Johannesburg – Police on Friday confirmed that a University of Johannesburg student was arrested after a 23-year-old woman was kidnapped from the Kingsway campus on Thursday, Beeld reported.

The woman’s VW Polo car was traced to the suspect’s house, Eyewitness News reported.
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Durban – Three men accused of killing an ANC branch leader appeared briefly in the Durban Magistrate’s Court on Friday.

The case against Bongukwanda Excellent Gasa, Sipho Innocent Sikhakhane, and Skhulu Phiwayinkosi Gasa was postponed to 13 August.

They had been expected to bring a formal bail application, but defence attorney Laurens de Klerk asked for a postponement because the State was not satisfied with their residential addresses.

“We were given addresses in the Nkandla area, but those addresses are not appropriate for the State. We still need to verify addresses the defence will give to us,” said prosecutor Blackie Swart.

De Klerk said he would put forward an address for a safe house which could be easily monitored and was close to a police station should the court grant the men bail.

They are accused of killing Sithembiso Ngidi, an executive member of the African National Congress ward 75, Jacobs area branch.

Ngidi was shot dead on 23 June after taking part in a door-to-door election campaign in Lamontville, south of Durban.

The three were arrested on 2 July on murder charges.

The courtroom was filled to capacity on Friday with members of the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC.

– SAPA

Potchefstroom – Tlokwe’s DA mayor Annette Combrink was granted access to the municipality’s office and was working on Thursday, after the ANC refused to vacate it earlier in the week.

“She was at the office by 9am,” Democratic Alliance North West leader Chris Hattingh said.

When Combrink arrived at the door, ousted African National Congress mayor Maphetle Maphetle gave her advice.

“Today in the morning, Maphetle gave her a lot of advice before she went into the office. She is in the office working,” said Hattingh.

On Wednesday, the ANC said it would vacate the office after initially refusing and saying it planned to appeal an earlier court ruling ordering it to do so. The party intended reclaiming its majority in the upcoming by-elections.

Maphetle has been unseated twice, the first time in November, then again in July. The ANC’s North West provincial disciplinary committee expelled 14 of its councillors following the second unseating.

Sapa

Mmabatho – Cosatu in North West on Thursday welcomed a Mmabatho High Court judgment in favour of farm workers and farm dwellers.

“(We) believe the judgment is a lesson for those intransigent councils who believe that human dignity and lives are nothing,” provincial Congress of SA Trade Unions secretary Solly Phetoe said.

The group was evicted from Boshoek, between Sun City and Rustenburg, by the Royal Bafokeng and the Rustenburg municipality, the two respondents in the matter.

The trade union federation called on the Royal Bafokeng to respect the judgment and carry out the order that the houses of all farm workers and farm dwellers be rebuilt within three days. The judgment also instructed the respondents to ensure that running water and electricity to the houses was reconnected, according to Phetoe.

He said they argued that the demolition of their houses was unnecessary, as many had been staying in the area for more than 20 years.

Sapa

Ventersdorp – Three men and two minors appeared in the Ventersdorp Magistrate’s Court on Friday on charges linked to the death of an initiate, said police.

The matter was postponed to August 30, Captain Pelonomi Makau said.

“They are expecting to be given a trial date when they appear again. They remain in custody, since they were denied bail the last time they applied,” said Makau.

Thapelo Poleng, 32, Johannes Yona, 21, Michael Montwedi, 18, and the two minors were arrested following the death of Lesego Goliath.

Goliath, 19, joined an initiation school on June 12. Between the time he joined the school and June 24, he was brutally assaulted and subsequently died.

His body was burnt and buried at a municipal dumping site. His remains were found on June 24.

Sapa

Pretoria – Traditional leaders apologised to the country on Friday for the recent spate of deaths among young men at initiation schools.

“We have been disturbed by the level of deaths during initiations. We want to apologise to the nation,” Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA general secretary Kgoshi Setlamorago Thobejane said.

He told reporters in Pretoria that initiations schools were responsible for 250 young men’s deaths throughout the country since 2004.

“We want to pass our condolences to the families who have lost children. We were supposed to have done things differently.”

There have been at least 30 deaths of initiates in the Eastern Cape since May, 30 in Mpumalanga, and seven in Limpopo.

Thobejane said the time had come for traditional leaders to go back to the drawing board and come up with ways to curb the death toll. One death was one too many.

“We have fallen and need everybody to help us in this journey,” Thobejane said.

Sapa

Johannesburg – Two people died when their car landed in front of a train in Krugersdorp, on the West Rand, on Friday morning, paramedics said.

The accident happened at 09:00 at the Tarlton railway crossing, said Netcare 911spokesperson Santi Steinmann.

The two occupants of the car died on the scene, she said.

Further details about the accident were not known.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – Dennis Thokozani Dlomo has been appointed National Intelligence Co-ordination Committee (Nicoc) intelligence co-ordinator, State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele announced on Friday.

“After a long, meaningful process of engagement, we are pleased to announce that we have successfully completed this phase of our work,” Cwele told journalists in Pretoria.

“We have successfully completed the restructuring process and passed the legislation that provides for a new dispensation of the State Security Agency (SSA).”

Dlomo is currently advisor to Cwele and also acting director general of the SSA. He is also a former deputy co-ordinator of Nicoc.

New appointments

Cwele also announced seven other new appointments:

– Ambassador to Egypt Gladys Sonto Kudjoe had been appointed SSA director general;

– Acting director in the foreign branch, Simon Ntombela, was appointed director of the domestic branch of the SSA; and

– Dr Batandwa Siswana was appointed director of the foreign branch of the SSA.

Siswana is currently chief operations officer in the presidency. He is also the deputy secretary of Cabinet.

Other appointments in the domestic branch of the SSA included Nozuko Bam and Thulani Dlomo as deputy directors general for domestic collection and counter-intelligence respectively.

In the foreign branch, Joyce Mashele was appointed deputy director general for collection, Africa, while Matshidiso Mhlambo was appointed deputy director general for the rest of the world.

Cwele said none of the new appointees had criminal records.

“All of them still have valid security clearance. All due processes and selection procedures were followed.”

The new appointments followed a transformation project of the country’s intelligence, announced in 2009, Cwele said.

– SAPA

Cape Town – The father of a 23-year-old Cape Town student has vowed to track down the driver of a vehicle which ran over his son and left him for dead.

Che Newman was celebrating his birthday with friends in Kalk Bay, Cape Town, on Sunday when a reckless driver ploughed into him, the Cape Argus reported on Friday.
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Harare – Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s party claimed on Friday he is on course for a landslide win in an election branded a sham by his rivals, but which the African Union said was fair and credible.

Partial results of Wednesday’s poll have given the 89-year-old a commanding lead, with his Zanu-PF party garnering 87 seats out of 120 declared.

“Our opponents don’t know what hit them,” party spokesperson Rugare Gumbo said. “It’s the prediction that the president might likely get 70 to 75%.”

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Zanu-PF also predicted it would win a two-thirds majority in parliament, enough to amend the new constitution that introduced term limits and curbed presidential powers.

Mugabe’s bitter rival Morgan Tsvangirai has rejected the vote as a “huge farce” and “null and void”.

“It’s a sham election that does not reflect the will of the people,” he said, pointing to a litany of alleged irregularities with the voters’ roll.

The independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network reported up to one million voters were prevented from voting in Tsvangirai strongholds.

But Mugabe won an endorsement from the African Union on Friday, with former Nigerian president and military leader Olusegun Obasanjo saying the vote was basically free and fair.

“There are incidences that could have been avoided, but all in all we do not believe that these incidents will amount to the results not reflecting the will of the people,” he said.

Much now rides on the verdict of observers from the 15-member southern African SADC bloc, which negotiated the creation of a power-sharing government in the wake of 2008’s bloody poll.

Deep misgivings

With 600 observers on the ground, SADC’s verdict will be closely watched by western nations blocked from monitoring the poll themselves.

The bloc said it will deliver its initial verdict later on Friday.

Foreign diplomats have expressed deep misgivings about a poll they have described privately as non-violent but fundamentally flawed.

Jeffrey Smith, from the Washington-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, said it would be wrong to disregard the final results but “we must also not be blind to potential irregularities both leading up to the vote and on the day”.

So far Tsvangirai has limited his comments to condemnation of the poll, but already there are calls for mass protests, and warnings that may prompt a bloodbath.

The top brass from his Movement for Democratic Change will meet on Saturday to decide their response.

Ahead of the meeting top MDC official Roy Bennett called for a campaign of “passive resistance”.

“I’m talking about people completely shutting the country down — don’t pay any bills, don’t attend work, just bring the country to a standstill.”

“There needs to be resistance against this theft and the people of Zimbabwe need to speak out strongly.”

The disputed outcome risks plunging Zimbabwe – which battled a decade-long downturn marked by galloping inflation and mass migration – back into deep crisis.

Extreme volatility

“If certain people feel their choice was not accepted, they may resort to violence,” said Sean O’Leary a spokesperson for a 3 000-strong group of poll monitors from the Catholic church.

Investors also expressed fears about the impact of a Mugabe victory, which could roll back the power-sharing government’s efforts to stabilising the economy after crippling hyperinflation and joblessness.

“It’s back to extreme volatility,” Iraj Abedian the CEO of Pan African Investments told AFP from Johannesburg. “We can expect fairly radical positions that will have populist support, but which will have huge implications.”

Abedian predicted banks and financial firms could become the targets of a new Mugabe government seeking to extend its programme of indigenisation, after agriculture and mining.

“The land grabs caused chaos in the agricultural sector and it took ten years for it to settle down.

“The financial sector would have a similar impact. It would cause chaos, but Zanu-PF and Mugabe seem to like that.”

Mugabe – Africa’s oldest leader – is a former guerrilla leader hailed as a hero of Africa’s liberation movement, guiding Zimbabwe to independence in 1980 from Britain and white minority rule.

But his military-backed rule has been marked by controversial land reforms, a series of violent crackdowns, economic crises and suspect elections that have brought international sanctions and made him a pariah in the West.

Bread basket

As the economy in southern Africa’s former bread basket recovers from crisis, Mugabe loyalists insist their hero is “tried and tested” and dismiss concerns about his age and rumoured health problems.

Former union boss Tsvangirai won the first round of voting in 2008, but was forced out of the race after 200 of his supporters were killed and thousands more injured in suspected state-backed intimidation and attacks.

This time around he announced plans to lure back foreign investors, create a million jobs in five years and improve public services in a bid to secure a long-awaited victory.

But some Western analysts said this could be Tsvangirai’s last bid at the top job if the MDC fails to prevent Mugabe sweeping to a seventh term.

For all Zimbabwe election stories please visit our Zimbabwe Special Report Page.

AFP