Daily Archives: December 10, 2014

Zille, Chester battle it out in twar

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Cape Town – DA leader Helen Zille and puppet “Chester Missing” battled it out on a social networking site on Wednesday after her suggestion that he campaigned against racists to boost his career.

Zille seemed to target ventriloquist Conrad Koch and his puppet Chester Missing in her “SA Today” newsletter on racism and free speech, released earlier in the week.

She referred to Koch and Missing’s success in court after Dan Roodt brought an application for an interdict against them on behalf of Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr last month.

The spat began when Hofmeyr tweeted on 23 October: “Sorry to offend but in my books blacks were the architects of apartheid. Go figure.”

Missing then launched a civil campaign against the singer’s racism and had the interim protection order Hofmeyr obtained against him set aside.

Zille said the puppet became the “poster-pop for anti-racists” and a national hero after winning the court case.

“But maybe the laugh’s on us. Chester knows there is nothing like a running battle with racists to send your career into orbit,” she stated in the newsletter.

“Maybe he did a deal with Steve and Dan to share the royalties in perpetuity. Steve and Dan would know that’s what you do when your career needs a booster rocket.”

Missing responded to Zille on Twitter, saying he and his family had been threatened and he had nonetheless gone to court, while she apparently sat back.

He referred her to tweets he sent her and her parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane last month, in which he asked if they were okay with Hofmeyr saying black people deserved apartheid.

Zille on Monday tweeted: “Can someone please explain how @chestermissing managed to make this newsletter about himself? Who has lost it here?”

Satirical posters

Missing responded that Zille had brought him into it and she should not complain when he replied.

“You could’ve just nailed Steve,” he said.

Using satirical posters, Missing seemed to turn on his puppet-master on Wednesday and agreed with Zille that Koch was seeking publicity and attention.

He offered her advice in a tweet he posted of a photo of Zille in her party clothes on a donkey cart, waving her hand.

Missing said: “@helenzille best avoid donkeys lest people say anti-racist-satirist-pot-shot taking move is called a publicity stunt”.

She replied that a North West province community dealing with a land claim problem fetched her in the donkey cart and she had loved it.

When someone suggested her comment about sharing royalties was a bit snide, Zille replied it was “mindblowing” that satirists could not take the slightest bit of satire about themselves.

Missing seemed surprised that Zille was suggesting her comments were satire and asked if her doek (headscarf) was also satire.

He posted a much-circulated photo of Zille in a blue headscarf stirring a traditional pot of pap while campaigning in the North West earlier in the year.

Ah, newsletter was satire now? Doek also satire? @helenzille: mindblowing satirists cannot take satire about selves pic.twitter.com/r5T85Lx3F7

— Chester Missing (@chestermissing) December 10, 2014

.@helenzille Best avoid donkeys lest people say anti-racist-satirist-pot-shot-taking move is called a publicity stunt pic.twitter.com/3vkkQ1viio

— Chester Missing (@chestermissing) December 10, 2014

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Biko family heads to court for post-mortem report

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Johannesburg – Steve Biko’s family and foundation will take legal action to get the anti-apartheid activist’s post-mortem report, their lawyer said on Wednesday.

“We have noted lack of undertakings to hand over the documents from the Steeles and regret that we now have no choice but to continue with legal processes,” Darren Olivier of law firm Adams and Adams said in a statement.

The firm represents the Steve Biko family and foundation pro bono (without payment, for the public good).

He said unauthorised access to health records was unlawful, and possession of and access to such records highly regulated.

Autopsy documents

Siblings Clive and Susan Steele were given until Monday to undertake to return the post-mortem reports of Biko and another anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol to their families.

In a statement on Monday, the Steve Biko Foundation said it was informed by Clive and Susan Steele’s lawyer that they would not return the document.

“It is with deep regret that the Timol Family, the Biko Family and the Steve Biko Foundation have been informed by Clive and Susan Steele’s legal representative that they will not undertake to return the autopsy documents relating to Ahmed Timol and Steve Biko to their respective families today.”

The High Court in Johannesburg last week halted the auction of Biko’s post-mortem document, about an hour before it was to go under the hammer at Westgate Walding Auctioneers. Bidding on the document was to start at R70 000.

Certificates from pathologists

The court also ordered Westgate to stop the auction of Timol’s post-mortem document.

On its website, Westgate says the Biko documents are from 1977 and contain certificates from pathologists, a certificate in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act, and a 43-page post-mortem report.

Years ago, the document was given to Maureen Steele for safekeeping. She was the personal secretary of Dr Jonathan Gluckman, the pathologist appointed by the Biko family.

After Steele’s death the documents went to her children, who did not want them. It was not known if the children gave or sold them to Westgate.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Steve Biko was a student leader. He later founded the Black Consciousness Movement. On 18 August 1977, Biko was arrested at a police roadblock and interrogated. He was tortured in prison and died in a prison cell in Pretoria on 12 September 1977.

Timol died in police custody in 1972. He was alone with a policeman when he supposedly fell out of a window at the then John Vorster Square police station in central Johannesburg.

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Pistorius family: We abide by ruling


Pretoria – Oscar Pistorius’s family on Wednesday said they would abide by the North Gauteng High Court decision to allow the State to appeal the paralympian’s conviction.

“We note the finding of the court and abide by the ruling,” his uncle Arnold Pistorius said in a one-line statement.

Earlier, Judge Thokozile Masipa granted the State’s application to appeal Pistorius’s culpable homicide conviction, but dismissed the application to appeal his five-year jail sentence.

“The application for leave to appeal against sentence is dismissed,” she said.

However, on the application against his conviction, she said: “I am satisfied that the points raised by the applicant [the State] are indeed a question of law.”

The Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein will deal with the matter at a date yet to be determined.

On 21 October, Masipa sentenced Pistorius to five years in jail for the culpable homicide of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

He shot her dead through the locked door of the toilet in his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day last year, apparently thinking she was an intruder.

The State filed papers last month calling for a heavier conviction and harsher sentence.

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Murdered toddler’s family still suffering


Johannesburg – The family of a Reiger Park toddler found murdered in August, on Wednesday called for justice.

Cuburne van Wyk’s grandmother Daphne Fredericks said they were still suffering as the case against her 3-year-old grandson’s alleged killer dragged on.

“I don’t feel good about it,” she told journalists outside the Boksburg Magistrate’s Court in

Ekurhuleni shortly, after the case against murder-accused Nathaniel Katlego Mpoku was postponed.

“Every time I think about it, I just cry and cry,” she said.

“Things don’t [turn] out the way I thought they would,” she said, referring to the pace of the case.

Disappeared while playing with friends

Mpoku’s case was postponed to 17 December as the court awaited a decision by the director of public prosecutions on whether to proceed with his prosecution.

Mpoku was arrested in August, days after Van Wyk’s body was found. The boy disappeared on 6 August while playing outside with his siblings.

His body was discovered by a passer-by at a mine dump in Reiger Park three days later.
Police said he died from multiple head injuries and burn wounds.

During his last appearance, Mpoku abandoned his bail bid. Dressed in a yellow sweater with a pink hoodie, he kept his face lowered as he stood in the dock.

“He doesn’t even want to look at me,” said Van Wyk’s father Elroy Peterson.

Tears flowed as the family, dressed in white T-shirts with a picture of Van Wyk, said they wondered how the boy pleaded for his life.

Little confidence in court

Grieving mother Lezell van Wyk had little to say as she stood alongside her family.

Peterson expressed little confidence in the court, saying they had seen two high-profile cases dropped in the same court.

He was referring to the case of Taegrin Morris, another Reiger Park toddler, who was killed following a botched hijacking earlier this year.

Thamsanqa Twala who was arrested for the crime, was released after the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) withdrew all the charges against him.

The case against Zanokuhle Mbatha, allegedly implicated in the fatal shooting of Bafana Bafana and Orlando Pirates goalkeeper Senzo Meyiwa was also heard in the same court.

Mbatha was released following what the NPA said were inconsistencies in the State’s case.

Peterson said it was best that his son’s alleged killer, who was reportedly out on parole at the time of the crime, remain behind bars.

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