Table of contents for 2021-07-22 in Mercury

Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za SOUTH Africa faces a shortage of business rescue experts as financially distressed companies are on the brink of collapse from the double whammy of Covid-19 exacerbated by last week’s looting and unrest. Analysts said yesterday that the ripple effects of the looting would continue to be felt for years to come. The civil unrest South Africa experienced last week has placed 50 000 jobs at risk, according to research published by PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PwC), and it indicated that national gross domestic product growth could be 0.4 percentage points lower this year. Kylene Weyera, a senior associate in dispute resolution at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, said yesterday that there were 361 licensed business practitioners in the country by October 2020. Only 85 of those were senior practitioners…

EBRAHIM ESSA | Durban DURING the height of the looting, there were some perceptions, correctly or incorrectly I am not certain, that there was friction between black people and South African Indians. Actually, that event or non-event is irrelevant to this argument. I found it most puzzling that the Indian government, for example Mr Vijay Jolly of the BJP, found it incumbent to send a message to the South African government to please look after the Indian population here. Jolly stated that Indians had assisted in the fight against apartheid. He said Indians were peace-loving and had contributed, in no uncertain terms, to the economy of this country. All very true. However, I would like to enquire from the local branch of the RSS, which obviously is the…

TAKING advantage of an apparent lull in local looting and arson/insurrection/coups/ thuggery/ counter-revolution, this column is able to revert for the time being to international news and intrigue. It seems that, in 1997, President Bill Clinton snubbed Queen Elizabeth by turning down an invitation to tea with her at Buckingham Palace. This is revealed in previously classified documents released by Whitehall about Clinton’s visit to Britain, along with Hillary, according to Sky News. Memos between Whitehall aides show that Clinton was invited to Buckingham Palace for 5pm tea. But a letter written by Downing Street private secretary Philip Barton said: “The Americans said that the president and Mrs Clinton were very grateful for HM The Queen’s invitation to tea at the palace, but would wish to decline politely.” What happened…

LINDA YOUNG | Morningside President Ramaphosa will never have a better time to make good on his promises to clean up government, get rid of corruption and incompetence and reduce the size of Parliament. We are all behind him after last week’s disastrous events, but he must do something now. We have many educated, clever young people with energy, new ideas and potential solutions who are blocked from government by the old people hanging on to their pay cheques and delivering nothing except more talk. We’ve had enough dithering. If solutions are not found now, we are doomed. If the opposition parties would just step up to give us another option, the ANC could be history.…

The Life Esidimeni inquest has been postponed to tomorrow after concerns were raised about the legal representation of potentially implicated officials who had dealt with the transfer of hundreds of psychiatric patients. Judge Mmonoa Teffo, who is chairing the virtual hearing at the Pretoria High Court, said that those implicated, including the former director of mental health in Gauteng, Dr Makgabo Manamela, have until tomorrow to secure legal representation. “I do not want us to proceed in this fashion. For every party who is going to be part of these proceedings, it is important that all their interests are protected ,” she said. The NPA started the formal inquiry on Monday, five years after the tragedy in which at least 144 patients died. The Gauteng Health Department transferred the…

Baldwin Ndaba baldwin.ndaba@inl.co.za The Gauteng provincial legislature’s health portfolio committee wants all those found guilty of irregularly awarding personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts to be blacklisted and stolen funds, if any, to be recovered. The health portfolio committee, through its chairperson Rebecca Phaladi-Digamela, issued these strong remarks after the Gauteng Department of Health fired its chief director of supply chain management for her involvement in the irregular awarding of contracts worth millions of rand. The official took up employment with the department in March last year and the irregularities happened in April – soon after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the R500 billion Covid-19 funds to fight the deadly pandemic. She was fired early this month following an internal disciplinary hearing after the recommendations of the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), which…

Sakhiseni Nxumalo sakhiseni.nxumalo@inl.co.za Ugu District Municipality said crucial infrastructure, equipment and vehicles, especially those needed for the supply of water and sanitation, were severely damaged in last week’s unrest. The cash-strapped South Coast municipality said several municipal assets had been affected. Municipal spokesperson France Zama said municipal buildings and offices were set on fire and destroyed, leaving the whole office block building at the Mkholombe depot in a state of disrepair. Zama said about eight water tankers, three excavators, two TLB trucks and five vehicles were also destroyed by fire. He said the ongoing assessments indicated a huge loss estimated at hundreds of millions of rand. “The destruction of these municipal assets, intended to deliver services to our residents, has had a devastating effect on the municipality’s ability to deliver…

Gert Grobler CHINA’S economy, which accounts for 18% of global GDP, is characterised by near-frantic planning, consolidation and expansion activities. The economic growth rate of 18.3% in the first quarter of this year will, according to the World Bank, result in an annual growth of between 8% and 9% for 2021. The IMF stated recently that China’s remarkable recovery had provided a “strong stimulus” for the global economy which supplies it with commodities and supply chain components. As the worlds’s largest market and with huge consumption potential, the Chinese “dual” approach of enhancing domestic economic activity while reinforcing international economic interaction will provide exciting trade and investment opportunities for South Africa, Africa and the developing world. This was one of the key messages that emerged from the China-South Africa…

Cometh Dube-Makholwa | Midrand THOSE responsible for the destruction of malls, businesses, warehouses, factories and all kinds of infrastructure cannot possibly be happy now, realising the impact of their senseless actions on all areas of humanity, if they still have a conscience. Mob psychology can drive people to do unthinkable things which, with hindsight might haunt them so much that they may suffer from sleep deprivation. While the president has promised reconstruction of buildings, businesses and infrastructure will be undertaken, we all know what a mammoth task it will be as the amount of destruction runs into billions, in a country bankrupt long before the riots. Maybe this is the time for all those who have millions and billions stashed away in local and offshore bank accounts to…

Families in Lebanon are now spending five times the minimum wage on food alone, a report found yesterday, as inflation caused by the country’s worst-ever economic crisis soars. Lebanon is battling what the World Bank has described as one of the planet’s worst financial crises since the 1850s, with more than half the population living below the poverty line. The Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value against the dollar on the black market since 2019, and Lebanese with deeply devalued salaries in the local currency have seen their purchasing power plummet. According to the latest prices in July, “a family’s budget just for food is around five times the minimum wage”, the Crisis Observatory at the American University of Beirut said. Most families in Lebanon would…

EDWARD WEST edward.west@inl.co.za PFIZER and Nasdaq-listed BioNTech SE have signed an agreement with the Cape Town-based-Biovac Institute to make up to 100 million doses a year of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for distribution across Africa. Pfizer said in a statement yesterday the agreement with Biovac meant its global vaccine supply chain and manu- facturing network would span three continents and include more than 20 manufacturing facilities. Africa has only so far received about 38 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines on a continent of 1.2 billion people, according to WHO estimates. “To facilitate Biovac’s involvement in the process, technical transfer, on-site development and equipment installation activities will begin immediately,” the group said. Biovac’s manufacturing of the Pfizer vaccine will be the second production plant of Covid-19 vaccine in South Africa – Aspen…

Reinet Investments says net asset EDWARD WEST edward.west@inl.co.za Reinet Investments, a R90 billion investment vehicle chaired by Johann Rupert, said yesterday that the net asset value (NAV) per share of its Reinet Fund had fallen slightly to €30.11 (R517.25) as of June 30 from €31.44 at the end of March 2021. Reinet Investments holds the entire share capital of the Reinet Fund of 171.3m shares. In addition, Reinet Fund Manager holds 1 000 management shares in Reinet Fund. Reinet Fund’s net asset value amounted to €5.16 billion as of June 30, a decrease of €228 million from March 31, 2021. Its net asset value per share represented about a 45 percent discount to Reinet Investments’ share price, trading 0.6 percent higher at R283.64 on the…

Sihle Mavuso sihle.mavuso@inl.co.za EXACTLY 14 days since he was jailed, former president Jacob Zuma is today set to make his first public appearance in Nkandla, in northern KwaZulu-Natal, to attend a family funeral – although this is subject to approval by the Department of Correctional Services. Yesterday, the department confirmed it had received Zuma’s request for compassionate leave, where he has asked to be temporarily released from Estcourt prison to attend the burial of his younger brother Michael Zuma. The department’s spokesperson, Singabakho Nxumalo, said Zuma’s application was in line with the Correctional Services Act and would be processed by the relevant departmental authorities. “We can confirm that former president Jacob Zuma has applied for compassionate leave. It is being dealt with in terms of Section 44(1)(a) of the Correctional…

Burpees are the gym exercise everyone loves to hate: You start in a standing position. Bend down, and with hands on the ground, hop your legs back into a push-up. Reverse and stand back up. Now repeat 951 times. That is how many burpees a Brazilian man living in Singapore completed in an hour, setting a new Guinness World Record in a fundraising effort for his niece who was born last year with severe heart disease. Last month’s record-setting endeavour by Cassiano Rodrigues Laureano, who turned 35 on the day of the attempt, was verified by Guinness Record adjudicators on Monday. “I’m tired”, said Laureano after completing the record at the city’s Tricolor Fight Team gym, where he teaches. “It didn’t go as smoothly as I thought it would go.”…

KEVIN GOVENDER | Shallcross WELL, the master of geometry – too many sides and too many angles – has managed to buy another three weeks of delaying tactics repackaged for an exculpatory exit from the Arms Deal corruption case. It is no supernatural, infallible sensors of avoidance that have served him well during his criminal career but rather the backing of a good legal team. Upon taking their advice, his performance has been likened to that of a trained seal. For now, he remains behind bars. But what next? Will he come out a martyr and reinvent himself? Will he be like former Brazilian president Lula da Silva who was convicted and jailed in 2017 for more than nine years on charges of money laundering and corruption? In 2019, a…

FAROUK ARAIE | Gauteng Peace and harmony are the fundamental prerequisites of our life and the ideal path to follow. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all who lost their loved ones in the battle to contain the anarchy that engulfed our nation. We mourn these losses as we struggle to rebuild our shattered lives. The enemies of freedom have pushed the false narrative that democracy is in decline because it is incapable of addressing people’s needs. In fact, democracy is in decline because it’s most prominent exemplars are not doing enough to protect it. Death, destruction and killings have torn at many of our relationships and our communities. The fundamental concept of living in peace is founded upon the triad of tolerance, forgiveness and forgetting. Philosopher…

The exclusion of political parties from a fact-finding mission by the SADC technical team in eSwatini may have a catastrophic effect on the legitimacy of the team’s recommendation, Swaziland Multi-stakeholders’ Forum said. In a letter to the SADC secretariat, chairperson of the forum Thulani Maseko said the exclusion of the People’s United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), the Communist Party of Swaziland and the Swaziland People’s Liberation Movement could see the legitimacy of the mission questioned. “We would like to impress on the technical team to spare no efforts in ensuring that no organisation is left out, in particular political parties, as this is fundamentally a political process arising from the political and governance problem in Swaziland. It is our view that any form of exclusion will result in legitimacy of the…

Teacher unions have accepted the delay in the daily attendance of high school pupils and are assessing the readiness of primary schools to return to the traditional attendance timetable. All schools are expected to reopen on July 26 under the existing rotational timetable. However, pupils attending special needs and primary schools will return to daily attendance from August 2, giving teachers time to prepare for the large group. This is according to the amended directions on reopening of schools that were recently gazetted by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga. Initially schools were expected to return from the holidays on Tuesday, but this was postponed to next week during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of alert level four lockdown. In the gazette, Motshekga instructed principals, school management teams and non-teaching staff to…

Sibusiso Mboto sibusiso.mboto@inl.co.za IT was an anxious wait for a 69-year-old woman from Ixopo in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands to get her chronic medication this week. She was supposed to fetch her medication last week from the Clicks Pharmacy at KwaMnyandu Shopping Mall, but the pharmacy was looted and vandalised during last week’s riots in KZN and Gauteng. Busisiwe Zulu, of Mahehle in Ixopo, said she had travelled to Durban and was eventually able to get her medication at the uMlazi Clinic on Monday afternoon. “I did not wait long in the queue before getting my medicines, and now I am going home safe in the knowledge that I have got my medication,” she told The Mercury on Tuesday. While Zulu’s story has a happy ending, there is anxiety and concern…

Loyiso Sidimba loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za ACTING Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni will now lead interaction with the media and communicating with the public following President Cyril Ramaphosa and members of his Cabinet contradicting each other on the recent looting. Ntshavheni will, through the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), attend to the government’s communication needs and requirements. In a letter to members of Ramaphosa’s executive on Tuesday, she asked her colleagues to clear all communication needs and media queries on the recent developments with her to ensure synergy. “All media statements of departments related to the recent developments must be issued in consultation with the GCIS to ensure the government’s message is aligned,” she wrote. Ntshavheni said the events of the past two weeks had threatened the country’s safety and security,…

Gabi Marais | Gillitts As if our children are not stressed enough. Their lives have been turned upside down because of Covid. Things that were regarded as normal, like going to school and hugging friends, playing sports, inviting friends to come and play. All this gone due to Covid. Now, more is added to their stress levels. Their education is at risk, their schools have in some parts been destroyed and looted. How can one do this to the innocent? We as adults are meant to be the guardians of the future for the children. We have already put their futures at risk by messing up the Earth. Now, more is added by depriving them of the resources that are meant to help them with their…

London: The UK government demanded yesterday that the EU renegotiate post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland after rioting and business disruption hit the province, but the EU immediately rejected the offer. London stopped short of suspending the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol -- introduced at the start of the year, and which requires checks on goods arriving from mainland Britain – and instead called for “significant changes”. It wants the EU to indefinitely abandon ad-hoc grace periods for certain border checks and freeze legal action launched against the UK for non-compliance, as part of a “standstill period” allowing for fresh negotiations. Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said while Britain had negotiated the protocol “in good faith”, its real-world application by the bloc had entailed “considerable and continuing burdens”. “Put simply, we…

NICOSIA: Cyprus has filed a recourse to the UN Security Council over the transfer of part of an abandoned coastal town on the ethnically split island to Turkish Cypriot control, its foreign minister said yesterday. Turkish Cypriot authorities and Turkey said on Tuesday that a small part of abandoned Varosha, left fenced in to rot for 47 years, would come under civilian control for potential resettlement. “This is a clear violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and will have a negative impact on efforts under way to restart talks,” Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides said after meeting his Greek counterpart, Nikos Dendias.…

Amsterdam: Hundreds of mourners yesterday attended the funeral of slain Dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries, who was gunned down in broad daylight in an Amsterdam street two weeks ago. A long queue began forming at 7am outside the Dutch capital’s landmark Carre Theatre, with those in line saying they want to pay their final respects to a Dutch “hero”. A prominent reporter who had been involved in a court case against one of the country’s most wanted drug barons, De Vries, 64, was shot five times on July 6. He died in hospital nine days later. Brenda van Coevorden, 66, said: “I am so sad that we’ve lost an icon.”…

Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za The BANK of Mozambique has appointed Zaitina Raul Chilaule as foreign exchange inspector at Standard Bank South Africa as part of a behind-the-scenes atonement for irregular foreign exchange activities that last week saw the bank in Mozambique fined R66 million, along with the fining and dismissal of two senior executives. Standard Bank has also been suspended for a year from the Mozambican Interbank Foreign Exchange Market. Chilaule’s appointment follows the appointment late last week by Standard Bank South Africa of an acting chief executive at its Mozambique operation following the stern censure by the Central Bank. Banco de Mocambique announced the opening of three “misdemeanour proceedings” against that bank and two of its employees, namely Adimohanma Chukwuma Nwokocha and Carlos Madeira, who were banned from holding…

Thami Magubane thami.magubane@inl.co.za IT will take 60 years for eThekwini Municipality to deal with the ever- widening housing backlog that is fuelling dissatisfaction within communities and exposing the municipality to serious risk. This is according to a report looking into the threats and risk faced by the municipality. The report found that lack of adequate housing for thousands of residents poses a serious threat for the council. The document, presented to executive committee members, is titled “Strategic Risk Profile 2021”. It flags housing among the service delivery challenges that create a risk for the municipality and community dissatisfaction. The municipality, said the report, has a housing backlog that could take decades to clear. The municipality is faced with a growing number of informal settlements and there are people who have…

Vernon Mchunu vernon.mchunu@inl.co.za ETHEKWINI mayor Mxolisi Kaunda will this weekend plead with President Cyril Ramaphosa to relax Covid-19 restrictions on religious gatherings to enable a spiritual injection for “a highly stressed” South African society. Since the advent of the pandemic, which led to restrictions on economic activity, many people have died, throngs of others are battling for life in hospitals, many jobs have been lost and last week KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng saw scenes of unprecedented looting and destruction. As the city’s executive committee heard during its special meeting this week, these challenges, which are insurmountable for many people, will cause untold trauma in society. Council chief whip Sibongiseni Mkhize argued that churches could be a useful source of much-needed spiritual support and upliftment during these trying times, as they were…

BE CAREFUL when you inflict evil upon South Africans. They will almost always unite across every conceivable barrier and return your evil with graciousness and kindness that will sizzle the goals of your dark motives. Watch out when “Boer maak a plan” and “ubuntu” combine. They are a tenacious combination that will explode into widespread love and success. The two concepts (inventiveness under pressure and working together for the communal good) come from extremes, sometimes enemies, but watch out when they unite and come for you. Together they’ll accost you with so much kindness that you will come to regret your unimaginative evil (it always is) and wish you’d seen what they know: good defeats evil every time. Most South Africans are unusual that way, they go into retreat after…

SABER AHMED JAZBHAY | Newlands West Eid Mubarak to South Africa, for this is really an Eid of sacrifices as we as Muslims sacrifice goats, sheep, cows, etc in emulating the tradition of Prophet Abraham (Peace be unto him) confirmed in our scriptures. I missed the name of the minister or official who commented, as heard on radio, that all the looted items that are being recovered will be destroyed so that the value of the product on the shelves or shop floor will not be affected. What rubbish statement is that? It is a statement of someone who can’t think. I strongly propose that, when the owners cannot be found or identified, the goods be sold and the amount go towards reparation costs of damaged and/or…

DUNCAN DU BOIS | Bluff Dr Harlan Cloete’s thoughts on how to fix dysfunctional municipalities tip-toe around the issues which fundamentally account for what afflicts local government (The Mercury, July 21). Citing the government’s latest plan to arrest municipal malaise – District Development Model (DDM), Cloete recites the usual jargon which encompasses such plans – integrated planning, capacity building, baseline monitoring and so on. But he is correct in expressing doubts in trusting those behind the failure of local government to rebuild it in terms of the DDM plan. If municipal dysfunction is to be arrested, municipalities need to be reconfigured because their size and extent is a primary reason for their failure. Smaller municipalities with different rates and service tariffs would mean healthy competition for business investment.…

Speaker Thandi Modise has rejected the call by the opposition to urgently reconvene Parliament to discuss the violence that affected two provinces. Modise received letters of request from the ACDP’s Reverend Kenneth Meshoe, the NFP’s Ahmed Munzoor Shaik Emam and the DA’s Natasha Mazzone as they wanted to debate the recent violence and looting in KwaZulu-Natal. The parties had asked that the constituency period that is set to end on August 16 be cut short in order for the MPs to return to the national legislature to be seen working towards finding solutions. A statement by Parliament reads: “In her replies Ms Modise said she did not believe it was necessary at this point to reconvene the NA (National Assembly) by recalling members from their constituency period, when they were…

Zelda Venter zelda.venter@inl.co.za FOR eight years, a Joburg gynaecologist faced a multimillion rand claim after one of his patients gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome. However, retired Dr Piet Engelbrecht will now be able to put all that behind him. The parents of the girl, who will turn 10 in November, persisted with a string of court applications to try to obtain damages from the specialist. The mother, who is not identified in order to protect the identity of the child, said that if she had known she was carrying a baby with Down syndrome, she would have opted for an abortion. She said Engelbrecht was negligent for not establishing during her pregnancy that her child would have Down syndrome. She and her husband blamed the doctor for…

Tarryn-Leigh Solomons and Zintle Mahlati THE National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) head, advocate Shamila Batohi, says even though poverty may have driven the actions of some looters, it should never be a reason to commit crime. Last week saw the destruction of 161 malls and shopping centres, 11 warehouses, 8 factories and 161 liquor outlets and distributors in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. Farms were also torched. Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola and his department, together with the NPA, yeterday briefed the portfolio committee on justice and correctional services on the prosecution plans for looters. Lamola said to deal with the prosecution of people involved in recent acts of violence, looting and cases which relate to people in possession of stolen goods, alternative measures such as admission of guilt,…

THERE is no definitive truth about any given situation – more than one truth can exist simultaneously without invalidating the other. For example: (1) Transformation is needed in South Africa, but the methodology is flawed; (2) #ShutdownSA is not about former president Jacob Zuma; and (3) #ShutdownSA is a result of operant conditioning of the mindsets of South Africans by the government. It is because several things exist on a spectrum that I find myself on the fence about what has turned into “a looting spree”. Normally, I take a position and stand by it, so this has ignited some cognitive dissonance because while I stand by the cause of social justice and transformation, I disagree with the methodology employed and the target group it affects. For some context, according…

THE South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) should be commended for being quick to denounce the violence and looting that gripped KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng. It should be applauded for being part of the solution when the unrest threatened to destabilise the country. Our wish is that it would take a similar stance in the taxi violence in the Western Cape which has claimed the lives of more than 80 people, including innocent commuters and bystanders, since the start of the year. While taxi drivers in KZN and Gauteng were hailed heroes, it is a different story in the Western Cape. The war between the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata) and Congress of Democratic Taxi Association (Codeta) over routes has been devastating to innocent commuters. A four-month-old baby was…

Brisbane was awarded the 2032 Olympics yesterday, triggering wild celebrations and fireworks as it became the third Australian city to host the Summer Games after Melbourne and Sydney. International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach confirmed the widely expected result after delegates voted 72 to five with three abstentions at the IOC session in Tokyo. “The International Olympic Committee has the honour to announce that the Games of the 35th Olympiad are awarded to Brisbane, Australia,” Bach said. The announcement was greeted by cheers from the Australian delegates in Tokyo, while in Brisbane fireworks lit up the skies and crowds who had gathered for the vote went wild. Brisbane’s victory looked a certainty after it was unanimously proposed as the single candidate for 2032 by the IOC’s 15-strong executive board in…

NAIROBI: The Kenyan civil aviation authority said yesterday that it had launched investigations into a plane which crash-landed at a military base in southern Somalia with 45 passengers on board. Director-General Gilbert Kibe of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority said no injuries had thus far been reported. Kibe confirmed the incident involving a Skyward Express aircraft and added that investigations would establish how the incident happened. Local officials in Somalia said the plane crash-landed at Burahache military camp at Elwak, a few kilometres from the Somalia-Kenya border.…

Hernán Mastrángelo, a 100-year-old grandfather in Argentina, has gone viral after it emerged that for years he had been taking handwritten notes of almost every goal scored by local hero and Barcelona star Lionel Messi. Mastrángelo, a chocolate maker by profession, made it his hobby to keep track of each of Messi’s goals, his grandson Julián announced on social media. “I wanted to have scored all the goals that Messi did,” Mastrángelo said. “I always followed the games and if I didn’t have time to watch them, my grandson would tell me about them.” The centenarianwrote down on sheets of paper the name of the rival team, the date and the number of goals, recording more than 700 scored by Messi over the years. When the story reached Messi in…

MIKE GREENAWAY mike.greenaway@inl.co.za SHUTTING down Springbok matchwinner Cheslin Kolbe is a top priority for the Lions in Saturday’s first Test but the Boks face their own challenge in shutting down Kolbe’s opposite number, Duhan van der Merwe. Lions boss Warren Gatland, speaking after naming Van der Merwe on the left wing in a very strong Lions team, has warned his players to keep the ball away from Kolbe. “Stopping Cheslin is going to be a real challenge and the best way to do that is limit the possession he gets,” Gatland said. “Cheslin got one opportunity against us in that South Africa ’A’ game and made the most of it. We can’t afford to do what we did in that ’A’ game and kick the ball down his throat. So…

Stuart Hess stuart.hess@inl.co.za AIDEN Markram is happy to adapt to a new role for South Africa’s T20 side even if that means it doesn’t allow him to ‘get his eye in’ at the crease. With Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock, Janneman Malan, Reeza Hendricks and Markram in the Proteas T20 squad, South Africa possess a lot of openers. But there are fewer options for the middle order, particularly a player who can propel the ball to and over the boundary. In addition that player needs to do so as soon as he gets to the crease. Even the Proteas’ ‘finisher’ David Miller needs a few deliveries to ‘get his eye in’. The lack of options in the middle has led to Markram being asked to make some adjustments. “I’ve…