Bloemfontein – The Free State government will sponsor 500 student bursaries for 2014 in identified fields, education spokesperson Howard Ndaba said on Tuesday.

The aim was to address the shortage of skills in the Free State.

“Since 2009, the provincial government has awarded about 7 000 bursaries to financially needy, but hard-working youth in the Free State,” he said.

The fields in which the 2014 bursaries would be offered, included medicine, mathematics, construction management, and civil engineering.

Ndaba said it was a student’s own responsibility to seek admission to an accredited tertiary institution.

Applications for the bursaries had to include several documents.

These were a certified copy of a birth certificate or a South African identity document, a certified copy of a salary advice not older than three months, and a Grade 12 June examination result report, or Grade 12 certificate.

Also required were the latest results of students already studying at a higher learning institution.

In the case of an orphan or a disabled person, proof had to be provided.

Ndaba said application forms were available at the Absa Building, at 142 Charlotte Maxeke Street (Maitland Street) in Bloemfontein, and at municipal offices.

The closing date for applications was 31 October at 16:00.

No late applications would be considered.

– SAPA

Graskop – The Mpumalanga education department is investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of a pupil who fell 200m off a cliff at the Three Rondawels, near Graskop.

Thulani Sithole, 18, from Nyamande High School in Thulamahashe, fell during a school trip on Saturday.

His body was recovered on Sunday.

Department spokesperson Jasper Zwane said it was investigating reports that alcohol might have been involved, a Sapa correspondent reported.

“We strongly condemn the use of alcohol and drugs in school premises or during school outings. We are planning to work with the justice enforcement departments to crack-down on learners or teachers who disregard rules,” Zwane said on Tuesday.

“We will wait for a report from the team of investigators. It will probably direct us on whether to take action or disciplinary measures.”

Zwane said that according to regulations governing South African schools, “no learner, teacher, parent or any other person should possess or use alcohol during any school activity”.

He said those who noticed any illegal activities involving pupils or teachers, should immediately report them to the department or to the police.

“We will also intensify the safe and caring schools campaign to help learners understand the dangers of using drugs and alcohol at an early age,” Zwane said.

Police spokesperson Leonard Hlathi said the police could not speculate about whether alcohol was involved in the incident.

An inquest docket had been opened.

“We suspect that he hit the rocks when he fell, because we found that he had broken bones and a cracked skull. That’s what we can confirm for now. We are also still waiting for post mortem results,” Hlathi said.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – The ANCYL is not about individuals, its national task team convenor Mzwandile Masina said on Tuesday.

“As we move forward to rebuild the structures of the organisation, we must build such structures and not concentrate on individuals,” Masina said at the ANC Youth League’s 69th anniversary celebration at the Old Academy Hall, which now houses the offices of the Johannesburg metro police.

Previous leaders, such as former president Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, met at the venue in 1944 to form the ANCYL, said Masina.

He said it would continue to pursue the course of economic freedom as adopted at its 2011 conference in Johannesburg.

“We must learn from the 1944 generation that came to this venue to give birth to this organisation.

“They delivered freedom to us 50 years later, and they had a clear programme of action. It is important to draw lessons from them.”

In order to achieve economic freedom, the issue of free quality education should be thoroughly addressed, he said.

The ANCYL was putting measures in place to deal with factionalism and “gate-keeping”.

“As we stand here, we are unable to tell you how many of you are members of the ANCYL. The task team is working tirelessly on such issues.”

ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to speak at the event.

– SAPA

Librarians and administrative staff at traffic and licensing centres in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality have gone on strike, the city said on Tuesday.

“We are very concerned that the strike… is inconveniencing the public and we are doing everything in our power to work towards a speedy resolution,” it said in a statement.

The municipality said several attempts had been made to hold a council meeting to discuss the matter, but this had not happen because some political parties had not prioritised it.

“Our mayoral committee will discuss this matter at length tomorrow [Wednesday] to determine a way forward,” it said.

“In the meantime, the public can [be]… assured that no library fines will be accrued during the strike period and contingency plans are in place for those who require services from our traffic department.”

It did not say what employees were demanding, or which unions were involved.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – The Right2Know Campaign and the SA History Archive (Saha) have served the police minister and the defence minister with court papers to gain access to a list of national key points.

“This follows nearly a year of campaigning to make the list of national key points public,” R2K and Saha said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

The court papers were filed on 5 September.

R2K national spokesperson Murray Hunter said its attorneys had indicated that the ministers had 15 days from receiving the papers to indicate whether they would challenge the matter in court.

He said R2K had been trying for almost a year to make the list of national key points public.

In October, Saha made a request, in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia), for the police to release the list, but they refused.

An internal appeal against the decision was turned down, R2K and Saha said in the statement.

“We are, therefore, left with no other choice but to go to court in order to obtain the list,” they said.

The organisations said the National Key Points Act was a relic of the apartheid era, which promoted arbitrary and anti-democratic secrecy.

“It empowers the minister of police to declare any place to be a ‘national key point’, giving it special security and excessive secrecy for ‘national security’ reasons.”

They claimed that the number of declared national key points had increased from 118 to 197 in the past five years.

Protest

On Monday, R2K protesters were told they could not protest outside Chief Albert Luthuli House in Johannesburg as it had been declared a national key point for the day because President Jacob Zuma was there.

Police ministry spokesperson Zweli Mnisi said its office had no record of the court papers. He said the National Key Points Act was set down for debate in Parliament next week.

“It was supposed to take place this week. However, due to the bereavement in the minister’s family [his mother passed on and was buried this past weekend] the debate was then rescheduled,” he said.

In 2007, a draft national key points bill was developed and when it progressed to the National Economic Development and Labour Council process, certain issues prevented the processing of the bill, said Mnisi.

He said that during his budget vote in May, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa announced that he had requested his legal team to relook at the bill to begin the process of “refining it and introducing it to Parliament”.

“The main objective is to re-align the National Key Points Act with the Constitution and other pieces of legislation,” said Mnisi.

“In terms of Section 6 (1) of the National Key Points Act, he [Mthethwa] had appointed an advisory committee on national key points to assist him in evaluating, auditing and assessing the desirability of all national key points, to determine how these should be aligned to constitutional prescripts.”

The team had finalised its report and the bill would be introduced in Parliament before the end of this financial year.

– SAPA

Durban – An 18-year old girl told the Durban Regional Court on Thursday, that she was kept locked up in a room until she became addicted to crack cocaine.

The girl, who cannot be named because she was a minor at the time, said she then prostituted herself to feed her new habit.

The girl, who turned 18 on Friday, was giving evidence in the case of a doctor, his wife and three other people facing charges of human trafficking, racketeering and keeping a brothel.

Dr Genchen Rugnath, his wife Ravina, Sandile Patrick Zweni, Nonduzo Dlamini, and Bhabha Dubazini, have pleaded not guilty to 156 charges, including assault, rape, sexual exploitation of a child, and racketeering.

Rugnath owns the Inn Town Lodge, where some of the alleged offences took place.

The girl told the court that when she and a friend ran out of money to get home from Durban’s Workshop Shopping Centre in 2010, a woman identified as Mbali, approached them and promised to help them get money.

The two girls were taken to the Victoria Lodge, where they were kept for four days.

She told the court she did not smoke any of the crack cocaine offered to her by Zweni the first day, but realised she would get out of the lodge only once she had taken the drugs.

“According to my knowledge, he instructed his runners that we should not go out until we got addicted to these drugs. It does not take long to get addicted,” she said.

The price of sex

She testified that her standard price for sex was R50, but that her first client was charged R100.

When asked by State prosecutor Yuri Gangai why this was, she replied: “Because I was still new. I was supposed to sit with him, smoke [drugs] with him and to sleep with him.”

She was with the man for four days in the hotel room.

Her payment was more drugs, which she received from Zweni.

She identified Dlamini and Dubazini as being “runners” for Zweni.

After being held at Victoria Lodge, she worked at various locations during the next year, including Inn Town Lodge.

She said she had not used drugs before being accosted by Mbali and being held at the Victoria Lodge.

“Doing it was never easy. Taking drugs and then having someone holding you is not nice at all,” she said.

The girl, who continuously fidgeted while in the witness stand, said people in the neighbourhood would ask her why she was a prostitute.

“Some people would ask us why we are doing this. That would affect us.

“You did not know how to reply. You would want to reach out to this person, but you could not give up the drugs.”

– SAPA

A 53-year-old man was jailed for eight years by the Mahikeng Regional Court on Monday for raping a woman, North West police said.

The man raped a 50-year-old woman in Itsoseng Township, near Lichtenburg, in 2011, said Captain Pelonomi Makau.

The man learned that the woman was a dressmaker and asked her to accompany him to his house to stitch his trousers. When they got there, he raped her. – Sapa

Residents in a squatter camp at Tlokwe in North West forced a high-profile ANC delegation led by ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa to flee on Monday.

Ramaphosa was accompanied by ANC North West provincial chairman Supra Mahumapelo when they were confronted by angry residents who accused the ANC of visiting them only to get their votes.
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The Mail&Guardian must retract its story that ANC chairwoman Baleka Mbete was bribed by Gold Fields and apologise to her and the ANC, the party said on Tuesday.

“In their eagerness to discredit the national chairperson and the ANC, the paper published a story that is flimsy, unsubstantiated and is just an exercise in slander,” it said in a statement.

“The Mail&Guardian deliberately uses this headline (‘Gold Fields bribed ANC Chair’) with an intention to be sensational, defamatory and slanderous.”

The ANC statement was described as “completely over the top” by one of the authors of the story, and the managing partner of the M&G centre for investigative journalism, Stefaans Brummer.

“We stand by our story which was clearly in the public interest,” he said.

The newspaper reported on Friday that Gold Fields buried a New York law firm’s finding that a R25m share allocation to Mbete constituted bribery.

The law firm, which was commissioned by Gold Fields, found it had increased Mbete’s cut in a contentious 2010 empowerment deal in response to an alleged threat by her representative.

The ANC said on Monday that it and Mbete reserved the right to “seek legal counsel and recourse to address this libellous and defamatory act”.

It said claims that Mbete was bribed were not proved or substantiated in the story.

“Nowhere in this story is it reported how, when, why and who bribed the ANC national chairperson,” the ANC said.

“Of their own admission, the paper clearly states that it does not know how the national chairperson would have done this (sunk the deal).”

Brummer said the ANC and Mbete were completely within their rights to seek legal advice, and should they bring action, the story would be “vigorously” defended.

“The story contains substantive details of the alleged threat by Ms Mbete’s representative that the deal would be scuttled unless Ms Mbete’s stake was substantially increased,” he said.

“(It also contains details on how) Gold Fields in fact responded to the alleged threat by increasing her stake with an amount of about R25 million.

“The ANC’s allegation is without merit”.

According to the newspaper, the deal was reportedly hatched in 2010, in response to a mineral resources department requirement that the company secure an empowerment partner for its South Deep mine. The company was then applying for a new-order licence for the mine.

It reported that Mbete’s representative Brian Mosehla had “threatened to scuttle” the deal unless Mbete was given a bigger stake. – Sapa