Daily Archives: March 25, 2014

SANDF’s mandate at DRC extended


Pretoria – President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday prolonged the mandate of over 1 300 SANDF members as part of a UN peacekeeping force in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The deployment “has been extended from 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015”, Pretoria said in a statement on the same day regional leaders met to discuss the conflict.

South African soldiers are part of a UN intervention brigade in the conflict-torn region, which has an unprecedented mandate to battle the armed movements long active in eastern Congo.

Zuma also increased the force by six to 1 345.

Meanwhile, Great Lakes leaders at a mini-summit in Angola condemned the actions of rebels in the DRC’s mineral-rich North Kivu province.

“These harmful incidents have to be controlled by the relevant authorities… to prevent them from becoming a threat to regional stability,” Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said in the capital Luanda.

He urged the neutralisation of “negative forces” from especially two rebel groupings, the ADF-Nalu, a Ugandan Islamist group, and the FDLR, a Rwandan Hutu militia that includes some the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.

Leaders from the Congo, the DRC, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda also attended the summit.

AFP

‘Downs close gap to the top


Rustenburg – Goals from Surprise Moriri, Anthony Laffor and Lebohang Mokoena powered Mamelodi Sundowns to a 3-1 win over Platinum Stars at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium on Tuesday evening.
 
The result sees the Brazilians close to within three points of PSL leaders Kaizer Chiefs (who have now played a game less), while Dikwena drop to eighth on the log after suffering just their second home defeat of the season.
 
Sundowns opened the scoring just before the midway point of the first half. Overlapping left-back Mzikayise Mashaba beat several challenges before playing a hard, low cross to the near post and Surprise Moriri provided a sharp finish from close range that went in via the underside of the crossbar.
 
The visitors doubled their lead four minutes into the second half, with Lebohang Mokoena providing a cutback from the left by-line and Anthony Laffor easily finished from close range to make it 2-0.
 
With just under 20 minutes to play, Laffor sprinted free on goal and tried to round Siyabonga Mpontshane, but the goalkeeper brilliantly stuck out his right hand and cleanly won the ball to keep his side within two goals.
 
However, the ‘keeper was beaten by Mokoena in the 78th minute. The Sundowns attacker charged down a clearance from a defender before firing a low, long-range drive into the back of the net to make it 3-0.
 
Stars gave themselves a glimmer of hope with a goal in the 81st minute. Sandilands, who had a while earlier injured his ankle, came for a cross from a corner kick but got nowhere near the ball, allowing Robert Ng’ambi a free header to make it 3-1.
 
Scorers:
Platinum Stars: (0) 1 (Ng’ambi 81’)
Mamelodi Sundowns: (1) 3 (Moriri 21’, Laffor 49’, Mokoena 78’)
 
Teams:

Platinum Stars: Mpontshane, Mere, Gumede, Semenya, Mpeta, Sarr (T. Mthembu 64’), Mhlongo, Malokase (Ngele 42’), Ng’ambi, Hadebe, (Makudubela 61’) S. Mthembu
 
Mamelodi Sundowns: Sandilands, Mphahlele, Schut, Nthethe, Mashaba, Modise, Kekana, Moriri (Nyandoro 63’), Mokoena (Malajila 81’), Wome (Zungu 63’), Laffor
Backpagemedia

W Cape polce hopefuls to be paraded


Cape Town – Those applying to the police in the Western Cape will this year be paraded before residents as part of the selection process, the Khayelitsha Commission of Inquiry heard on Tuesday.

This was the testimony of deputy Western Cape police commissioner Hendrik Burger, who is  responsible for human resource management.

He said stricter measures would be applied to select officers.

In addition to fingerprint testing and interviews to determine whether potential constables had criminal records, communities would also get a chance to have their say.

“We are now going to include public meetings where we are going to parade these possible recruits in front of communities,” Burger said.

Over 600 posts have been allocated to the province, which currently has the lowest police staff complement in the country.

Burger said the community involvement was to ensure members of the public could point out possible criminal activity or conflicts of interest on the part of applicants.

“It could be that community members see them [potential recruits] at shebeens or even running shebeens,” Burger testified.

Boot camp

Burger said another new requirement would be a boot camp to ensure the fitness levels of possible recruits were tested over a period of two weeks, instead of one day.

Burger said there were a number of reasons for the high vacancy rate.

While the number of officers retiring earlier and resigning was not as high as in previous years, there was a concerted effort to rid the force of ill-disciplined officers.

“We are getting rid of those people. It is impacting on our vacancy rate.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Brigadier Leon Rabie, an organisational design practitioner at police headquarters in Pretoria, testified that a recruitment drive was underway to increase the number of officers in the three most understaffed provinces in the country, including the Western Cape.

“Out of 1 070 posts, the decision was taken to allocate 60% of the posts to the Western Cape… because it’s one of the provinces that are the worst off,” Rabie said.

The other two understaffed provinces were the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga.

The reason the Western Cape lagged behind was because of historical practices, he said.

The SA Police Service was currently enlisting 663 constables to be trained and deployed in the province after a budget allocation was made during the current financial year.

Rabie testified in week five of the commission’s public hearings, which have been extended by nine days due to testimony running over the scheduled time.

The commission was established by Western Cape Premier Helen Zille after NGO the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) complained of police inefficiency in Khayelitsha.

The SJC also insisted that police inefficiency was responsible for an apparent increase in mob justice killings.

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa tried to halt the commission from being set up, but lost his legal bid to do so in the Constitutional Court last year.

SAPA

Oscar, Malaysian Airlines plane share media space


Johannesburg – Paralympian Oscar Pistorius’s murder trial and a missing Malaysian flight shared the media spotlight over the past 24 hours, figures from media monitoring group DDI revealed on Tuesday.
“The two stories are neck-and-neck on worldwide news sites,” Data Driven Insight (DDI) said.

The Pistorius trial – prominent in focus since it began on 3 March – claimed 50.94% of media space.

The Malaysian aeroplane had 49.06%.

The star athlete has been charged with the premeditated murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp and contravening the Firearms Control Act.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

On Monday, authorities in Malaysia announced that the missing Boeing 777 flight had gone down in the sea with no survivors.

The survey showed that the Pistorius trial generated the most press on the first day, followed by 10 March, the date the graphic pictures of Steenkamp were presented by Professor Gert Saayman.

“The third highest media yielding day was yesterday [Tuesday] largely due to the messages being read out from cellphone conversations on WhatsApp,” the survey indicates.

The survey found that countries such as the US, Germany, the UK, and Australia covered the Pistorius trial more than South African media.

The data was compiled from 6.2 million social media platforms including blogs, forums, social networks and commentary, 60 000 global online newspapers, 2 000 South African print publications, and 66 radio and television stations.

SAPA

Take parties to task, urges judge


Durban – South Africans needed to take the campaign against corruption to the political parties they support, retired Constitutional Court judge Zakeria Yacoob said on Tuesday.

Yacoob, speaking at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the struggle against corruption should not only be waged against the government, but within political parties.

He said the problem with the current system was that voters could not vote for candidates, but only for parties.

“People seriously suspected of corruption should be removed [from their parties],” said Yacoob.

He said apart from voters holding their political parties accountable, government needed to make serious efforts to reduce corruption.

“It is the worst form of treason,” he said.

He said political parties should not wait for a politician to be convicted, but should do their own enquiries when it came to corruption.

He said a reduction in corruption would make a massive difference in government’s ability to meet its socio-economic responsibilities such as housing and health.

Yacoob accused the government of lacking any sympathy when it came to socio-economic rights, which he described as including the provision of housing and proper health services.

Policies should mean something

“I would plead with government to start embracing social and economic rights.”

When taken to task over its failure to meet these rights, the government became very defensive.

“There isn’t enough sensitivity and caring. It is the level of sympathy which is absent,” Yacoob said.

The government had to have programmes that addressed the plight of the vulnerable.

“Our government always had wonderful-sounding policies.”

These policies though would only mean something if they were acted on in a programme that could be implemented, he said.

– SAPA

Oscar: Tough time


Pretoria – Oscar Pistorius, who is expected to testify in his murder trial at the end of the week, said on Tuesday he’s going through “a tough time” in a rare comment after the prosecution closed its case against the double-amputee runner.

It is “likely” Pistorius will take the stand to open the defence’s case, said defence lawyer Brian Webber, adding there’s no specific requirement for him to testify first but it is normal practice.

“I don’t think we have a choice, it’s a question of when,” Webber said of Pistorius’s testimony, which legal experts describe as critical because the judge will have a chance to assess first-hand whether he is a credible witness.

Judge Thokozile Masipa will deliver a ruling in the case, with the help of two assessors.

After the prosecution closed its case, defence lawyer Barry Roux asked for time to consult some of the 107 state witnesses who had not testified in the case against Pistorius, who is accused of premeditated murder for the death of Reeva Steenkamp, the girlfriend he shot through the closed door of a toilet cubicle last year.

Masipa adjourned the trial until Friday so that Roux could prepare his arguments that Pistorius, 27, killed the 29-year-old model by accident, thinking she was an intruder in his home.

Pistorius has sometimes reacted emotionally during the prosecution’s case, shedding tears this week during testimony of text messages that he and Steenkamp exchanged in the weeks before he killed her in the early hours of 14 February 2013.

Vomiting in court

In earlier testimony, he retched and vomited at a pathologist’s descriptions of Steenkamp’s gunshot wounds. At other times, he has appeared calm, taking notes during testimony and conferring with his lawyers during breaks.

The Olympian once basked in global publicity stemming from his achievements on the track and but became an almost silent, somewhat cryptic figure after he killed Steenkamp, his account only outlined in legal statements that were carefully tailored by his high-powered legal team. On Tuesday, he made rare, brief comments to reporters after the court adjourned.

“It’s a tough time,” Pistorius said. “We’ve got a lot ahead of us.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Roux sought to show that Pistorius had a loving relationship with the girlfriend he killed, referring to telephone messages in which they exchanged warm compliments and said they missed each other.

The testimony contrasted with several messages read in court a day earlier in which Pistorius and Steenkamp argued in the weeks before he shot her, part of the prosecution’s effort to bolster its case that the athlete killed his girlfriend after an argument. In those messages, Steenkamp told the runner that she was sometimes scared by his behaviour, which included jealous outbursts in front of other people.

Roux noted that the tense messages amounted to a tiny fraction of the roughly 1 700 messages that police Captain Francois Moller, a cellular telephone expert, extracted from the mobile devices of the couple.

Roux noted a 19 January exchange in which Reeva sent Pistorius a photo of herself in a hoodie and making a kissing face, followed by the message: “You like it?”

“I love it,” Pistorius said, according to the message.

“So warm,” Steenkamp responded.

CCTV footage

Roux was also granted permission to show CCTV video, earlier broadcast by Sky News, which showed Pistorius and Steenkamp kissing in a convenience store.

Chief prosecutor Gerrie Nel questioned the relevance of showing the convenience store video, saying he could ask for a courtroom viewing of another video, also broadcast by Sky News, that shows Pistorius at a gun range, firing a shotgun and using a pistol to shoot a watermelon, which bursts on impact.

Nel also said that many messages of affection between the couple were brief, in contrast to the texted arguments, which were far longer and dwelled on their relationship in greater depth.

Earlier, Moller said Steenkamp connected to the internet on her cellular telephone hours before Pistorius killed her.

She made the connection just before 21:00 on 13 February 2013, and the connection lasted for more than 11 hours, possibly because social media programs were still open.

Pistorius shot her shortly after 03:00 in the early hours of Valentine’s Day, and Moller’s extraction of data also shed light on what appeared to be a frantic series of phone calls made from one of Pistorius’s cellphones after the killing.

They include a call to the administrator of the housing estate where Pistorius lived at 03:19 on 14 February, a call a minute later to an ambulance service and a call a minute after that to the housing estate security.

AP

North West man sanctioned to 20 years imprisonment after rape


By Obakeng Maje
Mmabatho High Court has sentenced Thabiso Mogale,22 from Blydeville in Lichtenburg to twenty years imprisonment on Tuesday for rape, attempted rape and assault GBH. 

The accused was sentenced after admitting and pleading guilty to the charges.

“Crimes were committed at Blydeville in 2010 and 2011 respectively and they are 6 counts of rape, 1 attempted murder and 1assault GBH” captain Pelonomi Makau said.-TDN
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Five nabbed for public violence in Majakaneng


By Obakeng Maje
Majakaneng-Brits police arrested 5 suspects on Tuesday at around 12:00 at Majakaneng village near Mooinooi for Arson, Malicious damage to property, Intimidation, Assault Common and Public Violence, colonel Sabata Mokgwabone said.

The arrest follows intensive investigation on cases that were registered during Majakaneng community protests on 27 and 28 February 2014.

“Out of five suspects, 1 is facing a charge of Public Violence, another one is charged with Arson while the other 3 is facing charges of Arson, Malicious damage to property, Intimidation, Assault Common” colonel Sabata Mokwabone said.    

The arrested suspects ages range between 23 and 28.

“They will all appear in Brits Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.

Investigations regarding the matter continue.-TDN
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Mining, poverty, unemployment to be focus point of NWest round-table discussion


Rustenburg-The North West Provincial Planning Commission in the Office of the Premier will be hosting a one-day Research and Policy Round Table with stakeholders on key priority areas impacting on implementation of the National Development Plan (NDP) in the Province.

The aim of the round table, which is to be held in Rustenburg on Monday next week, is to gather inputs to inform strategies for the implementation of the NDP priority areas in the North West.

Premier Thandi Modise, who is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the event, said she is confident that the range of high profile speakers invited will be able to offer perceptive insights that will help the province to address the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality.

“We are a province that is supposed to have low levels of unemployment given the mineral resources we are endowed with. Beneficiation, sustainable community development, enterprise and skills development, local procurement, social investment initiatives and greater involvement of communities in the determination of Social Labour Plans are but some of the opportunities that we need to exploit fully because though there are currently challenges in the mining sector, we need to reposition ourselves for an upswing that will put us on a higher development trajectory,” Modise said ahead of the round table discussion.  

Speakers on the programme will among others include Joel Netshitenzhe from the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), who will discuss the future of the platinum industry and the challenges of growth and development, Prof Ojakoruti of the North West University who will make a presentation on the impact of mining on host communities, Prof Julian May from the University of the Western Cape who will preset the statistical overview of poverty, among others. 

The event is scheduled to be held as follows:
Venue : Kedar Country Lodge, Rustenburg
Date : Monday 31 March 2014
Time : 8H00
-TDN
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Goats stolen, killed and put in a hearse near Taung


By Obakeng Maje
Vryburg-The fight against stock theft gained success when 3 male suspects aged 41, 31 and 30 were arrested at approximately 01:00 on Tuesday in Vryburg, says colonel Sabata Mokgwabone.  

The members were on routine crime prevention patrol when they noticed a suspicious vehicle in Vryburg.  

“The police allegedly followed it, but the driver ultimately increased the speed when he realised that police were following them” Mokgwabone said.

The police eventually stopped the vehicle, which was a hearse from a funeral parlour in Huhudi near Vryburg.

“Upon searching the hearse, the police found four slaughtered goat carcasses. The suspects were interviewed and that led police to Taung-Vryburg National road where the suspects dumped the skins and heads of one sheep and four goats on the grass along the road” he said. 

It was then established that the goats and a sheep were stolen and slaughtered in Tshoseng village near Pudimoe.

The meat and skins were confiscated by the police.

All three suspects will appear in Vryburg Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.-TDN
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