Johannesburg – Former president FW de Klerk on Tuesday said the only way the fighting in the Middle East could stop was through dialogue.

“What is happening there is tragic. I believe that the only way out of it is through negotiations,” he said at the Maropeng Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, where imprints of his feet were made in clay.

“We have learnt in South Africa after centuries of conflict, after decades of growing conflict that the only way to end conflict is for past enemies to sit around the table and talk to each other.”

De Klerk said both sides had to make initiatives that would lead to peace prevailing.

AP reported that the fighting between the two nations has killed over 1 085 Palestinians, 52 Israeli soldiers and three civilians on the Israeli side.

De Klerk gave an example of the initiatives that were taken in SA that eventually led to the end of apartheid and smooth transition into democracy.

“Two initiatives launched the negotiations in South Africa. The initiatives I announced on 2 February 1990 and then the initiatives by Madiba to say we suspend the armed struggle,” he said.

De Klerk said the two initiatives set the stage for meaningful and, in the end, successful negotiations and such initiatives were needed in the Middle East.

“We need the issue of borders to be addressed in a meaningful way and Israel needs to take initiative in that regard to my mind. We need from the Palestinian side recognition of the right of the state of Israel to exist.

“If those two basic things can be dealt with through initiatives by those who have capacity to take initiative in that regard, it will lay the cloth for meaningful negotiations,” he said.

– SAPA

Durban – The KwaZulu-Natal health department will be injecting 12 female university students with contraception to stop them from falling pregnant as the girls embark to India for pharmaceutical and ultrasonography training, according to reports.

The Daily News reported that the local government were taking drastic steps to ensure the students do not fall pregnant and to avoid the Cuban pregnancy scandal, which embarrassed officials earlier this year.

Health MEC Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo said the students, who were given full bursaries, would be injected with Implanon, which will prevent pregnancy for up to three years.

Dhlomo said the government had invested about R600 000 per student and it was unfair for the students to abuse the privilege,

The Implanon implant is a matchstick-sized rod which is inserted into the arm that stops the release of eggs from the ovaries.

According to Implanon website, side-effects include: vaginitis (inflammation of the vagina), mood swings, headaches and dizziness.

SA Feminists tweeted: “People were forcibly sterilised, irrespective of what they wanted.”

Jabulani said: “This is on another level – they don’t really have a choice.”

Zimasa Mpemnyama tweeted: “How safe is this? What about choice? Policing womens bodies? maybe?”

Last year Sapa reported that three KwaZulu-Natal students, who were part of a group that studied education and medicine at Turkish universities, where sent back home after two of the students were involved in a drunken brawl and one fell pregnant.

At the time former education MEC Senzo Mchunu, said: “It’s embarrassing. At the end of two months one child is pregnant.”

Mchunu had reportedly promised to conduct pregnancy tests before sending bursary students overseas.

– News24

By Obakeng Maje
The family of Nkuyagae in Nhole village, near Taung is not happy about the service they received from Taung Police Station after the death of their brother Medupe Emmanuel Nkuyagae.

Nkuyagae was found lying in a pool of blood near the road by a good samaritan who took him to local police station. Cliff Tshefu who is a pastor at Seven Adventist church said he found Nkuyagae on the road lying in a pool of blood and he came to his rescue.

“I was driving home at around 21:00 on Saturday and saw a man lying on the road. I stopped and saw Nkuyagae bleeding profusely, but conscious. He was able to talk and walk and I dropped him at the police station” Pastor Cliff Tshefu said.

According to family member, Mokang Nkuyagae who is Medupe’s brother, he left home on Saturday morning and did not come back later on. We decided to go and look for him at hospital and police station on Sunday and we were told that he was dropped by a passerby on Saturday night.

Tshefu said he could not believe what he heard when told that Medupe is dead because he left him conscious in the hands of police. “I received a call from police at around 02:00am on Sunday morning police telling me Medupe is dead. He had back injuries and do not know what really happened to him” he said.

North West police spokesperson colonel Emelda Setlhako said a man was dropped off at police station by an unknown man and was transferred to Taung hospital for medical attention and said if the family is not happy with police competency can launch a case.

“A 52 year-old man was dropped at Taung police station at 21:15 on Saturday night and was transferred to the local hospital. He allegedly passed away at the hospital and police are waiting for post-martem results” she said.

Mokang Nkuyagae said if police reacted faster to help his brother, he would not have been dead by now.

“We believe if the police reacted swiftly without judging him that he is drunk I think he would’ve been alive.”

Nkuyagae family said they are saddened by the death of their brother and suspect there is a dark cloud hanging over the family after their sister died mysteriously too.

“Our sister went missing three years ago and found raped and killed with a rope around her neck. And a case was opened at Taung police station, but it was never dissolved until today” Mokang said.
-TDN
Follow us on Twitter@Taung_DailyNews or @IceT_

Johannesburg – ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe on Tuesday drew comparisons between the Nazis and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters.

“[Adolf] Hitler used brown shirts to mobilise people,” he told reporters in Johannesburg.

“The Nazis didn’t start by killing Jews, they started by making promises.”

The EFF has started wearing red overalls and domestic worker attire in legislatures across the country.

This resulted in clashes between the party and the Gauteng legislature last week after they were told the workwear which included the word “Asijiki” (we won’t go back) on the back is not appropriate for the legislature.

Mantashe said the EFF was trying to sound revolutionary but its words were hollow.

The emerging trend was worrying and it could undermine democracy.

Mantashe was briefing media following an ANC national working committee meeting held on Monday.

– SAPA

Cape Town – The DA is set to table a motion in Parliament on Tuesday demanding a committee be set up urgently to probe the Nkandla controversy, failing which it will take the matter to court.

DA federal executive chairperson James Selfe said President Jacob Zuma was deliberately undermining the office of the public protector.

This was by failing to respond in full to her findings on the R246m upgrade of his private homestead in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, for more than 130 days after she gave him two weeks to do so.

This, Selfe said, flew in the face of section 181 of the Constitution, on which the DA would base an eventual court application.

“The DA will consider launching a court application to compel the president to submit his full and comprehensive response, so as to end this unconstitutional undermining of the public protector.

“This will become necessary should our motion today to establish the Nkandla ad hoc committee not see immediate outcomes.”

Section 181 of the Constitution obliges organs of state to help and protect Chapter Nine institutions, like the public protector, to ensure their effectiveness.

In her report, titled “Secure in Comfort” and released in March, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela found Zuma had benefited unduly from the work at Nkandla and should pay back a portion of the money spent to the state.

At the weekend, ANC Chief Whip Stone Sizani said Parliament would reconstitute an ad hoc committee on Nkandla once the president made his written submission to Parliament to indicate how he planned to handle the matter.

But DA parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane said this commitment lacked a clear timeframe. The opposition therefore feared the president was likely to delay his response further.

“It is very open-ended and in many ways gives the president an open cheque to do in this instance as he pleases. So in the absence of a deadline for the president to submit his reply, and his current trend for feet-dragging in other matters, we hold no confidence and no weight to the statement that was issued by the ANC.”

– SAPA

Cape Town – National Council of Provinces chairperson Thandi Modise’s farm manager has denied threatening two NSPCA inspectors with violence, claiming he saved them from harm at the hands of farmworkers.

Speaking to Sapa by phone on Tuesday, Neo Moepi – who also acts as Modise’s farm spokesperson – accused the inspectors of saying to him: “‘n Kaffir kan nie ‘n plaas beheer nie [A kaffir cannot control a farm].”

The alleged remark has been firmly denied by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA).

Earlier on Tuesday, it was reported that two NSPCA inspectors were expected to lay charges against Moepi and a farm manager after they allegedly threatened to kick the inspectors’ car and set it alight, and grabbed a cellphone and erased recordings.

The altercation allegedly happened last Friday, when the inspectors visited Modise’s farm Modderfontein, near Potchefstroom, to evaluate the animals.

Modise’s pigs reportedly began eating each other from hunger earlier this month. The NSPCA had to euthanase 117 of the animals, and confiscate 120 after 80 had died.

Moepi told Sapa he was driving to the farm from Potchefstroom on Friday and was about 10km away when a worker called to tell him there were two NSPCA inspectors on the farm.

“I was told they had jumped the fence and opened the gate, and were harassing everybody. I told [the worker who phoned] ‘Leave them, I’m coming’.”

When he arrived, “they were taking pictures of the cattle, and they had syringes in their hands”.

He told the inspectors to leave, saying they had no right to be there and that he was in charge.

“They wanted to know my name, but I told them that they should leave the property and once they were outside we could engage.”

He said they had been speaking in English, but one of the inspectors had switched to Afrikaans and told him “‘n Kaffir kan nie ‘n plaas beheer nie [A kaffir cannot control a farm]”.

Moepi claimed the inspectors had used the word “kaffir” while speaking to some of the farm workers, which had angered the workers.

Racist slur denied

Contacted for comment, NSPCA executive director Marcelle Meredith denied Moepi’s claim.

“We have black, Indian, and white members of our inspection units. None of them would make a remark like that… They are playing the race card.”

She confirmed the NSPCA was pursuing cruelty charges over the treatment of animals on the farm.

Meredith said charges would be laid concerning alleged threats of violence against the inspectors.

“We are definitely laying charges. The matter has been reported to the police,” she said.

Moepi said the two inspectors who had visited the farm on Friday had fled their vehicle for fear of the workers attacking them, and left it parked in the middle of the farm entrance. The keys were in the ignition.

He had then driven the car from the entrance gate to the edge of the tar road running past the farm, a distance of a few metres, to get it out of the way.

“I was intervening to stop a possible fight,” he said.

While he was doing this, the inspectors had taken photos with a mobile phone, and accused him of trying to steal the car. The police had been called.

No pictures

Moepi denied grabbing the phone, as reported, and deleting photos or recordings. He claimed the inspectors had deleted whatever was on the phone.

“No, no, they are not telling the truth. We agreed there would be no pictures… they deleted them.”

Moepi admitted to being very angry at the time but, given what had previously happened on the farm, said he was aware that “I need to be very cautious how I deal with people”.

He had subsequently reported the incident to an advocate who handled the farm’s business, and had been advised that if the inspectors went ahead and pressed charges “we should also open a case”.

Moepi expressed regret that “we still have whites who are racist”.

Modise’s office at Parliament declined to comment on the matter.

An official told Sapa it was not a parliamentary issue, and “there is no comment”.

– SAPA