Monthly Archives: May 2014

Professor Maselesele appointed as NWU rector


The appointment of Professor Mashudu Davhana- Maselesele as the first woman rector of the North West University(NWU)-Mahikeng Campus should be celebrated as yet another milestone against patriarchy which is often given a cultural halo and identified with customs and personalities of different communities, North West Premier Thandi Modise said on Monday.

In congratulating Professor Maselesele, Premier Modise said that her appointment which follows closely on the appointment of Professor Dan Kgwadi as Vice Chancellor of the NWU should accelerate and deepen transformation within the higher education institution.“As reflected by the strides that the university has made despite the challenge of slow pace of transformation, 20 years of our democracy has advanced us towards non-racialism and non-sexism.” Modise said.

Modise said that she is encouraged by Professor Maselesele’s NWU-Mahikeng Campus vision 2020 which responds to the National Development Plan and provincial priorities identified in the Provincial Development Plan and among others seeks to reposition the institution to serve as an engine for rural development for the province and the country.In her inauguration message delivered on Friday, Maselesele said that the campus has an ethical and moral responsibility to ensure that the programmes that it offers address the needs of communities.

She said that the campus will focus more on its Professional Degree programmes to ensure that it addresses the scarcity of skills in the country.Veterinary programmes, B Comm Law, Agric Engineering, Honours in Chartered Accountancy, Primary Health Care to facilitate the process of re-engineering PHC, Nursing Education and Health care Management are some of the new programmes that are planned for establishment, the Professor said.

Maselesele also highlighted that the campus together with its sister campuses is also pursuing the possibility of training of Medical doctors and is has commenced with negotiations with the National Department of Transport in preparation for introduction of Transport Engineering programme.
“We do not want programmes that will only add to the numbers of unemployed youth in this country” she emphasised.

In his inauguration and official opening of the academic year address, 
Vice Chancellor Kgwadi said that universities have an enormous responsibility to contribute towards government’s National Development Plan and 2030 vision and should embrace their role in transforming society.Professor Kgwadi said that universities cannot contribute towards transformation when
they are not themselves convincingly transformed.“I am convinced from concerns in a number of reports about our transformation that if our ‘evolutionary’ approach is not accelerated we will be faced with a revolution at some point,” he stressed.

In congratulating the campus rector,
Campus Student Representative Council Acting President Tsohana Mokhothu said that the current epoch is the epoch where women leaders have come to the fore, grabbing the bull by its horns and leading.

Mokhothu cited the first female Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Her Excellencies Dr. Nkosazana-Dlamini Zuma, President Helen Johnson of Liberia, President Joyce Banda of Malawi and Premier Thandi Modise among women who have made a difference on the continent, in their respective countries and in their communities.

She said that Modise had made the Premier’s Office
more responsive and the North West Province actively developing at a faster rate than it was before.Six females were among the 8 first year students who were awarded merit certificates and laptops at the inauguration ceremony for outstanding performance and obtaining between 4-10 distinctions during the 2013 academic year.-TDN
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Taung Dam victim was missed by mermaid before


By Obakeng Maje
Taung- A 40 year-old man who died at Taung Dam on Thursday was once missed by a mermaid a while ago, says our mole.

Fono Marake,40 who was a staunch member of ZCC once went to the river to fetch water and allegedly came across an old man after trying to fill his bucket with water for more than two hours with no success.

According to our source, the old man told a Kolong-born man to stop fetching water from the river as the water belongs to his livestock.

“Marake allegedly decided to leave but old man offered to help him fill his bucket. The bucket was filled with water and Marake left. The water allegedly changed its colour by becoming pale while on the way” our source who is close to the family said.

He allegedly took the water to the church and was mixed with some remedy.

Marake drunk the water and developed a lizard-skin days afterwards. He suspected that he drunk the water contain with algae and started to behave awkwardly.

“Marake was taken to different traditional healers, but with no help. He eventually told the people in the house that the voice is calling him to become a sangoma” our source said.

The night before Marake met his death, his behaviour was bizzarre. He went to the Taung Dam and started to pray like he was possessed.

Marake slipped on the rock that he was climbing and fell on the other rocks and was trapped.

“A 40 year-old man was confirmed dead by police and paramedics. He slipped between the rocks and suffered major injuries resulted into his death” colonel Emelda Setlhako said.

Police said a case of inquest has been launched at Taung police station and investigations continue.

Marake will be buried on Saturday.-TDN
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ANC headed for another landslide win but…


Johannesburg – The governing ANC and its scandal-tainted leader Jacob Zuma are expected to secure a landslide victory when voters cast their ballots on Wednesday, but with the party’s trajectory in serious doubt.

Zuma, whose first five-year term in office has been plagued by corruption, mismanagement and often deadly social unrest, made a final nostalgia-tinged pitch to voters on Sunday, promising more economic power for disadvantaged people.

The ANC has won every general election since 1994 by a landslide and is expected to win by a wide margin this time round too. And the party that controls the legislature picks the president.

According to a recent Ipsos poll the ANC is set to garner 63% of the vote, just three percentage points less than in 2009.

Zuma an Achille’s heel

During the campaign the ANC has benefited from the outpouring of grief over the death Nelson Mandela as well as celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the first all-race elections.

But the ANC’s current leader has proved to be an Achille’s heel.

Opposition parties have pummelled Zuma over the R246m in taxpayer money used to “upgrade” his private home, Nkandla.

“The ANC has become arrogant because they believe that the voters will carry on voting for them, whatever they do,” said Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille at a rally on Saturday.
“Well, they are in for a big shock on Wednesday.”

Zille’s party is predicted to increase its share of the vote by nearly six percentage points to 22% and to do well in major urban centres.

But most voters appear ready to put the party they know before the president they mistrust.

On Sunday 90 000-plus jubilant and defiant ANC supporters packed FNB Stadium in Soweto in a pre-election show of force, during which Zuma at times appeared to be an afterthought.

There were no humiliating boos like Zuma suffered in the same stadium during Mandela’s memorial service in December, but the 72-year-old president’s lengthy speech got a lukewarm response, with tens of thousands filing out of the stadium as he spoke.

Bloodied but victorious

With corruption scandals, poor public services and a stumbling economy the ANC will emerge from the election victorious but bruised.

Low turnout is likely to inflate the ANC’s share of the vote, which is likely to fall for a second consecutive election.

Former stalwarts like Ronnie Kasrils, a leading ANC veteran, have gone so far as to publicly ask voters not to back the party that liberated them.

Both the DA and Julius Malema’s firebrand Economic Freedom Fighters are likely to continue to tap into voters’ anger that 20 years of democracy have not improved their lot.

South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries on earth and sees an estimated 30 demonstrations a day against appalling public services.

ANC leadership battle

An ANC leadership battle may also be in the offing.

Under South Africa’s constitution, Zuma’s second term would be his last and he risks becoming a lame duck as would-be successors jockey for position ahead of a 2017 elective party conference.

Zuma’s promise of more action to redistribute economic power away from the elite is unlikely to inspire investors already rattled by social unrest and more populist rhetoric.

Malema’s party is expected to get around 5% of the vote at its first attempt after promising to nationalise industry and give poor blacks land currently owned by whites.

“A lower-than-expected majority for the ANC would probably be regarded positively by markets, as it may jolt the party into reforming itself internally over the coming years,” said Shilan Shah, an economist with Capital Economics.-Sapa

ANC North West to welcome EFF members in Swartruggens


By Obakeng Maje
Swartruggens-ANC North West will welcome Economic Freedom Fighters into the party on Monday, says ANC North West chairperson Supra Mahumapelo.

Mahumapelo told media on Saturday after welcoming back members who defected to Cope back then.

“We will be welcoming another group of members from EFF back into ANC. People have realise that ANC is the only party that can liberate them” he said.

More than 200 members were welcomed back into ANC and some of them were members of Legislature in North West province.

Steven Kheswa, Nikiwe Num and Nandi Mashuri were some dignitaries who were unveiled.-TDN
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A woman killed in a crash


Johannesburg – A woman was killed, and her two children were seriously injured in a car accident on the R102 in Verulam, outside Durban, on Sunday, paramedics said.

“Reports from the scene [indicate] that a car collided into the side of a family vehicle on the R102 at the Verulam traffic lights,” Netcare 911 spokesperson Chris Botha said.

The woman was flung from her car and was found lying under another car. She was declared dead on the scene.

Her children were treated on the scene before being taken to hospital.

The cause of the accident would be investigated.

SAPA

Sundowns player in fake kidnapping


Johannesburg – Mamelodi Sundowns soccer player Punch Masenamela was involved in his own faked kidnapping, the Hawks said on Sunday.

The elite police unit’s spokeman Paul Ramaloko said that last weekend, the SA Football Association and Masenamela’s wife had reported that the defender had been kidnapped and a ransom of five million rand demanded.

“We immediately pursued it,” said Ramaloko.

“We used our technological cellphone tracking device to trace his location.”

Ramaloko said the soccer player was found at a hotel on the East Rand.

“It didn’t appear to us that he was kidnapped… He was safe.”

Ramaloko said that Masenamela would not be charged in this case because he had not been the one to report the incident to the police. – Sapa

Give us five years: Malema


Pretoria – EFF leader Julius Malema on Sunday appealed to South Africans to give his party five years in government.

“We don’t want 20 years in government, we are only asking for five years,” he told supporters at Lucas “Masterpieces” Moripe Stadium in Atteridgeville, Pretoria.

“If we don’t deliver, fire us. Show us the door and say we want hard workers.”

He said leaders in his party would never steal from government coffers but would instead push for the upliftment of the poor.

“We will never take your hungry children’s money. When you take public funds, your taking money that is meant for ARVs for the sick.”
Malema said there was too much money in the country but those in power did not know what to do with it.

He spoke of mechanisms that would be implemented to curb wasteful expenditure and contribute to the increment of grants in the party’s manifesto.

He said ministers and the president would have to buy their own cars and houses as they earned salaries.

“Like all civil servants, buy your own car, houses. Why should we buy politicians cars and houses while they work? The time of politicians being treated like royalty is over,” he said.

The elections take place on 7 May.-Sapa

Oscar’s defence enters critical phase


Pretoria – Oscar Pistorius’s murder trial enters a critical phase on Monday as his defence team attempts to recover from a faltering start and reinforce the Paralympian’s claim that he fatally shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp by mistake because he was overwhelmed by a long-held fear of violent crime.

Pistorius’s mindset when he stood on his stumps in a bathroom and pulled the trigger on his 9mm pistol in the early hours of 14 February 2013 remains the crux of the trial that has captured worldwide attention and is about to start its seventh week of globally televised proceedings.

It was initially scheduled to run for three weeks.

Judge Thokozile Masipa will analyse thousands of pages of testimony before she reaches a verdict, but ultimately must ponder the pivotal question: Did Pistorius fire his gun with the intention to kill or out of a misplaced belief that his life was in danger from a perceived intruder?

Masipa will decide, with the help of two assessors, if Pistorius’s overall account is believable and whether the apparent inconsistencies in his testimony count against him or are unimportant in the bigger picture.

If Pistorius’s defence, which will resume calling witnesses on Monday after a two-week trial recess, can show that his story of a tragic error is a reasonable explanation, even the double-amputee runner’s shaky testimony would be rendered irrelevant and the judge should acquit him of murder, legal experts say.

Contradictions

While testifying, Pistorius sometimes contradicted earlier testimony and other times said he did not remember details.

“The test doesn’t end there,” former state prosecutor Marius du Toit said of Pistorius’s testimony. “It’s not over. They [the defence] can still show there is another plausible scenario.”

Du Toit has over 20 years’ experience in South Africa’s criminal justice system and is following the trial closely. He said it must be shown that Pistorius had the “sole intention” to kill Steenkamp to be convicted of murder.

Pistorius, 27, doesn’t dispute that he shot 29-year-old Steenkamp through a toilet door. He claims the killing was accidental and he fired four times in quick succession without thinking and while terrified, believing that an intruder had climbed up a ladder and through a bathroom window of his Pretoria villa in the pre-dawn hours and was about to come out of the cubicle and attack him.

Prosecutors charge that the story is an intricate lie designed to cover up a murder. They say the couple fought, Steenkamp fled to the toilet screaming and Pistorius followed her and shot her through the wooden door while they were arguing. She was hit in the hip, arm and head.

More defence witnesses

Charged with premeditated murder, Pistorius faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

The prosecution’s case appeared to be bolstered as holes in Pistorius’s story were exposed when the athlete was on the stand for a fierce five-day cross-examination by prosecutor Gerrie Nel.

Nel also succeeded in undermining the evidence given by the defence’s first two expert witnesses, a pathologist and a former police forensic scientist.

But defence lawyers have only presented three of up to 17 witnesses they say they may ask to testify.

At the outset of the defence’s case, lawyer Barry Roux said Pistorius’s actions on Valentine’s Day last year centred on his “disability” and “vulnerability” and Pistorius’s team will likely seek to rebuild the overall argument that his actions were guided by fear and not anger in a country with a high rate of violent home invasions.

Roux said he will also show that a crucial thread of the prosecution’s case is not true; that neighbours heard a woman screaming before and during the shots fired by Pistorius at around 03:17 on the fatal night.

The lawyer said neighbours who live closer to Pistorius’s house never heard a woman scream.

Instead, it was Pistorius’s high-pitched shrieks for help after realising his terrible mistake, the defence argues.

AP

A boy bludgeoned to death in Kanana


By Obakeng Maje
Kanana-Police are investigating a case of murder after a 19 year-old boy was murdered on Saturday.

“An argument ensued between the suspect and the victim. The suspect allegedly took out the knife and stabbed the victim in the chest.The victim died on the way to the hospital” colonel Emelda Setlhako said.  

The police arrested the suspect and seized the knife.  

He is expected to appear in court soon. Police investigation continues.-TDN
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Klerksdorp murder accused to appear in court


By Obakeng Maje
Klerksraal- The police arrested a 46 year-old man for murder on Saturday in Klerksraal.

“It is alleged that the suspect stabbed the victim with an unknown object. The deceased was found with head injuries and her face covered with blood. The suspect was arrested and is expected to appear in court soon” colonel Emelda Setlhako said. Police Investigation continues.-TDN
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