Kimberley-About four changes were effected when the Northern Cape Premier reshuffled her cabinet yesterday. 

Premier Sylvia Lucas made fewer changes than anticipated, when she moved social development MEC Alvin Botes to the Corporate Governance, human settlement and traditional affairs (Coghsta) portfolio. 

Botes’ department will be occupied by Tiny Chotelo and MEC for Transport, Safety and Liaison Patrick Mabilo was moved to Enviromental and Nature conservation, which was previously occupied by Lucas before she became a premier. 

Mabilo made way for the newly sworn in Mac Jack.

 The former MEC for Coghsta, Kenny Moeiemang will resume the Legislature speaker position, a vacancy left by Boeboe van Wyk, who was redeployed by the ANC to be the new mayor of Namakhoi.

For more www,thenewage.co.za

Bafana Bafana players and technical team were in high spirits as they departed for Cameroon on Tuesday (4 June) where they will face the Central African Republic (CAR) in a key 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifier.

The match will take place in Yaoundé on Saturday, 8 June 2013 and is scheduled to kick off at 16h00 South African time.

Bafana Bafana go into this important match high on confidence following their convincing 2-0 victory over Lesotho in an international friendly match last Sunday.

Coach Gordon Igesund welcomed overseas-based striker Tokelo Rantie and midfielder May Mahlangu who missed the Lesotho clash due to club commitments.

South Africa who are second in Group A with five points, two behind leaders Ethiopia, defeated CAR 2-0 in the first leg played in Cape Town in March this year.

“We are well aware how difficult this match is going to be, and we can’t bank on our last result hoping things will be easy. Football does not work like that.

“We have to work twice as hard to ensure we get the same result as in the first match, and I believe we are up to the task,” said Bafana captain Itumeleng Khune, who is expected to return to the starting line-up after being rested for the Lesotho game.

“We are happy with the result in Lesotho because it’s a huge morale booster going into this CAR encounter. We need to continue where we left off and continue working as hard as we always do. We would like to return to South Africa with all six points – and that is very possible.”

His words were echoed by midfielder Dean Furman.

“This is a very massive game for us and the entire country. We know it’s not going to be easy but we have a strong belief that we can come back victorious. The win in CAR will set us up nicely for an even more difficult match in Ethiopia the following week, but we must take it one game at a time,” said Furman.

Bafana Bafana are expected to arrive in Yaoundé just after midnight. They are expected to start training on Wednesday afternoon.

Cape Town – South Africa on Tuesday declined to comment on reports that ousted Central African Republic president Francois Bozize was in the country.

Media reports said Bozize had left Cameroon and travelled to the country via Kenya late on Sunday.

“We currently don’t have an official comment on the matter,” department of international relations spokesperson Nelson Kgwete told dpa.

Bozize, 66, fled the CAR in the wake of a military coup on 24 March, after thousands of fighters from the Seleka rebel coalition entered the capital Bangui, accusing him of breaking an earlier peace agreement.

SA deployment

Thirteen South African soldiers were killed and 27 injured in the take-over bid. The country has since withdrawn its troops, which numbered 200 at the peak of a deployment to train the CAR military.

Over his 10 years in office, Bozize’s armed forces engaged in summary executions, unlawful killings, the use of children as soldiers and many other human rights violations, according to a 2007 Human Rights Watch report.

In December 2012, the European Union suspended its more than $200m development programme in the CAR, saying the funds would be withheld until the rule of law is re-established.

The CAR said it had issued an international warrant for his arrest via Interpol last week. However, his name was not on the Interpol wanted list as of 4 June.

Sapa-DPA

Johannesburg – The police operation during the unrest at Marikana last year was carried out in a “humane manner”, the Farlam Commission of Inquiry heard on Tuesday.

“A large operation such as that one had maybe one or two errors… and the commission will look into that, but I believe that the operation was indeed delivered in a humane manner,” national police commissioner Riah Phiyega said.

Dali Mpofu, for the injured and arrested miners, had asked Phiyega whether the police had the correct and up-to-date information before taking any action during the unrest.

Police prescripts required that police have up-to-the-minute information all the time during an operation.

“You are not prepared to withdraw your statement of gratitude towards what happened last year, is it?” Mpofu asked Phiyega.

Phiyega appeared unfazed.

“No I am not. As I said, there is a lot I have gratitude for [regarding the operation].”

‘I have blasted him’

The commission, sitting in Centurion, Pretoria and chaired by retired judge Ian Farlam, is investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of 44 people during violent unrest near Lonmin’s platinum mine in Marikana last year.

On 16 August, police shot dead 34 miners. In the preceding week, 10 people, including two police officers and security guards, were killed.

Phiyega earlier told the commission she could not hear a word in the video taken by a Captain Rylands when police shot at the miners on that day.

The written transcript, showed police shouting about the actual shooting, with one person saying “…I have blasted him boss… I have blasted him…”

Another said: “There is muti there… ja, all over the body… leave it leave!”

A third voice said: “Ja, that muti shit does not work here baba (man)… shona phansi.”

Statements ‘unclear’

Phiyega, who was asked by Mpofu last week to listen to the video, said she did listen, but did not hear a word because the tape was not audible.

Mpofu referred her to the written transcript and read out the statements captured on video.

Phiyega said she had a problem with the version and translation presented.

“The translation given now [by Mpofu] has a lot of gaps… I was asked to listen too, but [it] came out unclear.

“Today there is a version here that sounds like Fanakalo… perhaps we might have to get people better equipped to read this to us; further than that I cannot comment on this,” she said. 

SAPA

Johannesburg – Eight shop stewards of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) have been suspended for alleged fraud regarding union membership, platinum mining giant Lonmin [JSE:LON] said on Tuesday.

“Lonmin has suspended eight employees following investigations into allegations of membership fraud. Three of those suspended are currently in the middle of disciplinary hearings, while the remaining five members face hearings this week,” said spokesperson Sue Lindsell-Steward.

The shop stewards allegedly falsified stop orders to make it seem as if members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) had left their union and joined the NUM.

The company said it had been established that about 200 stop orders were falsified in this way and submitted to Lonmin’s human resources department.

The effect of the fraud would have been to relay membership fees due to Amcu to the NUM, while also helping the NUM regain its representation.

The NUM has until July 16 to retain its status as a majority union, or vacate union offices at shaft level.

The offices were provided by the company to the dominant union, while other unions were provided with only one central office to service their members.

Amcu ousted the NUM as the majority union after a wildcat strike in Marikana, North West, last year, commanding 70% of unskilled workers and machine operators as members.

Rivalry between the two unions contributed to the deaths of at least 44 people in Marikana in August last year.

NUM spokesperson Lesiba Seshoka said on Tuesday the company had the right to discipline anyone alleged to have committed fraud.

“We hope the charges they face are true and not made-up charges.”

He said it was not correct that union leaders had attempted to poach Amcu members.

“You cannot cook membership,” said Seshoka.

The union had recruited 800 members, although conditions were not conducive for recruitment at Rustenburg mines.

“You cannot recruit when there is violence and intimidation.”

Since the wildcat strike in Marikana last year, at least 20 NUM members had been killed, Seshoka said.

During a two-day strike in May, Amcu members demanded that the NUM offices be shut down and accused the union of membership fraud.

The strike followed the death of Amcu regional leader Mawethu Steven.

He was shot dead at a tavern in Photsaneng on May 11, on the same day twin brothers Andile and Ayanda Menzi, 24, were shot at a shack in Wonderkop.

One died at the scene and the other died in hospital.

A NUM shop steward was shot dead and another wounded in Wonderkop on Monday.

Police shot dead 34 striking mineworkers on August 16. Ten people, including two police officers, were killed in the unrest during the preceding week.

Workers were on strike demanding a monthly salary of R12 500. The strike ended in September.

The killings of union leaders in the area has been linked to rivalry between the two unions.

North West premier Thandi Modise has called on Amcu and the NUM to denounce violence and commit themselves to peaceful coexistence at Lonmin and other mines around Rustenburg.

“There is no place for strong-arm tactics and the use of violence in our labour relation regime that allows freedom of association,” she said.

Modise called on workers to remain calm and help police in their investigations to unmask those behind the recent spate of violence.

SAPA

THE Democratic Alliance has come up with an innovative campaign using mobile company MTN to reach eligible voters.

The move has angered the ANC, leading to some members phoning MTN last week demanding that it disassociates itself from the DA.

For more http://www.sowetanlive.co.za

Pretoria – Reeva Steenkamp’s mother has revealed in a new documentary aired in the UK that her late daughter fought with her alleged murderer Oscar Pistorius “a lot”.

June Steenkamp appeared in the Channel 5 programme Why Did Oscar Pistorius Kill Our Daughter? – which aired in the UK on Monday night – and expressed her anger and regret about not being able to protect her daughter, reports TimesLive.

She recalled a tense telephone conversation she had with the 29-year-old model, who was travelling in a car with Pistorius. 

“She was afraid, she was so afraid. She phoned me and she said: ‘Mummy I’m in the car with Oscar and he’s driving like a lunatic.’

“I said: ‘Will you just give him the phone’. She gave the phone to Oscar straight away. I said, ‘Listen, if you hurt my baby in any way I will have you wiped out.’

“A week or so later she phoned me, we chatted about this and that, little girl things. I said: ‘How’s it going with Oscar?’ She said that ‘We’ve been fighting, we’ve been fighting a lot’.”

Graphic crime scene photos

Pistorius is set to make a brief appearance in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court Room C on Tuesday on a charge of premeditated murder. Pistorius maintains that he shot and killed his girlfriend through a locked bathroom door at his luxury Silver Lakes home on Valentine’s Day believing she was an intruder. 

Local and international media had already flocked to the court by Tuesday morning to cover the Blade Runner’s pre-trial hearing.

If found guilty of premeditated murder, Pistorius could face a life term in jail.

The case took a twist on Friday when graphic photos of the crime scene were leaked and published by Sky News in the UK. On Sunday night, Pistorius’s uncle Arnold Pistorius said a leaked photograph, purportedly showing the scene where Steenkamp was shot dead, had “shaken” the family.

National police spokesperson Brigadier Phuti Setati said on Friday police could not comment on the photograph because they did not know how it came to be in Sky News’s possession, reports Sapa.

“We don’t want to be distracted by these deliberate tactics. All that we want to do is secure a conviction, so we are working throughout and investigating professionally,” he said.

June Steenkamp said on the documentary that she and her family are “praying so hard” for their ordeal to be over.

Reeva Steenkamp’s uncle, Mike, said on Monday that neither he nor his brother, Reeva’s father Barry, would not be watching Tuesday’s court proceedings.

“Tomorrow will bring whatever it will bring. We are just trying to live our lives. Our family is taking it very hard. Words cannot bring Reeva back, no matter how much we want that. We just have to, for now, let it be.”

Channel24

Pretoria – A 54-year-old mechanic was found guilty of killing his three-year-old son with a pick-axe handle by the High Court in Pretoria on Monday.

Vincent Mugwagwa, a Zimbabwean, told the court he did not know what came over him when he attacked his son Wesley in June last year.

Wesley was the youngest of Mugwagwa’s nine children – five of whom live in Zimbabwe.

Mugwagwa testified he came to South Africa in 2010 after losing his job in Zimbabwe. He was later joined by his wife and the four younger children.

The day of the crime his wife accused him of being unfaithful. He chased her and the children out of the house, and followed them to a neighbour’s house, where there was a pick-axe handle in the yard.

“I don’t know how it happened. I did not believe it when they told me I was going to be arrested…. I don’t have an explanation for what I did that day,” he told the court.

“I was trying to hit the mother, not the child. The child did nothing wrong.”

Mugwagwa’s wife of 29 years, Dorica Chipeta, pleaded with the court not to send him to jail, because she and the children needed his financial support.

“When the incident happened, as much as I knew him, I was really shocked. Even now I can’t believe what got into him. He was very close to his children. The other children are still in shock, because they never expected something like that to happen.”

She asked the court to order her husband to do community service instead of sending him to prison.

“I accept he did kill the child, but I ask the court to give him community service so that he can support us and the children,” she said. – Sapa

Kaizer Chiefs football manager Bobby Motaung says he would love to have Knowledge Musona back at the club, but admits getting the player back is highly unlikely.

Rumours are doing the rounds that the Zimbabwean striker could be on his way back after two tough seasons in Germany, where he is contracted to Hoffenheim. He spent the past season on loan at FC Augsburg.

“He is my baby. I will love to have him back, but unfortunately he is contracted to a German team. He is in Europe where it is high-level, but if he is available I will definitely have him back,” ‘BobSteak’ says.

However, head of world football at ProSport International Paschalis Tountouris has insisted that the “priority for Knowledge Musona is to continue his career in Europe”.
For more http://www.kickoff.com

Platinum Stars coach Cavin Johnson’s move to SuperSport United is getting closer to being a done deal.

Johnson is currently in a meeting the Dikwena management about submitting his resignation before making the move to Tshwane.

It is also known to KickOff.com that the former Ajax Cape Town youth coach is not wanted in Rustenburg, with management reportedly favouring his assistant, Alan Freeze.

When KickOff.com contacted Johnson for comment he was still in a meeting.

“I’m in a meeting and we are still discussing this issue. By 16h00 today everything will be done and I will give you all the information you need,” the coach said.
For more http://www.kickoff.com