Johannesburg – Several legal organisations on Monday said they were concerned by the threats and personal attacks directed at Judge Thokozile Masipa who presided over the trial of Paralympian Oscar Pistorius.

The Legal Resources Centre, Section27, and the Centre for Child Law said the wave of criticism directed at Masipa personally in relation to her judgment had resulted in her requiring police protection.

“Some of the remarks may even border on hate speech, defamation and contempt of court. These comments allege that Judge Masipa is corrupt, and or that her gender and or race rendered her incompetent in appropriately applying the law to the evidence presented,” the group said in a statement.

Masipa acquitted Pistorius of the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp who he shot dead through a locked toilet door at his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day last year.

He alleged to have mistaken her for an intruder.

Pistorius was instead found guilty of culpable homicide.

The legal organisations said while it was understandable that many people may disagree with the judgment, it condemned the attack on her which it labelled unacceptable and inappropriate.

“[The attacks] serve no purpose but to undermine her judicial capacity,” the groups said.

“Judge Masipa’s gender and or race should be an irrelevant consideration in opinions on her judgment of the Oscar Pistorius trial or any other cases she adjudicates. Her decision last week required a considered application of the law in relation to the evidence presented by both parties.

“Whether male or female, black or white, the process would have been the same. It was her decision to make and she made it.”

The three groups said threatening Masipa because she is black because she is female should not be tolerated in the current constitutional framework, where equality and non-discrimination are of paramount importance.

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JOHANNESBURG – The Hatfield Magistrates Court in Pretoria has postponed a case against radio and TV personality Sbusiso Leope who was arrested on Friday for speeding.
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According to a news report on Nature,  the drug,  lactocillin, hints at the untapped medical potential of this microbial landscape.

Michael Fischbach led a team to figure out how our microbiomes (the bacteria living in our bodies) impact our health, research which proceeded to reveal thousands of molecules that could act as drugs.

One example of these was a thiopeptide antibiotic produced by a bacteria that normally lives in the vagina.
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Johannesburg – No arrests have been made following a fatal shooting in Doornfontein, Gauteng police said on Monday.

“We [are] still looking for the suspects,” police spokesperson Doniah Mothutsane said. “We still don’t know the motive for the shooting.”

A woman was killed and five people were wounded in the shooting in Davies Street on Saturday.

At the time, Mothutsane said a gunman arrived at a block of flats and opened fire at random.

Netcare 911 paramedics said three adults and three children were wounded.

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Johannesburg – A woman whose husband was killed in a farm attack two-and-a-half years ago called for the reinstatement of the death penalty at public hearings on Monday.

Bernadette Hall, who was speaking at the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) public hearings on farm attacks, was asked what kind of sentence she thought would be appropriate for those found guilty of farm killings.

She hesitated for a few moments before replying: “It’s impossible… I personally feel the death sentence, or a really lengthy prison sentence.”

Hall said the problem with long imprisonment was that taxpayers had to pay for criminals to be fed and clothed.

“Our tax money is paying for that. I still end up looking after the man that killed my husband.”

The SAHRC hearings are chaired by commissioner Danny Titus and are being held in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

AfriForum previously complained to the SAHRC that the police were not doing enough to protect farming communities.

According to AfriForum, 91 attacks on farms and 42 murders on farms have been reported in South Africa since January.

Hall called for police to be better trained in dealing with victims of farm attacks, and in collecting evidence.

Arrest made

Almost a year after her husband’s murder the police arrested someone in connection with the crime. The matter was eventually thrown out of court due to a technicality, Hall said.

She said the police questioning and court process was traumatic.

“Every day in court I felt like a criminal.”

Hall still lives on her farm, even though there having been five attacks on farms and three murders in her immediate farming community in the past two-and-a-half years.

She has stopped farming maize, because the attackers who killed her husband hid in their mealie field to watch the family before the attack.

She said the police needed to beef up security in rural areas as the country was rapidly losing productive farmers.

Hall said her farming community had organised a patrol to bolster security in their area, but this had been problematic.

“When a farmer leaves his wife and children at home they are sitting targets.”

The police are expected to make submissions at the hearings later this month.

SAPA

Johannesburg – A woman whose husband was killed in a farm attack two-and-a-half years ago called for the reinstatement of the death penalty at public hearings on Monday.

Bernadette Hall, who was speaking at the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) public hearings on farm attacks, was asked what kind of sentence she thought would be appropriate for those found guilty of farm killings.

She hesitated for a few moments before replying: “It’s impossible… I personally feel the death sentence, or a really lengthy prison sentence.”

Hall said the problem with long imprisonment was that taxpayers had to pay for criminals to be fed and clothed.

“Our tax money is paying for that. I still end up looking after the man that killed my husband.”

The SAHRC hearings are chaired by commissioner Danny Titus and are being held in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

AfriForum previously complained to the SAHRC that the police were not doing enough to protect farming communities.

According to AfriForum, 91 attacks on farms and 42 murders on farms have been reported in South Africa since January.

Hall called for police to be better trained in dealing with victims of farm attacks, and in collecting evidence.

Arrest made

Almost a year after her husband’s murder the police arrested someone in connection with the crime. The matter was eventually thrown out of court due to a technicality, Hall said.

She said the police questioning and court process was traumatic.

“Every day in court I felt like a criminal.”

Hall still lives on her farm, even though there having been five attacks on farms and three murders in her immediate farming community in the past two-and-a-half years.

She has stopped farming maize, because the attackers who killed her husband hid in their mealie field to watch the family before the attack.

She said the police needed to beef up security in rural areas as the country was rapidly losing productive farmers.

Hall said her farming community had organised a patrol to bolster security in their area, but this had been problematic.

“When a farmer leaves his wife and children at home they are sitting targets.”

The police are expected to make submissions at the hearings later this month.

SAPA

Pretoria – A senior Lonmin employee had to apologise at the Farlam Commission of Inquiry on Monday for describing Amcu’s president as a liar on national radio.

“I withdraw that, and I apologise to Joseph [Mathunjwa],” said Barnard Mokwena, who was Lonmin’s executive president of human capital and external affairs at the time of a strike in 2012.

Mokwena called Mathunjwa a liar on SAFM, when they appeared on Xolani Gwala’s morning programme on 15 August 2012.

National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president Senzeni Zokwana also participated in the radio interview.

“You accused him of lying before the South African people. You accused him of twisting the truth,” said the commission’s chairman, retired Judge Ian Farlam.

Mokwena told the commission: “On [the] Friday, I had two partners who were agreeing with me in principle that this was unprotected…. The three of us would run this interview together and workers should go back to work.

“I walked into the studio with the impression that he would reiterate that position,” he said.

Mokwena also accused Mathunjwa of calling the striking workers “sinister forces not to be engaged”.

Mokwena claimed to have recorded evidence that the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) had spoken to strikers about wages at a hill near the mine.

However, he had to concede that this was not true.

“I retract that statement,” he said.

R12 500 wage demand

Mokwena also told North West police chief General Zukiswa Mbombo that it was Amcu which was making a R12 500 wage demand.

“Are you prepared to retract that as well Mr Mokwena?” asked Farlam.

“Yes, chair,” Mokwena said.

He continued: “I had honestly expected us to be a joint force in terms of what was going on. I just felt we were not in sync with Amcu: The way they approached the matter, the way they were discussing the matter with us.”

Farlam asked Mokwena if he had wanted Mbombo to arrest strikers and union leaders.

“I had no intention at any stage to get any union leader arrested. I was making an appeal that unless arrests were made, this may continue. I had absolutely no intention to influence her,” Mokwena replied.

The commission is investigating the deaths of 44 people during unrest near Lonmin’s Marikana mine.

Police opened fire on a group of mostly striking mineworkers, killing 34 of them on 16 August 2012. Around 70 people were injured and more than 200 were arrested. Police claimed they were trying to disperse and disarm them.

Ten people, including two policemen and two Lonmin security guards, were killed in the preceding week.

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Johannesburg – Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane’s “buttocks” comment was a Sepedi idiom used to describe the extent she would go to in order to protect President Jacob Zuma.

Mokonyane was quoted in the Sowetan earlier as saying ANC members and Cabinet ministers would use their buttocks to defend Zuma.

“In our ethnic language, there are some idioms that you use to express a meaning like: Push until it happens, or do whatever it takes. That was an idiom, it was not a literal meaning,” said Mokonyane’s spokesperson Brenda Mpitsang.

“Someone who knows the language would understand the meaning. When she [Mokonyane] used that expression, she was trying to emphasise the extent she would go to counterattack the people who are attacking the president.”

“The attack is not on Zuma, but it is on the ANC. Re tlo thiba ka dibono [We will defend with our buttocks],” Mokonyane said at the launch of a water project in Marite, Mpumalanga, on Saturday.

“Like it or not, Zuma is ours. He will finish the term because we want water…”

Mokonyane said Zuma would finish his term in spite of the controversies surrounding him.

In March, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela found that Zuma had derived undue benefit from the R246m improvements made to his homestead in KwaZulu-Natal. She recommended that he pay back a portion of the money.

Zuma also came under the spotlight recently when the so-called “spy tapes” were released to the DA following a court order.

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