Johannesburg – About R516m worth of animals have been stolen on farms so far this year, AgriSA said on Tuesday.

Kobus Breytenbach, chairperson of AgriSA’s rural safety committee, was speaking at the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) in Johannesburg.

He said robbery was the main motivation for farm attacks.

Breytenbach said hate speech with strong racial undertones directed at farmers was one of the factors which contributed to farm attacks.

He said farmers were too often depicted as racists which was not true and unfair.

Breytenbach praised government’s rural safety plan, describing it as a well-constructed strategy.

Rural development chief director Vuyiswa Nxasana also addressed the hearing.

She told the SAHRC that the department was concerned with the culture of land rights for the 2.7 million people who lived on farms in the country.

She said the department wanted to develop a policy around land rights and its problems.

“We don’t always have the skills or capacity to tackle the issues of safety and rights of farm dwellers.

“We are struggling to monitor illegal evictions because we don’t have enough presence on the farms.”

She said law enforcement agencies needed to work with the department, especially in matters like illegal evictions.

She said many courts failed to convict people who had illegally evicted people off farms.

Landowners had the right to safety and needed to feel that their rights were also being respected, she said.

She said she had been working in the rural development department since 1997 and that ensuring the public knew the legislation when it came to their land rights was still difficult.

Most conflicts were sorted through the alternative dispute resolution functions, rather than through the judicial system, Nxasana said.

The department wanted to establish a land rights management facility to facilitate disputes with independent mediators.

SAPA

Johannesburg – The NPA on Tuesday welcomed the life sentence imposed on a 51-year-old man who raped his friend’s daughter.

The man, Joseph Khulise, was sentenced in the Pietermaritzburg Regional Court on Tuesday.

Khulise raped the girl in 2011. She was 10 years old at the time, said National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Nathi Mncube.

“She was at his home, visiting her friend when she suffered an epileptic attack,” said Mncube.

Khulise told her that she should stay over and insisted that the girl and his daughter share the bed with him.

“During the course of the night, when his daughter was fast asleep, the accused raped the complainant,” Mncube said in a statement.

The girl reported the incident to her grandmother two weeks later.

In a victim impact statement the child told the court: “I could not sleep when he had done this to me as it was painful.

“He should not have done that because I was a child. A child should not feel such a painful thing.”

The prosecutor, Mariam Aboobaker, had called for a life sentence for Khulise, stating that he showed no remorse.

She also argued that the accused had failed to show that substantial and compelling circumstances for a lighter sentence existed.

SAPA

Cape Town – The debate over the motion against Speaker Baleka Mbete was filled insults as MPs took personal jabs at each other during Tuesday’s sitting of Parliament.

The debate got heated when MP after MP took to the podium and rather sticking to their mostly written speeches, reduced to name-calling and finger-pointing.

DA and EFF members were labelled losers and counter-revolutionaries, while others where called hypocrites.

After an insult-laden debate, opposition leaders walked out of Parliament leaving the ANC to easily defeat their vote of no confidence in Mbete.

DA parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane, who opened the debate on the motion, led the walkout after ANC Chief Whip Stone Sizani sought to table an amendment which would have seen the vote turn into one of confidence in the speaker instead.

As the DA, EFF and all other opposition parties were leaving the chamber, Sizani rose to withdraw and suggested that since there was a still a quorum – thanks to the ANC’s majority – MPs should proceed to vote on the original motion.

“It is a pity you did not recognise me earlier,” Sizani said before presiding officer Cedric Frolick agreed and rang the bells for the customary minute before the vote.

Asked at that point whether he would lead the opposition back into the National Assembly to vote, an angry Maimane told Sapa: “They can do what they like now.

“If it had to be a function of our walking out before they allowed the vote, then no, we are not going back.”

The result was 234 against the motion of no confidence, and none in favour.

It was an unexpected outcome to an afternoon of fractious debate in which the DA and EFF were called losers and counter-revolutionaries by the ruling party as its secretary general Gwede Mantashe watched from the public gallery.

Maimane argued that Mbete had a clear conflict of interest because she also serves as chairperson of the ANC.

“Let me be clear, this motion is not personal. This is not about Baleka Mbete. Honourable Mbete is a competent member of this House. She’s a former deputy president. She has her flaws, but we respect her as an experienced politician.”

Mbete ‘unable to remain neutral’

He said it was, however, impossible for Mbete to hold both positions and serve Parliament with the requisite neutrality.

“What this motion is about is about the office she holds in the ANC, and what it means to holding the office of Speaker. The conflict of interest is untenable.”

Maimane said Mbete, who kept a serene smile through most of the debate, had been deployed by the ANC as Speaker to ensure President Jacob Zuma did not have to face any tough questions.

“She came here not as an honest referee, but as a player for President Zuma’s ANC. She sold out this Parliament to her masters at Luthuli House,” Maimane said.

The United Democratic Movement’s Bantu Holomisa supported the argument, telling MPs: “Before she was elected into office, the Speaker is on record distorting and attacking outcomes of the Public Protector’s investigations on Nkandla.”

Maimane drew a tongue-lashing from Sport Minister Fikile Mbalula who dismissed him as a token black from a party with fascist tendencies, and the EFF as disgruntled youths looking to get rich.

“Lately the DA has been a shopping spree to find a token black person… it found him in dusty streets of Soweto,” he said.

“What gives these losers and hypocrites the audacity to question the ANC’s deployment policy?”

Mbalula ‘lack a backbone’

EFF leader Julius Malema, who had repeatedly urged deputy speaker Lechesa Tsenoli to silence excited ANC supporters in the gallery, later returned the insult, calling Mbalula a hypocrite “who is never true to any boss because he lacks a backbone”.

He added that Mbalula himself had aspired to the position of ANC secretary general but lost and was therefore carefully watched from the gallery – one of many references to Mantashe as the opposition repeatedly made the point in the debate that he was effectively running Parliament.

Asked to withdraw the comment, Malema firmly refused on the basis of precedent because Mbalula had not been asked to withdraw the same slur immediately.

Throughout the debate – the most chaotic session the chamber has seen since the EFF brought parliamentary business to a standstill last month by heckling Zuma – the ruling party argued that the opposition had no legitimacy and was trying to undermine democracy.

Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor termed the EFF and DA’s unlikely joining of forces on the motion a “desperate alliance”, and the vote itself “an attack on Speaker Baleka that harms our democracy”.

“It is without substance and part of an orchestrated campaign against the ANC, its members and the people,” she said.

SAPA

Johannesburg – Classes would not resume at the Tshwane University of Technology as scheduled by the institution’s management, TUT’s suspended SRC said on Tuesday.

The university had said it expected students back in classes on Wednesday following several days of violent strike action.

Secretary General of the Student Representative Council, Signified Tivana said that would not happen as the management had not yet resolved the students’ issues. “There won’t be any classes tomorrow. It is a lie from a pit of hell that students will return to class,” he said.

“Whoever comes to the campus will be there to join the strike.

“Students will only go back to classes once the management addresses the students’ concerns and readmits SRC members that were suspended,” Tivana said.

TUT announced on Monday that it had served the SRC with suspension letters on Sunday.

University spokesperson, Willa de Ruyter said the suspensions would be for the remainder of the term.

Academic activities were disrupted at the institution’s Ga-Rankuwa and Pretoria campuses last week.

Student were protesting against the lack of funds in the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.

De Ruyter on Monday said they were concerned about time wasted as the end of the academic year drew closer.

Police to blame

Tivana said the SRC shared the same concerns.

He claimed that a recovery plan was necessary and students were prepared to lose their September holidays to ensure that all their modules were completed ahead of the exams. “We are prepared to push the semester to December if we can,” he said.

Tivana said some students were continuing with their studies with the assistance of tutors.

Meanwhile, several students were injured when they clashed with police on Tuesday, said Tivana.

“Five students were badly injured and are hospitalised after they were shot with rubber bullets. One of them was said to have been shot with a real bullet,” said Tivana.

He claimed that many others suffered minor injuries.

The students took to the streets after learning that the SRC had been suspended, said Tivana.

“The students were carrying sticks and bricks but they never threw them. They never provoked the police,” he said.

The core of the unrest stemmed from the fact that management was not willing to engage with the students, said Tivana.

“We do apologise for any inconvenience caused by this strike,” he said.

De Ruyter and the police were not immediately available to comment on the matter.

SAPA

Johannesburg – President Jacob Zuma, after announcing the death of 67 South Africans in the Lagos building collapse, said on Tuesday night that he had ordered government departments to help family members get to Nigeria to identify the bodies of their loved ones and repatriate the remains as soon as possible.

They were among scores of worshippers who died when the guest house on the campus of televangelist TB Joshua collapsed on Friday. Up to a thousand rescue workers have been searching the rubble of the pancaked building since then, AP reported.

Rescue workers early on Tuesday had dug a woman out of the rubble four days after the building had collapsed. She’d walked away with only a slight injury, a government spokesperson said.

“Not in the recent history of our country have we had this large number of our people die in one incident outside the country,” Zuma said in a statement to the nation.

“The whole nation shares the pain of the mothers, fathers, daughters and sons who have lost their loved ones. We are all in grief.”

My deepest condolences to the people of Nigeria and the 67 South African families who lost loved one. Africa mourns.

— MMusi Maimane (@MmusiMaimane) September 16, 2014

Officials say at least five South African church tour groups were at the church, known as The Synagogue, at the time of the collapse.
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