Johannesburg – More black, coloured, and Indian South Africans speak Afrikaans at home than white South Africans, the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said on Monday.

According to a recent SAIRR study, based on data from the 2011 census, only 40% of those who speak Afrikaans at home are whites.

This means that out of 6.9 million people who speak the language at home, 2.7 million are white, while the rest are from other racial groups.

English is the home language of almost five million South Africans; of these, 1.6 million (or 34%) are white.

Almost 1.2 million black South Africans have English as their mother tongue, while coloured people and Indians accounted for nearly 950,000 and 1.1 million, respectively.

SAIRR researcher Thuthukani Ndebele said English was only the fourth most-spoken home language, but was the preferred language of learning in South Africa.

“About 64% of the 11.5 million pupils in public schools in 2010 chose to be taught in English, reflecting a global trend for the preference of the language.”

Internationally, at least one-in-four people speak English with some level of competence.

IsiZulu was the most common home language in South Africa, with 11.6 million South Africans listing it as their mother tongue.

Rustenburg – Police numbers in Marikana had been declining in the week that 34 striking mineworkers were shot dead, the Farlam Commission on Inquiry heard on Monday.

There were around 550 officers in Marikana on 13 August last year.

The number increased to around 750 by the 15th, but decreased to around 600 on 16 August – the day of the shooting, SAPS Major General Charl Annandale said.

Officers brought in from other provinces during the course of the week had returned to their posts prior to the main shooting.

Annandale was under cross-examination by Ishmael Semenya, for the SAPS.

He said though he had attended to big operations before, he never attended to one that needed such extensive crowd control where most of the crowd was armed.

Annandale was heading the police special tactical operations team during the Marikana unrest.

The Farlam Commission is holding public hearings in Rustenburg, North West, as part of an investigation into the deaths of 34 miners shot dead in a wage-related strike at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine on 16 August.

Another 10 people were killed in the preceding week.

The hearings continue.

Platinum Stars have taken an early lead in Q4, with University of Pretoria in second and Kaizer Chiefs third, on goals scored.

Springbok fullback Zane Kirchner will join Irish side Leinster later this year after signing a two-year contract with the club.
The 28-year-old has opted to move to Ireland rather than extend his contract with the South African Bulls franchise beyond its expiry at the end of October.    It is unclear when Kirchner will join his new team, with Bulls high performance manager Xander Janse van Rensburg hinting that the player could request a release before his current deal ends. “We understand that an earlier release might be requested, but it is up to the board to approve that or not,” Van Rensburg said in a media statement release by the franchise on Monday.

“We have been in talks with Zane and his agent since November and although it is very disappointing to lose his services, we wish him well.”

Kirchner joined the Bulls franchise in 2007 from Currie Cup side Griquas and was part of the squads that won the Super Rugby competition in his first year and later in 2009 and 2010. He made his Springbok debut in 2009 and has made 24 appearances.

For more www.sabc.co.za

Johannesburg –

More than 25 000 teachers will take to the streets on Wednesday during a national march by SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) members to the Union Buildings in Pretoria and to Parliament in Cape Town.

The march is part of the union’s drive for Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and director-general Bobby Soobrayan to resign.

For more www.iol.co.za

Pretoria – A psychological report on the so-called “Modimolle monster” Johan Kotze is subjective, the High Court in Pretoria heard on Monday.

Clinical psychologist Tertia Spangenberg initially said the report was not subjective, as Kotze did not know the criteria for dissociation, and had merely answered her questions.

However, Judge Bert Bam put it to her that the report was based on what Kotze had told her. She agreed.

Kotze is accused of orchestrating the gang-rape of his former wife Ina Bonnette and of murdering his stepson Conrad, 19, in his rented home in Modimolle on January 3, 2012. At the time, Bonnette was still married to Kotze, but lived in her own flat.

Kotze’s co-accused, Andries Sithole, Pieta Mohlane, and Frans Mphaka are accused of kidnapping, assaulting, repeatedly raping, and attempting to murder Bonnette that day.

In her report, Spangenberg found Kotze was not accountable for his actions.

“I am of the opinion that Mr Kotze was not accountable for the alleged actions of which he stands accused,” she said.

“It is my opinion that the combination of Mr Kotze’s narcissistic personality disorder, superimposed on traumatic psychological injuries, combined with an unmanaged, long-standing, major depression and untreated and unresolved acute stress disorder, resulted in a state of psychological dissociation during his alleged criminal acts.”

Bam asked her on Monday when this dissociation started and ended.

She said the dissociation would have started during an argument between Kotze and Bonnette on January 3.

Bonnette presented him with the couple’s vibrator and told him to use it on his next wife.

However, Spangenberg could not say with certainty when it ended. She testified that Kotze appeared to remain dissociated when he was in his car after the attack.

Bam put it to her that Kotze testified he had known he had committed an offence when he left the house.

Spangenberg said Kotze did not tell her this during their evaluation.

She earlier told the court Kotze’s case was the first she had done involving diminished capacity.

The defence for Kotze’s co-accused requested that it cross-examine Spangenberg after the State, as it needed a report on Kotze which another psychologist compiled in 2012. – Sapa

Johannesburg – For months they would lie in wait at dumping areas around Joburg, dressed in worn-out and dirty overalls pretending to be peasants.

In the early hours of the morning, late at night, in the freezing cold or in pouring rain, Warrant Officer Morake Khoali, Captain Maria Mokhele, constables Leutsoa Mofokeng and Jerry Khambule, from the Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit in Vereeniging, would be there.

For more www.iol.co.za

Boston – Seven days after the Boston Marathon bombings, the city planned to mark the traumatic week with mournful silence and a return to its bustling commute.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has asked residents to observe a moment of silence at 2.50pm on Monday, the time the first of the two bombs exploded near the finish line of Boston’s famous race. Bells will ring across the city and state after the minute-long tribute to the victims.

Many Boston residents are returning to the workplaces and schools for the first time since a dramatic week came to an even more dramatic end.

Authorities on Friday had made the unprecedented request that residents stay at home during the manhunt for suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He was discovered that evening hiding in a boat covered by a tarp in suburban Watertown. His older brother Tamerlan was earlier killed during a getaway attempt.

“It’s surreal,” said Barbara Alton, as she walked her dog along Newbury Street. “But I feel like things are starting to get back to  normal.”

In another sign of progress, city officials said they are beginning the process of re-opening to the public the six-block site around the bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 180. The announcement came on Sunday, a day when people could still watch investigators at the crime scene work in white jumpsuits.

Tsarnaev remained in hospital and unable to speak, with a gunshot wound to the throat. He was expected to be charged by federal authorities. The 19-year-old also is likely to face state charges in connection with the fatal shooting of MIT police officer Sean Collier in Cambridge, said Stephanie Guyotte, a spokesperson for the Middlesex District Attorney’s office.

A private funeral was scheduled on Monday for Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant worker killed in the blasts. A memorial service will be held that night at Boston University for 23-year-old Lu Lingzi, a graduate student from China.

City churches on Sunday paused to mourn the dead as the city’s police commissioner said the two suspects had such a large cache of weapons that they may have been planning other attacks.

After the two brothers engaged in a gun battle with police early on Friday, authorities found many unexploded homemade bombs at the scene, along with more than 250 rounds of ammunition.

Police Commissioner Ed Davis said the stockpile was “as dangerous as it gets in urban policing”.

“We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence that was found at that scene – the explosions, the explosive ordnance that was unexploded and the firepower that they had – that they were going to attack other individuals. That’s my belief at this point.”  Davis told CBS’s Face the Nation.

On Fox News Sunday, he said authorities cannot be positive there are not more explosives somewhere that have not been found. But the people of Boston are safe, he insisted.

Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev are ethnic Chechens from southern Russia. The motive for the bombings remained unclear.

Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the surviving brother’s throat wound raised questions about when he will be able to talk again, if ever.

The wound “doesn’t mean he can’t communicate, but right now I think he’s in a condition where we can’t get any information from him at all”, Coats told ABC’s This Week.

It was not clear whether Tsarnaev was shot by police or inflicted the wound himself.

In the final standoff with police, shots were fired from the boat, but investigators have not determined where the gunfire was aimed, Davis said.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the parents of Tamerlan Tsarnaev insisted on Sunday that he came to Dagestan and Chechnya last year to visit relatives and had nothing to do with the militants operating in the volatile part of Russia. His father said he slept much of the time.

A lawyer for Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s wife told the AP on Sunday night that federal authorities have asked to speak with her, and that he is discussing with them how to proceed.

Attorney Amato DeLuca said Katherine Russell Tsarnaev did not suspect her husband of anything, and that there was no reason for her to have suspected him. He said she had been working 70 to 80 hours, seven days a week, as a home health care aide. While she was at work, her husband cared for their toddler daughter, he said.

The younger Tsarnaev could be charged any day. The most serious charge available to federal prosecutors would be the use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, which carries a possible death sentence. Massachusetts does not have the death penalty.

Across the rattled streets of Boston, churches opened their doors to remember the dead and ease the grief of the living.

At the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, photographs of the three people killed in the attack and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer slain Thursday were displayed on the altar, each face illuminated by a glowing white pillar candle.

“I hope we can all heal and move forward,” said Kelly McKernan, who was crying as she left the service. “And obviously, the Mass today was a first step for us in that direction.”

A six-block segment of Boylston Street, where the bombs were detonated, remained closed on Sunday. But Mayor Thomas Menino said on Sunday that once the scene is released by the FBI, the city will follow a five-step process, including environmental testing and a safety assessment of buildings. The exact timetable was uncertain.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was tracing the suspects’ weapons to try to determine how they were obtained.

Neither of the brothers had permission to carry a gun. Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas said it was unclear whether either of them ever applied for a gun permit, and the applications are not considered public records.

But the younger brother would have been denied a permit based on his age alone. Only people 21 or older are allowed gun licences in Massachusetts. – Sapa-AP

The North West Provincial government is to pursue closer links with the regional governments of Madrid and Navarra in Spain for promoting tourism with particular focus on music, art, exchange and training of personnel from District and local municipalities in the North West Province in the development of Rural Tourism.

The resolution adopted by the Provincial Executive Council (Exco) follows a trip a trip undertaken by MEC for Economic Development, Environment, Conservation and Tourism, Motlalepula Rosho and a provincial delegation to FITUR International Trade Show in Madrid, Spain two months ago.

Premier Thandi Modise says that the province needs to emulate the Spanish approach to tourism research and development which the delegation found to be most effective and explore the relationship established by MEC Rosho for the Hotel Division in respect of exchange of expertise between the Indonesian Chefs and the Hotel Schools Division in Madrid.

“The potential for students and staff exchanges programme established by the South African Embassy in Madrid especially on Hospitality training as well as Tourist Guiding should be followed through,” emphasised Premier Modise.

The province anticipates that the Memorandum of Understanding between South Africa and the hunting communities (Spain Hunting Association) will be finalised by September this year.