Kaizer Chiefs coach Stuart Baxter says his relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson grew stronger after he recommended Henrik Larrson to the Red Devils in 2007.

“He is one of these people that if you do something for him, he never forgets you,” Baxter says.

While coach at Swedish club Helsingborg, Baxter received a call from Ferguson to ask if he had any strikers because of injuries and suspension to his key players.

“When I was Helsingborg, Alex Ferguson called me to see if there were any strikers in Sweden who could help them out.

“So I suggested Henrik Larsson, and he asked whether I felt he could still do it,” says Baxter, who has led Chiefs to the Nedbank Cup Final and within touching distance of the League title.

“I said yes, they took Henrik, and the rest is history. They wanted to keep him there, but remember Henrik had promised his wife that he would enjoy his swan-song in Sweden, so he returned as planned.”

Larsson signed on loan at Manchester United from 1 January until 12 March 2007, coinciding with the Swedish League’s off season. He scored on debut against Aston Villa in the FA Cup Third Round at Old Trafford.

United were eager to extend the loan deal, but Larsson stuck to his promise to return to Sweden.

Still, Ferguson was full of praise for the striker, who scored three goals in 13 matches in all competitions during his three-month stay, saying at the time: “He’s been fantastic for us, his professionalism, his attitude; everything he’s done has been excellent.”

“We would love him to stay but, obviously, he has made his promise to his family and Helsingborg and I think we should respect that – but I would have done anything to keep him.”

“I knew him (Alex Ferguson) loosely before this time. But when Jim Lawler (a colleague and friend of Baxter’s) moved to work at United I had more contact with him.

“So since then I have had a lot more to do with him. [Laughing] Before then I was not sure if I should salute him and call him Sir Alex or Mr Ferguson,” joked Baxter.
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Interest in the services of Ajax Cape Town attacking midfielder Lebogang Manyama continues to grow as his contractual situation at the club remains hanging.

Though Ajax have struggled this season, Manyama has provided some inspiring performances along with the way just like Khama Billiat – who is also in demand up in Gauteng – which catapulted interest in his services from Mamelodi Sundowns and Bidvest Wits while Kaizer Chiefs are believed to be also sniffing around.

KickOff.com has been informed that Manyama’s contract runs up at the end of June but Ajax have an option of a further year which however doesn’t have any figures attached to it.

Manyama’s contract situation with Ajax means that even though the Urban Warriors exercise the option of the further year he can still enter into a pre-contract at the beginning of next year and walk away for free if he doesn’t find a way out during the next transfer window.

The 22 year-old has left his options open but would be keen on a move back home to Gauteng in the new season that will provide him with improved remuneration compared to what he is currently earning in the Mother City.
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Cape Town – Parliament’s chief financial officer Leslie Mondo has been dismissed with immediate effect following the findings of a disciplinary hearing, the national legislature said on Friday.

Mondo was found guilty on four out of five counts of misconduct.

The charges relate to the salary advance of R186 000 paid to National Assembly Secretary Zingile Dingani for a security wall around his plush Panorama residence.

Mondo had allegedly ordered Parliament’s finance department to grant Dingani the advance payment.

“Mr Mondo was charged with five counts of misconduct related to financial matters. He was found guilty on four of these,” Parliament said in a statement.

Mondo has already been informed of the findings.

“No further internal processes will be entered into.”

The disciplinary hearing against Dingani had not yet been concluded. Both Dingani and Mondo were placed on special leave in March after the misconduct allegations surfaced.

The auditor general was asked to investigate, and later recommended that Parliament discipline them.

– SAPA

Cape Town – Metrorail security guards are accused of burning down about 50 hawker stalls at the Khayelitsha railway station in Cape Town, it was reported on Friday.

The Cape Argus reported that Metrorail had not denied responsibility for burning the stalls.

“Traders were requested to remove their belongings from the site. Any confiscated items may be reclaimed after payment of the requisite fine. Remaining rubble and waste was burnt,” Metrorail regional manager Mthuthuzeli Swartz told the newspaper.

Trading illegally

He said the hawkers had been trading illegally on “railway property”.

The lack of formal trading amenities had led to excessive littering, had posed a health hazard and had become an “additional financial burden”.

“We will continue to remove unlawful traders from trains and stations, but always in compliance with the law,” he said.

Hawker Christina Mafenuka, 50, told The Cape Argus her sales of fruit, sweets and chips at the station in the past 23 years had helped her support her entire family and send her two children to university.

She said the hawkers met with Metrorail last year when it was agreed they could trade along a single line so commuters could easily walk past.

“We did that. If they saw that we were not following the agreement they should have come to us.”

– SAPA

Cape Town – Parliament spent about R16m on food and beverages last year, according to a report.

Parliament’s annual budget for refreshments stands at R18m. This includes tea, coffee, cool drinks and platters of finger food available at committee briefings, Eyewitness News reported.

Parliamentary spokesperson Luzuko Jacobs told EWN that Parliament does not only cater for numerous briefings, but also for major external events such as the Take Parliament to the People programme, which involves catering for over 30 000 people.

However, opposition parties have criticised the amount spent on catering at Parliament as excessive.

“I think it’s money wasted. If they want a cool drink, they must buy it themselves,” the DA’s Watty Watson said, adding that he believes most of the food ends up being wasted.

He said R16m could feed eight million children twice a day for a full year.

The DA will ask for a full breakdown of Parliament’s catering expenses.
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Soweto – Beneath the undying loyalty of poor blacks to the ANC, there is a growing resentment towards the movement that delivered South Africa from apartheid 18 years ago.

In Soweto, once home to anti-apartheid heroes Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, residents struggling against high unemployment, crime and pervasive corruption are not afraid to speak frankly about what they call the ANC’s rot.

“The ANC is not a bad movement, it is the people who have brought the rot to the party,” said Slavate Marema, who has never had a job since finishing school five years ago.

“Leaders don’t seem to care much about us once they get our votes. All they seem to care about is enriching themselves and driving around in fancy cars, and telling us that government has no money,” said the 22-year-old.

After decades of championing the fight against apartheid rule, the ANC led South Africa peacefully into a “rainbow nation” in 1994 and its leader Mandela was elected the country’s first black president.

But the ruling ANC is now accused of abandoning its roots and core constituency.

“As far as I am concerned we have no government. They are serving themselves, busy lining their own pockets,” said France Diholo, a retired factory worker.

“The rot that you see today, did not start with [Jacob] Zuma, it has been creeping up slowly since Mandela days,” he lamented.

Service delivery

Too often, Soweto residents complain, ANC membership has become synonymous with instant wealth and the beneficiaries of lucrative government contracts seem to be politically connected.

The ANC government has often come under fire for excessive spending on luxury hotel stays, and providing small armies of round-the-clock security to officials, while the most of the population battle unacceptably high crime rates.

“These days security seems to be reserved for high profile ANC politicians, who travel with groups of armed police in fast cars. When communities need them they are not available,” fumed Tankiso Mmusi.

Although the ANC government has built 2.8 million homes since taking power, around 20% of South Africans still have no electricity and 10% no running water. Protests over service delivery are frequent.

Reports that the government spent more than R200m of taxpayers’ money upgrading Zuma’s private home, complete with helipad, underground bunkers and a clinic, are jarring for many.

A divided society

Despite being the largest economy on the continent and home to a burgeoning black middle class, South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world.

The grievances are reaching a crescendo at a difficult time for the ANC, as it prepares for a leadership conference on Sunday, held every five years, which effectively kicks off the campaign for elections in 2014.

But like many people who felt angered by the ANC, Diholo said he will continue voting for the party, which still holds a commanding electoral majority.

Failed transformation

At the 2009 elections the ANC won almost 66% of the 17-plus million votes cast.

The DA, which is often seen as “too-white” by black voters, got just 17% of the vote.

The bigger risk for the ANC may be that voters stay away from the polls altogether.

But according to Andile Mngxitama, a firebrand columnist for The Sowetan newspaper, the “conditions for a revolution are rife in South Africa”.

“The ANC has failed to transform the state into an instrument of the people,” he wrote in a recent column.

“The question we need to ask is will the South African revolution be by the ballot or by insurrection, like the Arab Spring?”

That may be over-exuberant, but there is little doubt the ANC’s revolutionary lustre has lost some of its shine.

– AFP

Johannesburg – Government will establish its own government school in order to improve skills, ethics and professionalism in the public sector, Public Service and Administration Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Thursday.

“This school will educate, train, professionalise and develop a highly capable, skilled, socially and committed public service cadreship with a sense of national duty and a common culture and ethos,” Sisulu said in a speech.

“As a recognition of our public need that there is a ‘competency gap filling’ among public servants that is urgent, the school will be established before the end of October this year.”

“Our new school of government will as a consequence seek to institutionalise a culture of professionalism and innovative thinking within the public service and serve as a catalyst for reform,” she said.

Improve efficiency

Sisulu said regardless of a person’s political orientation, religious background, rank or seniority “for as long as you are a public servant you will attend this school.”

She told the Tshwane branch of the Black Management Forum that government existed to meet the basic needs of people.

“Governments exist fundamentally to meet the basic and human needs of its people and to create an environment where they can exercise their right to life and right to freedom.”

However, government had experienced complexities as a result of influences of the global economic and fiscal crises.

Sisulu said the National Development Plan identified that the country needed to improve its efficiency in the state machinery.

She said to achieve the developmental state discussed in the NDP, government must ensure that state administration at all levels was effective, efficient, professional and capable.

The first space at which government moved was to engage labour through the 2012 collective agreement, she said.

Professional public service

“We jointly committed that our citizens are entitled to have a professional public service rewarded for hard work,” she said.

To professionalise the public sector, government took a decision to investigate salary levels to ensure that public servants were appropriately remunerated.

“Here the notion of equal work for equal pay has been mooted.”

An office of standards of compliance had since been established with the department to promote a high standard of professional ethics and compliance to norms and standards across the public service.

“Our view is that this office will detect, intervene and assist in developing managerial and supervisory systems, especially in the areas of human resource and financial management…,” Sisulu said.

“Our view is that our citizens’ contact and access to public services and goods must be similar across the length and breadth of our country, irrespective of whether it is in a metropole or rural village.”

– SAPA

Johannesburg – Advocate and Judicial Services Commission (JSC) spokesperson Dumisa Ntsebeza has criticised the government for not employing black advocates, it was reported on Friday.

Ntsebeza said this was driving black advocates out of the profession, The Star newspaper reported.

According to the report, Ntsebeza felt a policy should exist where no white advocate should be briefed by the government if they did not have a black, Indian or coloured junior assisting.

He said government used mainly white law firms and advocates such as David Unterhalter and Jeremy Gauntlett, who were made out to be “superhuman”.

Unterhalter and Gauntlett recently represented the SA National Roads Agency Limited and the Treasury respectively in the case against e-tolling in Gauteng.

Gauntlett was passed over earlier this year by the JSC for a position on the Constitutional Court.

Ntsebeza told the newspaper that many black and women advocates left the profession because of a lack of briefs from the state, which was the biggest consumer of legal services in the country.

He was commenting on a written parliamentary reply from Justice Minister Justice Radebe, who said his department was well on its way to fast-tracking the appointment of black and women judges.

– SAPA

Johannesburg – Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu will not vote for the ANC, he wrote in an opinion piece carried by the Mail&Guardian on Friday.

“I have voted for the ANC, but I would very sadly not be able to vote for them after the way things have gone,” he wrote in a piece for Prospect magazine, which was carried by the Mail&Guardian.

“I am not a card-carrying member of any political party,” he said.

Tutu said there was a need for change in the country.

The African National Congress had been “very good” at leading the country in the struggle to be free from oppression.

“They were a good freedom-fighting unit. But it doesn’t seem to me now that a freedom-fighting unit can easily make the transition to becoming a political party.”

He said the “first thing” the next elected Parliament had to do was to change the electoral system so one was elected on the basis of the constituency, and would be accountable to the electorate.

“Those in Parliament are accountable to their party first rather than the electorate.”

Tutu wrote that although the country had the capacity to be one of the most vibrant countries in the world, it had the most unequal society in the world.

“We can’t hold our heads up with pride when you think of the levels of violence in our country.”

He wrote that South Africans were “amazing”. They had been committed to freedom during the political struggle, and had been ready to lay down their lives.

“But now one can point to so many instances of corruption, of unaccountability,” he wrote.

“Seeing how standards have dropped is so galling, because it seems to give ammunition to those who would say: ‘we warned you that once you had a black majority government you would see a steady decline in standards’.”

– SAPA

Kaizer Chiefs coach Stuart Baxter has apologised for seeing red in the Nedbank Cup semi-final, explaining that a personal tragedy sparked his actions.

Baxter was sent of by referee Victor Gomez in the match against United FC on May 4 for abusive language, and will have to watch Amakhosi’s final two matches from the stands.

The coach explains that he heard the news that a player at his former club had passed away before the match, putting him under psychological stress.

“I was probably over-emotional on the day after receiving the news of the death of my goalkeeper at my former club AIK in Stockholm, Sweden,” Baxter tells kaizerchiefs.com. “Ivan Turina died in his sleep on the 2nd of May, the news that shattered not only me but my whole family and sent shock waves in Swedish football.”

However, the coach also adds that he believes his dismissal was harshly awarded.

“It was at the end of the game and I had not been warned before this incident,” he says.

“At the end of the day I take responsibility for my actions. I would like to apologise for my action to the referee and I regret that this happened – although it was in the heat of the moment.”

Chiefs are top of the Premiership log. Their final two League fixtures are against SuperSport United and University of Pretoria.

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