in forestry and agriculture. | Sputnik…

GOING into the second edition of the SA20, it is safe to say that the Durban Super Giants (DSG) are the dark horses of the tournament. Last season, the Durban-based team peaked a little too late, leading to their early exit from the tournament. Since then, some of their players have gone on to set the T20 format alight, with middle-order batter Heinrich Klaasen undoubtedly being the pick of the batters in the world in the shortest format. Moreover, with the duo of Quinton de Kock and Kyle Mayers at the top of the order, there will be no team that will take the Giants lightly this season, more so after the addition of T20 star and former West Indies captain Nicholas Pooran to their camp this season. More than…