Table of contents for 2021-09-14 in Mercury

Loyiso Sidimba loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za THE legal battle over the filling of vacancies at the Constitutional Court has taken a new twist, as a Tshwane man has challenged the decision to reopen interviews for the positions in the country’s highest court. Reyno de Beer, of the Liberty Fighters Network (LFN), has asked the South Gauteng High Court to declare the August 18 order – for the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) to reconvene and interview the eight candidates for positions in the Constitutional Court – invalid. Alternatively, De Beer wants the high court to set aside its decision. The order was granted, after the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution (Casac) approached the high court to have the interview process which was conducted in April reviewed. Casac had challenged what it…

Sibusiso Mboto sibusiso.mboto@inl.co.za A DURBAN High Court Judge has raised eyebrows after he issued a directive that only people who had been vaccinated against Covid-19 or who could provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test result would be allowed to attend the court case involving KwaZulu-Natal ANC deputy chairperson and former MEC, Mike Mabuyakhulu. The move has caused quite a stir, with advocacy group Right2Know saying it had picked up a number of instances where people were cajoled into getting vaccinated against their will, sometimes with overt threats of employment termination. Mabuyakhulu and seven co-accused are facing charges of theft, fraud and corruption over the North Sea Jazz Festival which was planned to take place in 2012 during his tenure as MEC for Economic Development and Tourism. The R28 million…

PREPARING for success? Here are some very broad principles: Know that, “way leads to way” – Robert Frost. Decisions open new possibilities that are hidden or unavailable until the first steps are taken. Live from a position of “yes” more than “no”, which means you will value adventure over safety and know that if there is no risk, there will be no gain and definitely there will be no adventure. Try to empower others while understanding that there is very little room for lone geniuses. Getting alongside others to find success is much more fun than trying to do it alone. Know that self-leadership, how you manage yourself, is about 98% of effective leadership. If you really want to be an effective leader, get your focus off what other people…

ANTHONY STARKEY | Durban North IN A letter titled “There’s no pandemic and there’s no need for vaccine” (The Mercury, September 10) Duncan du Bois argues that “this is not a pandemic and there is no need for a vaccine. And there certainly is no sense in taking vaccines which have not been properly tested and which are proving ineffective and controversial”. And his source for the facts to support this argument? WorldNetDaily, a fringe right-wing website that has been around since 1997, founded by Joseph Farah. In an article titled “Inside the spectacular fall of the granddaddy of right-wing conspiracy sites” (The Washington Post April 2, 2019), Manuel Roig-Franzia said: “This month, Farah was once again asking for money and railing against the tech companies he blames…

Baldwin Ndaba baldwin.ndaba@inl.co.za CALLS have been made for whistle-blowers to be protected as the suspects accused of the murder of former Gauteng Health top official Babita Deokaran appeared in court yesterday. The six men made a brief appearance in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court yesterday in connection with the murder of Deokaran – a former chief director for financial accounting in the Department of Gauteng Health. Civil society organisations including Outa and Defend our Democracy, who were at the court, called on the government to protect whistle-blowers and to act swiftly against those who commit fraud and corruption. ActionSA President, Herman Mashaba also attended the court appearance. Outside court, Mashaba said he and his party members wanted to express their views that whistle-blowers needed the support of the State and…

Tarryn-Leigh Solomons tarryn-leigh.solomons@iinl.co.za ONLY 50 out of more than 10 000 police officers who were accused of violent misconduct were suspended by the SAPS over the past nine years. This was revealed by Police Minister Bheki Cele when he was responding to parliamentary questions from DA MP Andrew Whitfield, who described the figures as “alarming”. Whitfield asked Cele to provide the number of officers who have been accused of rape, murder and assault, that the SAPS had placed on suspension, pending investigation by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), among others, between 2012/13 and 2020/21. He also asked whether there were instances where officers were accused and suspended twice during the period. Cele’s response showed that 10 086 officers had been charged with death as a result of…

AS THE government tries to intensify its Covid-19 vaccination programme, politicians need to step aside and let individuals who are trusted by the public take centre stage in convincing people to get inoculated. Despite having sufficient vaccines and vaccination sites in almost every corner of the country, the government’s vaccination programme has been moving at a snail’s pace. Vaccine hesitancy among men, the youth and older people has caught the government by surprise. Clearly, the social media misinformation campaign is winning. During his address to the nation on Sunday night, President Cyril Ramaphosa presented statistics collected in the Western Cape. They show that most of those admitted to hospital due to Covid-19 in the province were unvaccinated. He said that between August 14 and 20, the Western Cape Department…

BERLIN: Scientists are racing to collect ice cores – along with long-frozen records they hold of climate cycles – as global warming melts glaciers and ice sheets. Some say they are running out of time. And, in some cases, it’s already too late. Late last year, German-born chemist Margit Schwikowski and a team of international scientists attempted to gather ice cores from the Grand Combin glacier, high on the Swiss-Italian border, for a UN-backed climate monitoring effort. In 2018, they had scouted the site by helicopter and drilled a shallow test core. The core was in good shape, said Schwikowski: It had well-preserved atmospheric gases and chemical evidence of past climates, and ground-penetrating radar showed a deep glacier. Not all glaciers in the Alps preserve both summer and winter snowfall;…

YANGON: Deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi was unable to appear at a court hearing yesterday for health reasons, a member of her legal team said, describing her condition as dizziness caused by motion sickness. Suu Kyi, 76, who has been detained on various charges since her overthrow in a February 1 military coup, did not have the coronavirus but felt ill having not travelled in a vehicle for a long time, lawyer Min Min Soe said. The popular Nobel Peace Prize winner has spent about half of the past three decades in various forms of detention over her non-violent struggle against dictatorship and her health is closely watched. “It is not serious sickness ... She suffered car sickness. “She cannot stand that feeling and told us she wanted…

KABUL: Afghan security personnel attacked a band of kidnappers in the northern Balkh province to try to rescue the two people they held, killing seven people including the five kidnappers, provincial official Mawlavi Zabiullah Nurani said yesterday. He said the kidnappers captured two people possibly for ransom in Dasht-e-Shur area outside Mazar-i-Sharif, the provincial capital. “Five kidnappers abducted two men. Security staff attacked the abductors in Dasht-e-Shur area, killing the abductors but unfortunately the two abductees were also killed in the firefight,” Nurani said. One of the security personnel sustained a minor injury in the rescue mission.…

Wynona Louw wynona.louw@inl.co.za There weren’t that many positives to focus on in the Springboks’ 28-26 Rugby Championship defeat by Australia at the weekend. Sure, they got three tries off line-out drives, which again showed what a weapon the attacking set-piece is, but even in areas where you would confidently tip the Boks to have the upper hand, it wasn’t the case. So, with a chance to save face in Brisbane on Saturday, here are three questions to consider before the Boks’ fourth Rugby Championship fixture. 1. Should Pollard get the boot? While it wouldn’t be fair to put the blame for the Boks’ agonising loss solely on Handre Pollard, there is no denying that his goal-kicking was a major contributing factor. But perhaps more concerning than his performance last…

Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za VUKILE Property Fund said the trading metrics at its retail properties were largely back to pre-Covid levels. The owner of 45 shopping centres in South Africa, including Mdantsane City and Gugulethu Square, and 18 centres in Spain, said yesterday in a pre-close statement for the six months to August 31 that 473 shops across six of its retail centres had been affected by the violence in July. The group expected Sasria insurance reinstatement claims of some R125 million, and loss of rental claims from the violence of about R57m, the statement said. Full year 2022 turnover was averaging 4 percent higher than the comparable period in 2020. Collections were strong at 98 percent. Vacancies were marginally up to 3.4 percent from 3.2 percent in the…

Sihle Mavuso sihle.mavuso@inl.co.za THE politically volatile province of KwaZulu-Natal is still on edge following the killing of three women and injuring of five others on Saturday in what is seen as a politically motivated act. Yesterday, ANC provincial chairperson, Sihle Zikalala, accompanied by provincial secretary Mdumiseni Ntuli and former eThekwini mayor, Zandile Gumede, visited the families of the deceased to mourn with them. Zikalala condemned the act as barbaric and said law-enforcement agencies should work day and night to bring the killers to book. “The incident on its own reflects barbarism and it has thuggish elements that we cannot accept in the ANC. We (the ANC) have conducted meetings in more than 95% of wards that are expected to select candidates and all along everything has been normal though in…

Music lovers in London can now enjoy classical performances with a difference – on a canal boat traversing the city’s waterways. Masayuki Tayama, the captain and pianist of the “Piano Boat”, moored in Uxbridge, just outside London, said the vessel was the only one of its kind. “It was built to our specifications as a floating concert venue,” he said, pointing to a brand new Steinway grand piano at one end of the cabin, which has been transformed into a concert hall with parquet flooring and sumptuous burgundy walls. Later that day, Tayama played a programme including Beethoven and Schumann to an enthusiastic audience in evening dress, seated around tables. Project manager Rhiana Henderson said the idea of a floating concert venue came about when they were living on an…

KEVIN GOVENDER | Shallcross IN AN attempt to woo township gamblers, casinos have come up with a marketing concept to introduce a new informal card game into their gambling portfolio – Call Card 52. The game has been famous among Indians and Blacks for generations and has an umbilical cord to shebeens and taverns where gambling schools operate on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s a magnet for weekly wage earners looking to make a quick buck. It’s a numbers game between a caller and a dealer and a whole plethora of side-betters hoping to hop on to the winning call/number. “Shuffle – thin top – small bottom, hit and throw!” – that’s the mantra of the caller as his card is dealt and his anxiety breezes out on…

PAM LENTIN | Glenmore PEOPLE should lighten up a little and learn to laugh at themselves. The recent incident in which JP Smith was accused of racism for not attempting to pronounce an African surname and jokingly suggesting changing it, to a more easily pronounceable one, like Smith, has been blown out of proportion. The gentleman concerned has said that he did not take Smith’s remark as an insult or racist. Can any of us, Africans, pronounce all the surnames of the nations of the world? I don’t think so. Most people, would just laugh and offer help in pronouncing their names correctly. For years, I have been called “Lentil”. It’s human nature to jest. Accept it and laugh along. The Irish laugh at the numerous jokes made…

Their assailants used a spanner and a whip to torture them. In an ordeal lasting hours, they then burnt their female victim with a hot iron and cut off her hair with a knife. Chris and Hesta Barnard are in hospital, but they will battle to overcome the emotional scars left last week by their three assailants in Koster, a small farming town on the watershed between the Orange and Limpopo rivers in North West. Leon Basson, the DA North West provincial leader, said: “Police Minister Bheki Cele and the entire national government continue to sit idly while residents in rural communities are subjected to the most despicable brutality”. Basson is also concerned that with every farm attack, there are fewer farmers willing to invest in working the land, producing…

The Local Government Elections Anti Disinformation Project has warned political parties that with the election date declared last week, candidates and their agents may now face strong penalties for spreading disinformation. Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma declared November 1 as the new date for the local government elections, indicating that the Electoral Commission of SA’s (IEC) Code of Conduct comes into effect. The Local Government Election 2021 Disinformation Project said it would monitor communications from political parties using technological tools and data science for any disinformation in violation of the IEC Code of Conduct. “Any instances of disinformation detected will be reported to the Electoral Court,” said Gamane Gama, the project’s spokesperson. “The IEC Code Of Conduct prohibits political parties from ‘publishing false information about other…

EVENTS leading up to the local government elections of 2021 have been, for lack of a better word, chaotic. Justice Dikgang Moseneke’s recommendations to postpone the elections to early next year due to fears of election fairness amid Covid-19, and the subsequent Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) bid to have the elections postponed as per Moseneke’s recommendations, threw a spanner in the works. We now know that the elections will take place on November 1 this year, following the Constitutional Court’s dismissal of the IEC’s bid. The pandemonium in the run-up to the local government elections (LGE) will certainly play a part post-elections. It will be interesting to see how political parties respond to election results – questions of the freedom and fairness of the elections will certainly dominate post-election…

Heavily-armed gunmen stormed a jail in Nigeria’s central Kogi state, freeing scores of inmates, a prison spokesperson said yesterday. It was unclear who the gunmen were but central and north-west Nigeria have been terrorised by criminal gangs for years. “The medium Security Custodial Centre in Kabba, Kogi State, has been attacked by yet to be identified gunmen and 240 inmates forcefully released,” Nigeria’s correctional service spokesperson Francis Enobore said in a statement. At about 10.45pm on Sunday, he said, numerous attackers “engaged the armed guards in a fierce gun battle”. The gunmen invaded the prison, which had 294 prisoners, including 224 pre-trial detainees. Investigations were under way yesterday to find the escapees, he added. In a separate incident, a military base in north-west Zamfara state was attacked at the weekend.…

Two Florida pupils are held at a juvenile detention centre after being accused of planning a mass school shooting inspired by Columbine. The 14-year-old and 13-year-old boys, whom The Washington Post is not naming because they are minors, are eighth-graders at Harns Marsh Middle School in Lee County, about two hours away from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a gunman killed 17 people in 2018. They were charged with conspiracy to commit a mass shooting and have been ordered to be held at a juvenile detention centre for three weeks, according to the county sheriff’s office. Police investigations suggested the boys had looked for guns on the black market, studied ways to build pipe bombs and researched the 1999 school shooting that occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado,…

Hanoi: Fifteen people including a 7-year-old boy have been found inside a refrigerated truck in Vietnam after they tried to escape areas of the south badly hit by Covid-19, state media said yesterday. Vietnam has been battling a devastating fourth wave of the virus since April, and tens of millions of people are under stay-at-home orders. On Sunday police in Binh Thuan province discovered the group of 15 inside a vehicle that had aroused suspicion as it tried to pass a virus checkpoint on its way north. A passenger said they had asked the driver to turn off the truck’s refrigeration system as it had been too cold..…

Sakhiseni Nxumalo sakhiseni.nxumalo@inl.co.za THE Durban University of Technology has retrenched 31 lecturers who have failed to obtain a Master’s degree in their respective fields more than a decade after being told to do so. In a communiqué issued last month, the institution said the requirement of a Master’s degree dated back to 2008. In the internal letter, DUT’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Thandwa Zizwe Mthembu said in 2008 that the university gave affected lecturers up to 2012 to register for and earn their Master’s degrees. Mthembu said in the letter that earlier this year, the institution approached the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) in pursuance of a well-legislated consultation process regarding the issue. “At the start of this CCMA-facilitated process, the university provided a list of 57 lecturers who faced…

| Peter Ustinov I’M THINKING seriously of taking up croquet as the sport to watch. I wish the TV networks would take it more seriously and give it the coverage it deserves. Last Saturday, I sat with a bunch of Maritzburg College fellow old boys, watching College go down to Glenwood by a penalty in the dying seconds of the game. I was up in the scenic Midlands with entertaining companions. How could such injustice be inflicted in such a setting? That evening, I was to witness the humiliating disaster of the Currie Cup final, where the Sharks went down by a cricket score to the Bulls, in an encounter that was not just a rout; as a spectacle it was nowhere near Currie Cup standards. Still in the…

GLEN CHRISTIE | Durban North IF IT IS TRUE that President Ramaphosa appro- ved Jacob Zuma’s release on medical parole, this is quite disturbing in that it opens up a huge can of worms. Why is the president now aligning himself with a corrupted ex-president and therefore putting himself into a position of also being an untrustworthy individual, when at the same time his public statements about getting rid of corruption in the ANC now make a mockery of his so-called intentions? Is it that he is trying to hang on to ANC party support by agreeing to this parole for Zuma so that the Zuma party supporters will support him? What a corrupt way of gaining support from one’s own party. A note to the current president…

PAKS PAKIRIY | Durban North HOW else can one explain Jacob Zuma’s exploits? He was firmly ensconced in his palatial Nkandla home paid for by the taxpayers. Instead of being incarcerated in a cell in Estcourt, he was treated as royalty in a hospital, courtesy of hard-pressed taxpayers. He had the good fortune of having the right men placed in the right position to do his bidding when he was the president of the country. Arthur Fraser, the renowned spy boss, was one of them. As the commissioner of prisons, he saw to Zuma’s early parole in spite of an objection by the medical parole board. Zuma was “free” in a hospital ward, not incarcerated in a jail cell and, thereafter, Fraser handed him a get-out-of jail card.…

Nicola Daniels nicola.daniels@inl.co.za HALF-marathon challenger Henry Cock has reached the halfway mark in his goal to break a Guinness World Record for the most consecutive half-marathons in a row in 133 days. Through his efforts, the Joburg resident hopes to raise more than R4 million for the South African Depression and Anxiety Group’s (Sadag) national suicide helpline, which has seen an increase in calls received from 600 to more than 1 800 a day. A half-marathon is a distance of 21.0975km, exactly half the distance of a full marathon. He plans to run 2 800km in total, from Kosi Bay in northern KwaZulu- Natal, to Vioolsdrift in Namibia. He hit the halfway mark in the Eastern Cape coastal village of St Francis at the weekend. On his BackaBuddy fund-raising…

Lehlohonolo Mashigo lehlohonolo.mashigo@inl.co.za COMMONLY believed to be a childhood disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can also be diagnosed in adulthood. About 4% of adults have ADHD, but this number could be higher as owing to a lack of awareness, it often goes undiagnosed. Psychiatrist Dr Laura Comrie said research indicated that ADHD persisted from childhood to adulthood in 25%-50% of those diagnosed. “ADHD tends to present more commonly in men, with the hyperactive/impulsive type being most prevalent in that sex. These individuals will often choose a line of work that involves physical activity rather than sitting at a desk,” Comrie said. Inattentive ADHD, commonly found in women, was less visible to onlookers than hyperactive/impulsive or combined ADHD, and was more often undiagnosed, she said. “The disorder occurs on a spectrum,…

Sakhiseni Nxumalo sakhiseni.nxumalo@inl.co.za MORE than 20 people have been killed in two road crashes in KwaZulu-Natal. Nine people lost their lives in a head-on collision on the N2 between the Canefields intersection and the Enseleni Nature Reserve on Sunday evening. Robert McKenzie, KZN emergency medical services spokesperson, said an SUV and a minibus taxi collided, killing eight people. McKenzie said paramedics treated 13 victims at the scene before taking them to hospital. One person died yesterday in hospital bringing the death toll to nine. Six men and three women from both vehicles died. McKenzie said nine people were being treated at Ngwelezane Hospital. KZN provincial police spokesperson Colonel Thembeka Mbele confirmed the incident, adding charges of culpable homicide were being investigated by Empangeni SAPS. A week ago, another deadly crash…

Candidates should remember nothing is more important than the sanctity of life THOSE of us who are serious about our country succeeding in all its endeavours were relieved the Judicial Service Commission, entrusted with the selection of our Constitutional Court judges, will have another chance next month to select five to fill the positions of our retiring chief justice and four of the other 11. The most important aspect that our apex court has ever dealt with since its inception after the dawn of our democracy in 1994, is the issue of the death penalty. Nothing else can ever be more important than the sanctity of life, and acting against the taking of life. All 11 of them, at the time, did our country, and indeed the world, a great…

VENEZUELA’S power system has come under a “terrorist attack” resulting in power outages in several regions, including the capital city, Venezuela’s Electricity Minister Nestor Revelor said. It is “a new attack on the country’s national electrical system”, he said, adding it was a “terrorist attack”. On Sunday, at least seven states experienced a partial power outage. Seven other states experienced problems with internet connectivity. The power outages were caused by an explosion at a big substation in the city of Santa Cruz in the Aragua state, the minister said and noted that the transformer was attacked. “We have restored [the power supply] in the metropolitan district” and are in the process of fixing the others, he said. In March 2019, Venezuela had two big-scale power outages. The first, an accident…

While fewer than 1 in 5 of Norway’s inhabitants (about 17%) have an immigrant background, they now receive well over half (58%) of all the social financial assistance available in the country, new statistics have indicated. On behalf of the national-conservative Progress Party, Statistics Norway has taken a closer look at the use of social benefits in Norwegian municipalities over the period 2009-2019. This includes all means of temporary support given to people unable to provide for their own subsistence. Over the 10-year stretch, the number of welfare recipients with an immigrant background has increased over 70%, while recipients among the general population have become fewer. This coincided with a period of record-high immigration, including the 2015 migrant crisis, the newspaper Nettavisen reported. In 2009, just over NOK 1.8 billion…

Monrovia: New witnesses testified yesterday in a war crimes case in Liberia’s capital, a police investigator said, in the latest stage of a landmark trial against ex-rebel Gibril Massaquoi. The hearing before a Finnish court marks the second time its judges have travelled to Monrovia in the case against Massaquoi, who is accused of committing rape and ritual murder during Liberia’s brutal civil war. Around a quarter of a million people were killed between 1989 to 2003 in the West African country, in a conflict marked by merciless violence and rape, often carried out by drugged-up child soldiers.…

Being disrupted by hecklers while serving for the match only made Daniil Medvedev’s first grand slam title that much sweeter when it came on Sunday at the expense of Novak Djokovic in the US Open final. World No 2 Medvedev ripped top-ranked Djokovic 6-4 6-4 6-4 to deny the Serbian star the first grand slam sweep since 1969 and a men’s record 21st career major title. “He definitely was not at his best. We saw him playing better,” Medvedev said. “Question is, if he would be, would I be able to cope up with him? We can never know now. I’m just happy to win.” The breakthrough came in Medvedev’s third slam final after losses to Rafael Nadal in the 2019 US Open final and Djokovic in February’s Australian…

Mihlali Baleka mihlali.baleka@inl.co.za So MUCH for being the reigning PSL Coach of the Season. Benni McCarthy has yet to chalk up a win with his AmaZulu team this season, thanks to one draw and three defeats in all competitions – the MTN8, Premiership and Caf Champions League. But with high expectations, which included making a grand entrance in Africa, McCarthy and his charges are yet to look like a group that is on a mission. They lost their opening match in the MTN8 quarter-finals to Cape Town City at home. Soon thereafter, they lost to champions Mamelodi Sundowns in their opening league match before salvaging a point at home against Swallows FC. The international break was expected to help AmaZulu recharge their batteries, but it wasn’t to be. They were…