Monthly Archives: August 2014

SIU is slow – communications committee


Johannesburg – The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) is slow in its investigations, the portfolio committee on telecommunications and postal services said on Friday.

“The portfolio committee… is concerned about the slow pace of the investigations by the SIU into some entities of the department,” chairperson Mmamoloka Kubayi said in a statement.

The committee received a report from SIU head Vasantrai Soni on progress in outstanding investigations into entities within the department, as proclaimed by the president.

Kubayi urged the SIU to urgently find speedy resolutions.

SIU spokesperson Boy Ndala said he could not comment on the matter as he had not seen the committee’s comments.

 

SAPA

Great health policies, poor outcomes


Durban – South Africa has achieved much in health since the era of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, but South Africans are still getting a raw deal, a health conference in Durban heard on Friday.

“We have poor health outcomes despite good policies,” Salim Abdool-Karim, director for the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa, told an SA Medical Association conference in Durban.

“Health outcomes are disproportionately poor.”

He said since Tshabalala-Msimang stepped down as health minister in 2008, the government’s decision to implement the world’s biggest antiretroviral programmes had a major impact on South Africa’s mortality rate.

A quarter of all people in the world receiving antiretroviral treatment were in South Africa.

The rate of mother-to-child HIV transmission had fallen almost 10-fold, from 27% to 2.7% of newborn babies being infected.

There had been other improvements in health, such as a slight decline in tobacco consumption.

The country was unique in that it carried an exceptionally high health burden, he said.

Some 17% of all HIV infections globally occurred in South Africa while it had less than 1% of the world’s population.

The country had 5% of the world’s tuberculosis cases.

Injuries caused by violence were higher than the global average, with South Africa accounting for 1.3% of such injuries.

South Africa had 1% of the world’s non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

Abdool-Karim said there was a steady increase in these diseases.

South Africa was unique in that it was affected disproportionately by several health problems at the same time.

Bangladesh, which had a population of about 150 million, spent less money per person on health and yet all its health indicators, such as infant mortality, matched those of South Africa, with a population of about 53 million.

SAPA

Zuma took our money – EFF


Johannesburg – EFF members sang about President Jacob Zuma and the money spent on Nkandla as they waited for party leader Julius Malema to address them on Friday night.

“u Zuma o thate i mali yethu” (Zuma has taken our money), they sang in Boksburg, on the East Rand, at an event to celebrate women’s month.

The song was a reference to the R246m spent on security upgrades to Zuma’s Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal homestead. Public Protector Thuli Madonsela recommended in her report on Nkandla that Zuma repay that part of the money not spent on security features, like a swimming pool, cattle kraal, and visitors’ centre.

Last Thursday EFF MPs disrupted questions to Zuma in the National Assembly by chanting “pay back the money”.

At Friday’s event about 100 Economic Freedom Fighters members dressed in red berets and overalls sang struggle songs as they waited for Malema, including one paying homage to ANC veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

SAPA

Corrupt cop jailed for 8 years


Cape Town – A police constable who corruptly smuggled Mandrax and tik to an awaiting- trial prisoner at the Swellendam Magistrate’s Court was jailed for eight years on Friday for corruption.

Constable Grandville Francke, 34, an orderly at the court, was unaware that he had been targeted in an under-cover police operation and that the prisoner in the cell was in fact part of the trap in March last year.

He appeared in the Bellville Specialised Commercial Crime Court before Magistrate Sabrina Sonnenberg, who also declared him unfit to possess a firearm.

According to the charge sheet, Francke handed a parcel containing three Mandrax tablets and three straws filled with tik to the prisoner in the cell and then went to a store in Swellendam where he received his R500 reward.

Francke told the court that he had given the parcel to the prisoner unaware that it contained drugs, and that he was soon afterwards sent to a shop to purchase chocolates for his supervisor.

On the way, a stranger had given him what he first thought was a R100 note but what turned out to be R500, to buy himself something to drink.

Because of the general hostility between the public and the police, he had accepted the money as a gesture of gratitude for his work as a police official, knowing full well that he was forbidden to accept gifts from the public.

When he realised that he had been given R500 and not R100, he could not “go chasing after the stranger to tell him he had given him too much”, Francke told the court.

He was unaware, at the time, that his acceptance of the money made him guilty of corruption, he told the court.

The magistrate disagreed with defence attorney Chantelle Morgan that Francke was entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and therefore an acquittal.

Instead, she ruled that his version was so inherently unlikely as to be rejected as false.

She said Francke, with seven years’ service, was an embarrassment to the police service.

A wholly suspended sentence, or correctional supervision involving a short period of imprisonment and then his release into house arrest, as suggested by the defence, was inappropriate.

Lenient sentences would cause the public to lose respect for the courts, and would encourage people to take the law into their own hands, she said.

She agreed with prosecutor Xolile Jonas that corruption involving police officials called for harsh punishment, as their job was to uphold the law, not breach it.

The message to the Swellendam community had to be that corruption would not be tolerated.

SAPA

Malema: We will shut down Parliament


Johannesburg – EFF leader Julius Malema has called on National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete not to push the party to shut down Parliament.

“One thing Baleka Mbete does not realise is that if all opposition walk out, they will have to collapse the Parliament,” he told party members in Boksburg on the East Rand, during a women’s month event.

“They must not push us to that level because we will go and have elections again.”

He was reacting to Mbete’s threat to suspend Economic Freedom Fighters MPs from Parliament following their heckling of President Jacob Zuma in Parliament on Thursday last week.

EFF MPs disrupted questions to Zuma in the National Assembly by chanting “pay back the money” and then refusing to leave the House when Mbete ordered them out.

Malema said opposition parties on Friday showed unity when they put their differences aside and refused to select a chairperson for the Nkandla ad hoc committee. They first wanted the committee’s mandate reworked to expressly include Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s findings on the R246m spent on security at Zuma’s Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, homestead.

Reasons

Malema said suspension would not silence the party. They would use the time to launch more branches.

“Jacob Zuma must know that the time for laughing in Parliament is over. He must give the right answers or what happened will continue. Suspend us and when we come back, we will start from where we left off,” Malema said.

Mbete has written to each of the 25 EFF MPs individually to give reasons why they should not be barred from the legislature for up to two weeks for disrupting presidential question time.

Malema earlier on Friday threatened to take the matter to court should Mbete not withdraw her plans to suspend his MPs by noon on Sunday.

He blamed the African National Congress for the formation of his party. If the ruling party thought the EFF was a problem, it had created the problem, he said.

Malema said his organisation was making MPs think twice when they had to account to Parliament.

SAPA

Mooi River mayor removed – report

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Pietermaritzburg – The African National Congress would not confirm reports that it had sacked Mooi Mpofana local municipality mayor Ntombi Mpangase in the wake of protests during the past week.
For more http://www.news24.com

Parly’s Nkandla committee hits deadlock

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Cape Town – The first sitting of the new parliamentary committee on Nkandla hit a deadlock between the ANC and opposition on Friday, as the latter refused to elect a chairperson until the mandate is reworked to expressly include the public protector’s findings.

Democratic Alliance MP James Selfe said the opposition agreed beforehand to argue that “at the heart of it is the public protector’s report and we need to be absolutely certain that all relevant documentation will be consulted”.

Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema made plain opposition parties feared the ANC could not be trusted to uphold Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s findings against President Jacob Zuma.

Instead, he said after the meeting, the African National Congress would want Zuma’s bitterly contested submission to Parliament on Nkandla – in which he declined to comment on her report – to be accepted as the last word on the controversy that had haunted him for years.

Terms of reference

“I know exactly what the ANC is going to do. They are going to come here and accept the president’s report as an accurate reflection of what happened and say the matter is closed.”

The ANC reluctantly conceded that the first meeting of the committee be adjourned, but afterwards disagreed with the opposition as to what would happen next.

According to DA parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane, it was understood that the terms of reference of the committee would be referred back to the National Assembly to be elaborated.

But Cedric Frolick, the ANC’s nominee for chairman, said there was no need to do this.

“It simply requires further discussion but the secretary will be called and the Speaker will be called in to discuss it. I have stated the view of the ANC, as far as the proposal is concerned there is definitely a trust deficit and that can be dealt with without taking it back to the National Assembly.

“I think it is unlikely that the ANC will go back and review the resolution that is there. I think it just requires further political interaction between the chief whips of the different parties so they can move from a common understanding.”

A day’s work lost

The office of ANC Chief Whip Stone Sizani subsequently issued a statement accusing the opposition of frustrating the work of the committee.

“The office of the ANC Chief Whip is disappointed by the needless filibustering tactics today [Friday] by the opposition parties in the ad hoc committee.

“Due to this stonewalling by the very same parties who ostensibly support accountability, the committee has lost a day’s work it may never recover.”

The mandate of the committee was debated heatedly in the National Assembly this month when the DA argued unsuccessfully that it was too vague and had to be redrafted to include dealing with the findings of all investigations on Nkandla.

Urge to call Madonsela and Zuma

A motion to this effect was voted down by the ANC, with Sizani saying at the time the opposition should accept assurances that the committee would consider all relevant documents.

With Madonsela’s 450-page report, in which she calls on Zuma to repay some of the R246m cost of the upgrades to his private Nkandla homestead in KwaZulu-Natal, now the subject of a public row between her and the ruling party, the committee is expected to see more wrangling between the ANC and the opposition.

Malema told reporters he would, like the DA, argue that the committee call not only Madonsela, but also Zuma. Maimane said he saw the task of Parliament as ensuring that the remedial action recommended by Madonsela was implemented.

“The job of the committee is to uphold the remedial steps that the public protector put forward… the question of the committee must simply be ‘why has the president not complied?’,” said Maimane.

In his 20-page submission to Parliament earlier this month, Zuma deferred a decision on whether he should reimburse any of the public spending on Nkandla to Police Minister Nathi Nhleko.

Madonsela, in her subsequent letter to the president, pointed out that her decisions could only be overruled by a court.

– SAPA

Malema gives Mbete deadline to withdraw suspension

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Cape Town – EFF leader Julius Malema warned National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete in a letter on Friday that unless she withdrew plans to suspend him from Parliament by Sunday noon, he would launch a court challenge.

“You should expressly withdraw your intentions on or before Sunday 31 August 2014 at 12 noon, failing which I will have no other option but to approach an appropriate forum for an appropriate relief,” he concluded in the five-page letter.

It is Malema’s formal response to a letter from Mbete, sent to all 25 Economic Freedom Fighters MPs in the Assembly, warning that she planned to suspend them ahead of an investigation into their conduct in terms of the Powers and Privileges of Parliament Act.

She asked each EFF MP individually to supply reasons why they should not be barred from the legislature for up to two weeks for disrupting presidential question time.

On 21 August, EFF MPs chanted and sang after Malema asked President Jacob Zuma when he would repay a portion of the public funds spent on upgrading his Nkandla home, in line with the recommendations of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela.

Malema: Mbete ac ting beyond her powers

Mbete ordered “members of this House who are not serious” to leave the Chamber, and called the sergeant-at-arms to remove them after the EFF refused to leave, remaining in their benches in protest.

In his letter Malema charged that Mbete was acting beyond her powers, as he had breached neither the act, nor the Constitution.

He said he was never asked by name to leave, and the EFF protest occurred after she had adjourned the house – therefore it was false to say that he had interfered with the authority and functions of the legislature by disrupting a sitting.

“It is my conviction that what we were doing was to hold the president as the head of the executive accountable,” he added.

“In performing this task, I was serious, hence your instruction that members of the House who are not serious must leave the House did not apply to me.”

Malema said Mbete had prematurely suspended proceedings, as points of order raised after his question to Zuma fell within the provisions of parliamentary rule 58(2), and there was no threat of violence.

Mbete to make formal request for suspension

The incident has ratcheted up tension between the ANC and the EFF, who this week accused the ruling party of bringing supporters to the parliamentary precinct to attack its members.

Mbete is expected to make a formal request to the National Assembly on Tuesday that she be allowed to suspend the EFF MPs.

Malema said on Thursday the party had briefed lawyers to ask the high court for an urgent interdict, possibly on Monday, to prevent their suspension should Mbete not respond positively to their letters.

– SAPA

Ramaphosa has cordial meeting with Afrikaners

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Johannesburg – The Boere-Afrikaner Volksraad encountered no negativity from acting President Cyril Ramaphosa when they met to discuss Afrikaner self-determination, the council said on Friday.

“The almost two-hour long meeting at the Union Buildings took place with an open heart and good spirit,” it said.

Ramaphosa met the delegation on Thursday afternoon for a briefing on the group’s aim of self-determination for the “Boere-Afrikaner”.

The organisation said Ramaphosa’s delegation asked many questions on the actual form of an Afrikaner people’s republic, and these were answered.

Ramaphosa in turn made some proposals, which would be discussed at the Boere-Afrikaner Volksraad (Boere-Afrikaner People’s Council).

Boere-Afrikaner Volksraad chairperson Andries Breytenbach told Sapa the Constitution allowed for self-determination for particular groups, but this had to be passed through Parliament. To do this, they would need the support of Parliament.

Ramaphosa said he would discuss the matter with African National Congress secretary general Gwede Mantashe, Breytenbach said.

The ANC, which Ramaphosa is deputy president of, has the majority in Parliament.

In the meantime, the council would approach other Afrikaner groups interested in self-determination to make the process more inclusive, and so that government had to deal only with one forum.

– SAPA

MEC Maine moves fast to save Mothotlung from stinking

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Brits – The overflowing sewerage that has been spilling into the houses of the residents of Mothotlung in Madibeng local municipality will be something of the past following North West MEC for Local Government and Human Settlements, Collen Maine’s intervention.

MEC Maine met with affected ward councillors, Executive Mayor of Madibeng, Jostina Mothibe, leadership of Mothotlung community and community in general of Switch and Thetele, on Thursday, in order to establish the cause of the spilling sewerage that had made the whole area to stink. The residents of Switch acknowledged to deliberately blocking the sewer pipes in an attempt to get attention of municipality to respond to their plea which amongst others, included the construction for an internal road.

In addressing the problem, MEC Maine, requested Madibeng local municipality to deploy the necessary machinery to the area to unblock the system. He will also, in the next two weeks, introduce a contractor who will build the +-2 km road that goes through Switch settlement. “The municipality will have to move swiftly to make sure that the road construction is prioritised. Work will also commence to repair the damaged sewage pipe and the sewerage dam will be emptied”, he said.
-TDN
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