BY Obakeng Maje

Taung_North West police shot and killed one suspect after a business robbery in Pudumong. According to the police, two suspects entered a supermarket in the area and robbed a Pakistan owner some cash.

“Two suspects entered the supermarket owned by Pakistanian  citizen and robbed him some cash. The police were called and the armed suspects opened fire and the police responded which resulted into one suspect shot dead” Mokgwabone said.

“The other suspect fled the scene and i do not have more information regarding the incident” He said.

Most of cases involving police shoot-out are investigated by IDC crew gave Independent Police Commission spokesperson Moses Dlamini a call.

“I am not aware of the incident and after gathering more information i will let you know” Dlamini said.

Mahikeng-The dismissal of three senior officials from the North West Provincial Administration should sent a strong message that the provincial government is committed to rid itself of maladministration and corruption, North West Executive Council(Exco) resolved in its meeting held in Mahikeng on Wednesday.

Exco welcomed the outcome of disciplinary cases against former Acting Head of Department for the Provincial Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport who was the substantive Chief Director for Roads and the Chief Financial Officer. Both officials were on suspension for irregularities related to the awarding of the Koster-Lichtenburg road construction tender,

In welcoming the announcement by MEC for Public Roads and Transport, Raymond Elisha, Exco expressed concern that the two officials had taken up employment with Mogale City Council and Ditsobotla Local Muncipality while on suspension.

In line with the earlier commitment made by Premier Thandi Modise during the Provincial Roads Summit held this month that her administration will strive to recoup every cent lost through fraud and corruption, Exco resolved that the department should recoup whatever monies which the state might have lost as a result of the action of those involved.

Premier Thandi Modise had warned that her administration is tightening the screw against corruption with a major focus on price collusion within the tendering system and will pursue corruption syndicates relentlessly until those who have been looting state resources are behind bars and their properties repossessed.

Premier Modise had sternly warned that those that thought that they were untouchable and could loot state resources with impunity should know that its game time.

“You have reached this far and no further. We are not going to be scared off or succumb to any pressure to abandon the fight against corruption because road users deserve quality and safer roads. We will not be bought because our integrity is not for sale,” Modise had vowed.

She had emphasised that the province cannot afford to pay three to four times what other provinces are paying for road construction and that communities deserve quality and safer roads and not expensive but inferior roads.

Meanwhile, MEC for Sports, Arts and Culture Tebogo Modise also announced the dismissal of an Assistant Director from her department who was found guilty of defrauding reservation bookings monies from the Rustenburg Cultural Centre.

Further investigations into the matter are being pursued by MEC Modise’s department.

Follow us on Twitter@Taung_DailyNews

Kurgersdorp –

The case against Roedolf Viviers, 28, who is accused of beating a Muslim man to death, was postponed to January by the Krugersdorp Regional Court on Thursday.

The matter would be transferred to the Johannesburg High Court and would be heard on January 28, said magistrate Stanley Mkhari.

“I have been instructed to inform you that you will appear on a charge of attempted murder and a charge of murder. You remain in custody,” he told Viviers.

Charges were withdrawn against his co-accused Zayne van Tonder, 33.

Van Tonder, who was charged with assault, was granted bail of R2 000 in August.

“Accused number two (Van Tonde), charges against you have been withdrawn. You may leave,” Mkhari said.

National Prosecuting Authority spokeswoman Phindile Louw said the charges were withdrawn because of a lack of evidence.

Viviers and Van Tonder allegedly made racist remarks to Muhammad Fayaaz Kazi and his friend Anser Mahmood at a fast food outlet in Magaliesburg on August 6.

A fight ensued. Kazi was severely beaten and died in hospital.

Viviers was pointed out by seven witnesses in an identity parade.

He wore a brown shirt and black pants during Wednesday’s proceedings.

Van Tonder wore a black shirt and khaki pants. He sat at the back of the court and listened to the proceedings after the charges against him were withdrawn.

Outside the court, Kazi’s father-in-law, Hasimbhay Motara. said the family was pleased with the decision to move the matter to the high court. – Sapa

Durban –

A street vendor was shot dead in Phoenix, Durban, on Thursday when she was caught in a crossfire between security guards and robbers, said KwaZulu-Natal police.

Lt-Col Vincent Mdunge said four armed men walked into a scrap-metal business on Thursday morning, apparently intending to rob it.

“It is not clear if the four suspects wanted to rob the business of money or if they wanted to rob members of the private security company of their firearms,” he said.

During their ensuing shootout with security guards, a street vendor was hit in the stomach and died, said Mdunge.

He said three of the robbers were arrested. One firearm was found.

Mdunge said it was not clear who shot the woman. – Sapa

A Sea Point man has been sentenced to 18 years in jail for the murder of a 26-year-old woman whose body he hid under a bed.

Siyabonga Gelese, 23, was also sentenced to 10 years in the Cape Town Regional Court for raping a pregnant woman.

The sentences will run concurrently.

Magistrate Lulamile Mdoda said he had shown Gelese “mercy” by taking into account the fact that he has been in custody for almost two years.

The case stemmed from an incident last January when Gelese stabbed Desiree Davids 17 times before shoving her body under his bed. He also tied a plastic bag around her head.

The pair had met the night before and had sex in his flat. Then she told him she was HIV-positive.

Gelese told the court he was “incensed” as he had wanted to use a condom but she refused. In anger, he stabbed her and hid the body under his bed.

Hours later, Gelese went clubbing and returned with friends. One couple had sex on the bed under which Davids’s body lay.

Gelese then raped a pregnant woman while her boyfriend was asleep beside her.

He had pleaded guilty to murder, but denied the rape charge.

At the time of his arrest, Gelese was 22 and had been working as a barman at an Italian restaurant and had been renting the Sea Point flat.

On Wednesday, defence lawyer Aneeqah Booley argued that Gelese was fairly young, a first-time offender and was “provoked” when Davids told him she was HIV positive.

She said Gelese had insisted that they use a condom but Davids refused and later told him that she was HIV-positive.

Gelese said he had lost both his parents to HIV when he was a child.

Gelese said his childhood emotions returned under such provocation, which was why he stabbed Davids several times.

”He is an intelligent man, he made a mistake, that was his instructions to me, he made a mistake,” said Booley.

For more details go to http://www.iol.co.za

Johannesburg – South African President Jacob Zuma looks set for re-election as head of the ruling African National Congress in December, but the battle for the post of his deputy could thrust millionaire businessman and former unionist Cyril Ramaphosa back into political prominence.

Despite sluggish growth in Africa’s biggest economy, bloody labour strife that dented South Africa’s image this year and a slew of scandals during Zuma’s three years in power, five of the country’s nine provinces are backing the president to stay on as leader of the ANC.

This line-up suggests Zuma has seen off a campaign to replace him with Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, whose own silence on whether he is in the running has opened up the chance of a political comeback by business tycoon Ramaphosa.

Leadership of Nelson Mandela’s 100-year-old liberation movement would virtually guarantee Zuma another five years as state president in a 2014 election, given the support the ANC can still count on from South Africa’s black majority.

Nominations for top ANC leadership positions for the December 16-20 party conference close on Friday.

Zuma, who ousted former President Thabo Mbeki in a fight to head the party in 2007, has obtained wide endorsement from ANC branches across five provinces, including his home KwaZulu-Natal, which will have the largest number of voting delegates at the conference in the central city of Mangaung.

The expectation that Zuma will carry the ANC leadership race has taken some steam out of the contest and provides an element of political continuity, even though many have been critical of his lacklustre performance in office.

Zuma’s reputation as president was tarnished by criticism that his government mishandled a wave of violent mining strikes in recent months that saw at least 50 people killed, 34 of them striking miners shot by police in a single day in August. It was the deadliest labour violence since apartheid ended in 1994.

Critics on the left within his own party accused the 70-year-old president, who is proud of his Zulu origins and likes to present himself as a genial “man of the people”, of abandoning poor and working class South Africans.

Business leaders said Zuma’s government did not move quickly enough to halt the labour troubles that led to downgrades from two credit ratings agencies for South Africa, whose deep social and economic inequalities are seen as an Achilles Heel.

“His leadership has led to a myriad of conundrums around policies, and investors expect more inaction from him,” Peter Attard-Montalto, emerging market economist at Nomura International, told Reuters.

Since Zuma took office in 2009, protests about basic services have become an almost daily occurrence in urban areas across South Africa as the ANC struggles to fix a broken education system and address chronic unemployment and poverty.

This has generated opposition to Zuma from elements within the party who demand radical economic and social reforms to achieve a fairer sharing out of the national wealth.

Two provinces have come out in favour of Motlanthe to be party leader.

But sources in the camp of the bearded and bespectacled deputy president, who is 63, said he was reluctant to challenge his boss in next month’s internal ANC election.

Motlanthe’s silence on whether he will stand has also forced Zuma’s supporters to look elsewhere for a deputy president.

“Zuma’s emissaries initially approached Motlanthe to stay on as deputy president on condition that he will get their support for president in the next ANC election (in 2017),” said one Zuma campaigner. “But his silence, and subsequent support from some provinces to go it alone, has made us decide to look elsewhere.”

This has opened the door for Ramaphosa, a respected and influential member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee, who has been backed as candidate to be Zuma’s deputy in the party by at least four of the provinces.

Reuters spoke to official sources and lobbyists in all nine provinces and although Ramaphosa, 60, appeared to have strong grassroots support from local branches, it was not clear if he would in the end accept the nomination.

“Cyril is the best man for the job, he brings integrity but we can only hope that he accepts the nomination. He expects guarantees that this will line him up to become the automatic choice for president next time around,” said one ANC official from KwaZulu-Natal.

Ramaphosa is hailed along with Mandela as a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle. As a founder leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, he led a three-week strike against South Africa’s white mining bosses in 1987 that gained him international renown.

But he left politics for business in 1997 three years after the end of apartheid, and is now South Africa’s second richest black entrepreneur.

But his shareholding in Lonmin, the company at the centre of the August 16 Marikana mine killings in which 34 strikers were shot by police, has laid him open to accusations that he has betrayed his original working class allegiances.

An ANC member from the Free State province, who asked not to be named, said: “We really don’t know if he will leave his high life in business to come back to a position in the ANC.”

Ramaphosa’s extensive business empire includes ownership of the McDonald’s South Africa franchise, he is the chairman of telecoms giant MTN, and also sits on the board of Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank by assets, and of brewer SABMiller.

In the ANC’s closed political culture, open ambition is frowned upon, so Ramaphosa, Mothlanthe, or any other candidates are unlikely to go public with their intentions before the nomination process closes on Friday.