Monthly Archives: April 2014

MEC: Lebotloane clinic to operate 24 hours


As part of the re-engineering strategy of primary care in the province, MEC Dr Magome Masike will on Tuesday, 22 April 2014 declare Lebotloane Clinic which falls under Moretele Sub-District a 24 hour station of quality health care services.  

Moretele Health sub-district, is one of the five sub district within the Bojanala and the most rural sub- district comprising of 22 health facilities out of which 6 facilities render 24 hour services.

 

Lebotloane clinic is one of the clinics currently rendering seven days 12 hour health services within Kutlwanong cluster, which exclude maternity  with a population of 12 267 supporting areas of Mmukubyane, Little Lebotloane and Tlholwe.

 

The department’s decision of extending working hours at Lebotloane Clinic will afford poor communities of  Mmukubyane, Little Lebotloane and Tlholwe with 24 hour access to health care services, accommodate those who couldn’t attend the clinic between 7am to 4pm because of their jobs and  assist in eliminating the long queues that are often found in some of the health facilities.

“It is our wish as a department to convert all remaining seven days 12 hour clinics in our province to render 24 hour of health care service. But with financial constraints we are facing, that will surely not happen overnight. However, I can assure the North West residents that we will not rest until that goal has been realised,” said MEC Masike

 

The department has appointed at least four additional professional nurses at the said Clinic through absorption of community service nurses and two Nursing Assistants

 

The clinic will provide comprehensive primary health care in the form of the following services: a Ante Natal care, Post Natal Care, child health, reproductive health, ART Services TB, HIV & AIDS testing and councelling, Mental Health. Dental health services, health promotion and occupational health, as well as communicable and non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, diabetes.

 

MEC Masike will also take some time to listen to suggestions and concerns from members of the community at the meeting scheduled to take place at Lebotloane Clinic at 15h00.-TDN
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Communities should ignore calls for no vote-Premier Modise  


North West Premier Thandi Modise has called on communities not to heed calls for them not to exercise their hard won right to vote. 

Premier Modise made the appeal at the Methodist Church Easter Service held in Kanana outside Orkney on Sunday where she handed over 13 wheelchairs and food parcels to people with disabilities. 
“For as much as God gave Adam and Eve the ability to make their choices, we must exercise our right to choose by voting,” Premier Modise who was accompanied by MEC for Economic Development, Environment, Conservation and Tourism, Motlalepula Rosho, Provincial Chairperson of Disabled People South Africa and Member of the Provincial Legislature, Pastor Aucharle Mothupi and Provincial Head of Department for Social Development, Advocate Tshidi Mogale said.
Modise said that Jesus’ life was about bringing peace and development; hence leaders must emulate this by having integrity and being trustworthy.
“We must exercise tolerance, respect one another, and remember that we are all made in the image of GOD, regardless of our culture, ethnicity, race, or even gender. We are a caring and compassionate government, we love you in times of pain, in times of disability, in times of poverty, in times of prosperity; we love you all the time! ,” she emphasised to the church that was filled to its full capacity to the extent that other congregants had to listen from outside.  
Monnapule Mothubu, one of the wheelchair recipients said “I’m extremely happy to be receiving this wheelchair, I use to sit on my bed from sunrise to sunset, with very little movement; I’m glad that now I will be able to move around with ease.”
In expressing appreciation on behalf of his congregation, Rev Claupus Molokoane said that the Methodist Church continues to assist the less fortunate and is grateful for the support that it is receiving from government and will be encouraging all its members to cast their votes on elections day.
In her second address delivered at the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) Provincial Easter Conference also held in Kanana, Premier Modise urged the church to pray against wrong things experienced across the world, in the country and province and for peaceful and orderly elections.
“I speak with my God everyday as I was raised with the saying that, do not fight your own battles, let God fight for you!” The premier told the worshipers.
 

In his vote of thanks, the local Pastor Abaiel Khubeka echoed Pastor Aucharle Mothopi’s introductory message read from 1 Timothy Chapter 2 verse 2 that there cannot be government without God

“This is not the Premier’s first visit to our area, which shows that she loves us and doesn’t come only during Easter / election time! She has managed to leave her high glory office and come down to the people; this is the service delivery we want!,” Pastor Khubeka said.

“We are deeply touched and honoured by the Premier’s gesture of good deeds. We can see that her government cares” said 18 year old Tisetso Mabalane.
“I was inspired by the Premier’s message and feel positively confident about the future,” said Dipuo Moremi a community member of Kanana.
Solomon Damene from Jouberton echoed Moremi’s sentiments saying, “ I have always asked myself about  how politicians and government leaders perceive the Lord almighty; however today I have been answered, these are respectful and God fearing leaders whom I am proud to follow!”-TDN
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Numsa plans special congress


Johannesburg – The National Union of Metalworkers (Numsa) plans to force the holding of a special congress of Cosatu unions in order to resolve the bitter feud that has continues to rage within the labour federation. 
For more http://www.news24.com

Wrongfully imprisoned ‘Hurricane’ Carter dies


Washington – Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the boxer whose racially-tinged wrongful murder conviction made him a symbol of injustice, died on Sunday at the age of 76.

Carter, who was convicted twice and imprisoned for 19 years before he was exonerated in 1985, died on Sunday at his home in Toronto, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) confirmed.

From 1993 to 2005, Carter served as the executive director of the Canadian organisation, which said it was “deeply saddened” by the death of “a truly courageous man who fought tirelessly to free others who had suffered the same fate”.

US and Canadian media reported that Carter had been battling prostate cancer.

Carter was a middleweight contender before he was convicted in the 1966 murders of three people who were shot and killed at a tavern in Paterson, New Jersey.

A fearsome fighter, Carter scored his biggest win in 1963, when he stopped past and future world champion Emile Griffith in the very first round of a non-title clash.

He lost a 15-round unanimous decision to Joey Giardello in a middleweight world title fight in 1964 – his only world championship bout.

“He could have gone a long way,” Griffith said. “I should know. He knocked me down and stopped me.”

An ‘appeal to racism’

However, Carter’s ring career was abruptly curtailed by his triple murder conviction in 1967.

He denied the crime, and his story caught the attention of boxing great Muhammad Ali and inspired Bob Dylan’s 1975 song Hurricane.

Decades later, 1999 flick The Hurricane, earned Denzel Washington an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Carter, although some factual inaccuracies in the film provoked criticism.

Carter was convicted along with his friend John Artis, who was also black, by an all-white jury in the death of two white men and a white woman.

The convictions were gained in part with the testimony of two convicted felons who placed Carter and Artis at the scene, but later recanted.

Carter was given a second trial in 1976 and convicted yet again.

In 1985, however, Carter was exonerated by US district court judge, H Lee Sarokin, who said the conviction had been “based on an appeal to racism rather than reason”.

After finally being released, Carter, a native of New Jersey, moved to Toronto.

AFP

Grandson kills gran, 83, with axe


Mshiyani – A man is expected to appear in the Giyani Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday for allegedly killing his 83-year-old grandmother with an axe, Limpopo police said.

“The 29-year-old grandson accused his grandmother, Miluva Chauke, of bewitching his mother,” said spokesperson Colonel Ronel Otto.

“He took an axe and chopped her on the neck on Saturday.”

The man’s 52-year-old mother died last week after a short illness.

Her funeral took place at Mshiyani village on Saturday, Otto said.

“After the funeral, the man accused the grandmother of being responsible for his mother’s death by bewitching her, he then attacked her,” she said.

The woman collapsed and died on the scene.

The man fled from the house but was arrested shortly after the incident.

SAPA

103 die across SA in Easter weekend


Johannesburg – At least 103 people have been killed in road accidents throughout the country over the long Easter weekend, the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) said on Monday.

“Up to the end of Saturday night, there were 103 fatalities and 80 crashes,” said RTMC CEO Gilberto Martins.

“We don’t have the full count. The final report will only be submitted tomorrow [Tuesday] and after 14:00, it will be available.”

The department of community safety in Gauteng said traffic continued to peak on Monday and the freeways were congested.

The SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) said road accidents in South Africa would continue until motorists behaviour was addressed.

“Until a number of road safety issues have been addressed we can expect the carnage on South African roads specifically around holiday seasons to continue,” Sanral’s road safety manager Elna Fourie said in a statement on Monday.

Fourie said Sanral’s planned road safety event at the University of Pretoria on Tuesday would see a number of South Africans pledging responsible behaviour.

These included not to text, drink, and speed while driving.

SAPA

Grim work for families as more bodies found in ferry


Jindo – There are no names listed as relatives huddle around signboards to identify bodies from a sunken ferry. Just the slimmest of clues about mostly young lives now lost. Many favoured hoodies and track pants. One girl painted her fingernails red and toenails black. Another had braces on her teeth.

As divers increasingly making their way into the ship, including a new entryway through the dining hall on Monday, there’s been a big jump in the discovery of corpses. And so more grim work for relatives gathered on Jindo, an island near the ferry. Until recently, they have been waiting and hoping that round-the-clock rescue operations would find survivors.

Meanwhile, a newly released transcript shows the ship was crippled by confusion and indecision well after it began listing Wednesday. The transcript suggests that the chaos may have added to a death toll that could eventually exceed 300.

Many people followed the captain’s initial order to stay below deck, where it is feared they remain trapped. Sixty-four bodies have been recovered, and about 240 people are still missing. The ferry sank with 476 people on board, many of them students from a single high school.

According to the transcript released by South Korea’s coast guard, about 30 minutes after the Sewol began tilting a crew member asked a marine traffic controller whether passengers would be rescued if they abandoned ship off South Korea’s southern coast. The crew member posed the question three times in succession.

That followed several statements from the ship that people aboard could not move and another in which someone said that it was “impossible to broadcast” instructions.

An unidentified official at Jindo Vessel Traffic Services Center told the crew that they should “go out and let the passengers wear life jackets and put on more clothing.”

“If this ferry evacuates passengers, will you be able to rescue them?” the unidentified crew member asked.

“At least make them wear life rings and make them escape!” the traffic-center official responded.

“If this ferry evacuates passengers, will they be rescued right away?” the crew member asked again.

“Don’t let them go bare — at least make them wear life rings and make them escape,” the traffic official repeated. “The rescue of human lives from the Sewol ferry … the captain should make his own decision and evacuate them. We don’t know the situation very well. The captain should make the final decision and decide whether you’re going to evacuate passengers or not.”

“I’m not talking about that,” the crew member said. “I asked — if they evacuate now, can they be rescued right away?”

The traffic official then said patrol boats would arrive in 10 minutes, though another civilian ship was already nearby and had told controllers that it would rescue anyone who went overboard.

The cause of the disaster is not yet known, but prosecutors have said the ship made a sharp turn before it began to list. Several crew members, including the captain, have been arrested on suspicion of negligence and abandoning passengers.

More than 170 people survived the sinking of the Sewol, which had been on its way from the South Korean port city of Incheon to the southern tourist island of Jeju. The captain took more than half an hour to issue an evacuation order, which several passengers have said they never heard.

The confirmed death toll climbed over the weekend after divers finally found a way inside the sunken vessel and quickly discovered more than a dozen bodies. They had been hampered for days by strong currents, bad weather and low visibility.

Dozens of relatives have started camping out at the port in Jindo to be closer to where the search was taking place, sleeping in tents in the open. Volunteers provided food and drinks and ran cellphone charging stations. A Buddhist monk in white robes stood facing the water and chanted in a calm monotone as several relatives stood behind him, their hands pressed together and heads bowed in prayer.

Anguished families, fearful they might be left without even their loved ones’ bodies, vented rage Sunday over the government’s handling of the crisis.

About 100 relatives attempted a long protest march to the presidential Blue House in Seoul, about 400km to the north, saying they wanted to voice their complaints to President Park Geun-hye. They walked for about six hours before police officers in neon jackets blocked a main road.

“The government is the killer,” they shouted as they pushed against a police barricade.

“We want an answer from the person in charge about why orders are not going through and nothing is being done,” said Lee Woon-geun, father of 17-year-old missing passenger Lee Jung-in. “They are clearly lying and kicking the responsibility to others.”

He said relatives are desperate to retrieve bodies before they decompose beyond recognition.

“After four or five days, the body starts to decay. When it’s decayed, if you try to hold a hand, it might fall off,” he said. “I miss my son. I’m really afraid I might not get to find his body.”

The Sewol’s captain, Lee Joon-seok, 68, was arrested Saturday, along with one of the ship’s three helmsmen and the 25-year-old third mate. The third mate was steering at the time of the accident, in a challenging area where she had not steered before, and the captain said he was not on the bridge at the time.

Senior prosecutor Yang Jung-jin said the third mate has refused to tell investigators why she made the sharp turn. Prosecutors have not named the third mate, but a fellow crew member identified her as Park Han-kyul.

As he was taken from court in Mokpo on Saturday, the captain explained his decision to wait before ordering an evacuation.

“At the time, the current was very strong, the temperature of the ocean water was cold,” Lee told reporters, describing his fear that passengers, even if they were wearing life jackets, could drift away “and face many other difficulties.”

He said rescue boats had not yet arrived, and there were no civilian vessels nearby.

Kim reported from Mokpo, South Korea; Foster Klug, Youkyung Lee, Jung-yoon Choi and Leon Drouin-Keith in Seoul; and Minjeong Hong in Jindo contributed to this report.

AP

Dagga activists to host 4.20 celebration


Johannesburg – A party to raise funds for a legal challenge against dagga prohibition laws will be held in Johannesburg on Sunday, cannabis non-profit organisation Green Fields For All said on Saturday.
“This is the second year of our 4.20 party, a date ‘sacred’ to the worldwide cannabis culture,” spokesperson Julian Stobbs said.

According to Wikipedia, 20 April 20 or “4.20” has become a day of marijuana celebration, particularly in North America.

“We tap into a complete cross-section of South Africa, just as the plant does. It is truly a rainbow crowd of old young, black white, straight, gay, smoker and non-smoker alike.”

Stobbs said South Africa had a “huge, vibrant cannabis culture” with the plant being used for various purposes, including recreational and medical reasons.

“Easily half this country use dagga. Cannabis is cannabis, whatever you use it for,” he said. The fundraising party would be held in Johannesburg’s trendy Maboneng Precinct from 11:00 to 22:00 on Sunday.

Around 3 000 people attended the event last year, and Stobbs this year’s event was also expecting to be well attended, although a R50 entry fee had been introduced.

The 4.20 event would feature a restaurant and cash bar, DJs and graffiti artist tag teams creating a “legalise it” mural.

There would also be a small market selling “all things cannabis”, but not the drug itself.

Fundraiser

The event aimed to raise money for Stobbs’ and Myrtle Clarke’s, known as “the Dagga Couple”, legal challenge to South Africa’s dagga prohibition laws.

“The enforcement of dagga prohibition clogs our courts, creates unwarranted criminal records and costs SA taxpayers millions every year.

“The roots of prohibition lie in racism and it leads to organised crime, a fact supported by extensive international research,” Stobbs said.

The couple were arrested in August 2010 and faced a charge of drug dealing because they were in possession of more than 115g of dagga.

Their case was subsequently struck from the court roll, pending the outcome of their challenge to the legality of the dagga-prohibition legislation in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.

“We have served summons on seven government departments to answer to our charge of unlawful legislation.”

The couple were seeking to call in eminent international experts on the matter at the next scheduled court appearance in March 2015.

“We will demonstrate to the court that it is possible to re-legalise dagga without causing any disruption to society whatsoever.”

“This is the next great civil movement,” he said.

SAPA

DA ad scores nearly half a millions hits on YouTube


Johannesburg – The DA’s “Ayisafani” (It’s not the same) election TV advert – originally pulled off the air by the SABC – had garnered nearly half a million views on YouTube by Saturday.
Over 491 000 people have viewed the advertisement on the social media site since it was posted on 8 April. It has 3 796 likes and 237 thumbs down.

The advert shows the DA’s Gauteng premier candidate and spokesperson, Mmusi Maimane, standing in front of a mirror talking about the current state of the country.

On the YouTube posting, the DA has added a caption below calling for supporters to “Help the DA fight corruption, e-tolls and Nkandla” – as well as providing a link for donations.

Under the video link, a variety of comments – some of them heated – weigh up the merits of the advertisement.

A more light-hearted batch are about the English automatic captions that YouTube has created for the advertisement. Maimane’s declaration that “there have been some great leaders”, has been reinterpreted by the captioning as him saying “there has been some crazy to see leaders”.

At one point in the advertisement, a mention of the ANC is subtitled as “Nancy” and Maimane’s final slogan line: “ANC Ayisafani, together we can bring hope”, is ‘translated’ as “ENC, I said fine to get weekend.”

This week, it was announced that the television advertisement, as well as five radio ads, would be aired by the SABC after the national broadcaster originally pulled them from the air after being flighted for two days on 8 and 9 April.

The party then laid a complaint with the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa).

On Wednesday, a hearing by the Complaints and Compliance Committee at Icasa was postponed after the SABC hired a new legal team.

The DA accepted the postponement on condition that the party’s six adverts be aired with immediate effect.

Originally, the SABC said it could not broadcast the advertisements on grounds related to incitement of violence, publication of false information about election candidates and parties, the perceived personal nature of the attack on Zuma and advertising standards that did not allow the discrediting of one product to promote another.-Sapa

Dangerous start to Easter long weekend


Johannesburg – The Easter weekend has had a dangerous start on the roads as a number of accidents have been reported.

A woman was critically injured after a hit and run on Friday on Longmore Drive in Crystal Park, Benoni, paramedics said.

The woman was hit by the car when she tried to cross the road, ER24 spokesperson Werner Vermaak said.

According to people who witnessed the accident the car sped off after it hit her.

“Bystanders pulled the woman from the middle of the road shortly after the incident,” Vermaak said.

Critical head injuries

When paramedics arrived on the scene they found the woman lying on the pavement.

The woman sustained critical head injuries. She was treated on the scene and taken to a nearby hospital.

Two children and three adults were injured in an accident on the N1 near Bloemfontein on Friday, paramedics said.

A car was travelling on the N1 highway when it was hit by truck from behind, said Vermaak.

“Paramedics treated two children, aged eight and [two], for moderate injuries. Three adults were also treated for moderate injuries,” Vermaak said.

The occupants of the car were transported a nearby Bloemfontein hospital for further treatment.

The driver of the truck was not injured.

Six children and two adults were injured in an accident near Harrismith in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday, paramedics said.

The family of 10 was travelling toward Durban when their vehicle overturned 5km outside of Harrismith, said Netcare 911 spokesperson Chris Botha.

Eight people including six children aged between one and 14 sustained serious to minor injuries.

Two people who were in the car were not injured. SAPA