BY Obakeng Maje

Banyana Banyana head coach, Joseph Mkhonza has announced a squad of 28 players that will attend a training camp in Potchefstroom from 18 – 22 February 2013. The squad is gathering to prepare for the annual Cyprus Women’s Cup which starts on 6 March at Tasos Marajou Stadium in Paralimi, Cyprus.

After the first week of camp, the extended squad will be cut down to 22 players which the coach will take with him to do duty in Cyprus. The squad features six new players whom the coach has been eyeing in a bid to breed a new crop of players for the national team.

“I am trying to look to the future that is why I have included several players from the Under 20 National team. These are the players we are trying to give a chance because experience has taught us that we need to be prepared for all circumstances. If you remember when we went to the London Olympic Games we had four key players, so we need a bigger pool of players to be ready to slot in when needed,” said Joseph Mkhonza.

“We also want to qualify for all upcoming tournaments starting with the 2014 African Women’s Championship, where we need to finish in the top three to automatically qualify for the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada. These two tournaments will help us prepare thoroughly for the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.”

Banyana Banyana is expected to depart for Cyprus on Monday, 25 February, but before that they will play a friendly match on Saturday, 23 February with still-to-be announced opponents. Banyana Banyana will also face New Zealand upon arrival in Cyprus as part of their final preparations.

The two clashes will give coach an opportunity to assess the match fitness of the players and also to look at possible combinations before the start of the tournament that will feature teams like England, Canada, Switzerland and the Republic of Ireland.

In their group, Banyana Banyana is drawn with Korea Republic, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. They will kick off against the Korea Republic on Wednesday, 6 March and will go on to play the Republic of Ireland on March 8 and will finish off their group matches against Northern Ireland on March 11.

“This is the first outing of the year for the team, so we need to start on a good footing. This tournament is key as it will give players a good work out for future tournaments,” said Mkhonza.

“We also need to improve our performance in this tournament as we finished 10th out of 12 teams last time around. A good showing will surely improve our rankings.”

The three overseas based players in the squad, Nompumelelo Nyandeni, Kylie-Ann Louw and Roxanne Barker will meet up with the rest of the squad upon the team’s arrival in Cyprus.

Banyana Banyana squad that will report for camp on Monday, 18 February 2013:

BY Obakeng Maje

Bafana Bafana assistant coach Serame Letsoaka has been invited to Egypt to be part of a select group of experts to review the CAF Coaching Licensing System with the aim to make it more relevant to the African set-up.

Letsoaka, a CAF Coaching Instructor, is the former SAFA Technical Director and has conducted several high–profile coaching courses in and outside South Africa.

There will be three working sessions of four days each which will be held at the CAF Headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.

The First Session to take place from February 18-21 will review the C License; the second is scheduled for March 4-7 to review the B License while the Third Session to run from April 2-5 will review the A License.

Letsoaka will be in the company of Belhassen Malouche (Tunisia), Jean Michel Benezet (Consultant FIFA, France), Mohamed Basir (AFC, Singapore), Jean Pierre Morlans (TD France) and Mama Sow (Senegal). The following persons will also be in attendance:

General Coordinator: Captain Shatta – CAF Director Development Division Observer: Jean Marie Conz (Suisse) – FIFA Technical Director

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The patience of South Africa’s population is wearing thin and urgent action needs to be taken to address the big concerns, including economic growth and jobs, big deficits and social stability, according Old Mutual Investment Group South Africa senior economist Johann Els.

Speaking at the company’s Breaking the Economic Deadlock conference at Montecasino yesterday, Els said although the state was spending too much, with half of its expenditure going on wages and social grants, the lingering social challenges made for a discontented society as shown by the protracted labour strikes and the uncertainty of business about the political scenario.

“Politics matters a lot to business, politics is a huge constraint for business investing in their own business,” he said.

He said the backdrop to the increasing agitation was that 2012 was dominated by fear, with the euro zone falling apart, the fear of the world economy slumping to recession and policy that either did not work or led to more errors. But despite this, “none of the risks actually materialised”.

Part of the remedy lay in achieving sustainable growth over a long period to bring unemployment down.

He lauded the National Development Plan as fantastic but said the country “needs government to have the same sense of urgency that we need to do something now”.

On the excessive expenditure on wages and social grants, Els said there was a need for tax increases, which would cushion the state’s limited resources and at the same time help to achieve sustained job creation.

“Unfortunately there is no decent growth model, there is no single sector that can boost the economy,” he said.

Articulating the problems that needed to be addressed, Els pointed out the following:

l uncertainty about future policy direction; excessive government regulation and meddling in the economy; low employment absorption, which was a function of the labour laws, education, productivity and labour relations; corruption, which was a drag on infrastructure and tainted South Africa’s investor attraction;

l infrastructure backlogs, in which implementation crosswinds hampered plans;

l escalating costs in the economy, including wages, electricity, fuel, water and public service charges; and

l fiscal constraints, including the state’s wage bill and grant explosion, that threatened the infrastructure drive.

Making an assessment of South Africa’s ranking in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index of 144 countries, Els said the country lagged behind pathetically in labour/employer co-operation, where it was last. It was 143rd in maths and science education, the same in hiring and firing practices and 140th in quality of higher education and flexibility of wage setting.

“On the upside, say the fixes are made with vigour and speed, confidence recovers and growth and employment improves, but if the fixes are not made, investor confidence grinds lower, growth stagnates at 3 percent, social and financial pressures mount relentlessly and the end game is a crises,” he said.

Speaking at the same event, veteran journalist and author Max du Preez said the worst never happened in South Africa but sadly, neither did the best.

Pretoria – The State intends charging paralympian Oscar Pistorius with premeditated murder after the death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court heard on Friday.

“Is the State’s argument premeditated murder?” asked Magistrate Desmond Nair asked.

“Yes,” said prosecutor advocate Gerrie Nel.

Pistorius was arrested on Thursday after Steenkamp was shot dead in his home, at the Silver Woods Country Estate in Pretoria, on Valentine’s Day. 

The magistrate has postponed Pistorius’s case to February 19 after a highly charged first appearance on Friday. – Sapa

Pretoria – There are still more questions than answers about what happened on the night a Theresa Park woman and her two small children were murdered, but for now her killer has been sentenced to three life sentences and 28 years’ imprisonment.

Sipho Masiqa, 36, maintained to the end that he had nothing to do with the July 2010 murders of Thifhelimibilu (Pauline) Mashau and her two children – four-year-old Adivhao and eight-month-old Aveani.

Mashau’s half naked body, dressed only in a pink pyjama top, was found in bushes near Ga-Rankuwa two days after the bodies of her children were found in her home. She had been stabbed with a knife and strangled to death and was sexually assaulted.

The baby was discovered face down in the bath and her sister in a bedroom with a balaclava pulled over her face. Both children had been strangled and suffocated.

“You are a dangerous man who needs to be permanently removed from society,” Judge Bert Bam told Masiqa yesterday.

The murder of the woman was an act of savagery, he said. 

“Not only was she stabbed, but she was also strangled. She was overpowered while still in her pyjamas. The killing of her two children was also brutal and barbaric.”

The judge said the two children were defenceless.

“Why they were murdered remains a mystery. It seems so senseless to kill little children. They could pose no threat to anyone.”

The judge said the children were shown no mercy. “The killing of children is a reprehensible crime.”

Masiqa had told the court several versions. The first was that Mashau asked him for a firearm to kill herself, while the second was that she asked him to kill her. The third was that Mashau asked him to stage a robbery at her house for insurance purposes. 

Masiqa said he staged the robbery, but had nothing to do with the murders. According to him, she killed her own children and gave him R10 000 and her car for staging the robbery.

Masiqa admitted he was at her home on the night of the murder.

He claimed Mashau and a man named Peter fetched him from work and took him to the house.

The woman took the children to a bedroom, he said, and he never saw them again.

For more details go to www.iol.co.za

BY Obakeng Maje

Pretoria-South African award-winning athlete Oscar Pistorius shed his tears when led away by Police into a court room this morning in Pretoria Magistrate Court.

Pistorius cried hysterically and the magistrate prevents photographers from entering the court room.Pistorius was arrested yesterday at his mansion after he allegedly shot dead his girlfriend, Steenkamp.

The gruesome event was reported by a concerned neighbour after hearing gunshots at the runner’s residential area.

He appears before Magistrate for charge of murder after he spent a night in a holding cell.

Oscar Pistorius,26 won many medals for South Africa in Olympics and according to information the NPA are very adamant to oppose the runner’s bail application.

So far no one knows what really led to the “shoot out” and the runner will be given that opportunity to state his facts.

The lawyers of Pistorius highlighted that the runner will apply for bail when he appears today.

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The government is trying its best to fight corruption, President Jacob Zuma told a The New Age breakfast on Friday.

“From my understanding we are trying our best to deal with corruption. If I look around in the world, I think there are very few countries that talk about corruption. It is not as if corruption is not there. We are reported more about because we are talking about it,” Zuma said.

“Yesterday (Thursday) I indicated the progress we have made [in fighting corruption]. We are even discussing the tender system, whether don’t we need to change it in order to restrict the possibilities of corruption?”

Zuma said there was also corruption in the private sector, which was not often talked about.

Zuma said South African society had been called to join the government in the fight against corruption. Of the cases that were reported, “many of them are being attended to”, he said.

-Sapa

Cape Town – Violence in society originates from the apartheid system, President Jacob Zuma said on Friday.

“I don’t think as a nation we just became violent overnight. Violence is a direct consequence of apartheid. Apartheid was a very violent system. So violent that even if you peacefully demonstrated, they would shoot at you and kill you,” Zuma told a The New Age breakfast.

“That called the reaction from those who were oppressed to become very violent in fighting apartheid.”

Zuma said the African National Congress was a non-violent organisation. However, due to persistent violence from the apartheid government, the party had to take up arms.

“Those who are demonstrating for example, because they are from that kind of situation that if you protest you are going to be shot at, so they are already in a sense full of readiness to do violence,” Zuma said.

“If we have that background it means it is not a matter that we are going to deal with overnight. We are going to take time.”

However, Zuma condemned violent protests. He urged citizens to respect other people’s rights while exercising their right to strike.

Rustenburg – The conduct of miners believed to be affiliated to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) took centre stage at the Farlam Commission of Inquiry on Thursday.

Lonmin miner Vusimuzi Mandla Mabuyakhulu, speaking through an interpreter, told the commission he feared for his life and was scared to go home after being told NUM members were looking for him.

On Thursday morning, Mabuyakhulu told the commission he had not been sleeping at his house.

Commission chairman judge Ian Farlam said no witness should be intimidated. If needed, Mabuyakhulu would be provided with witness protection.

Karel Tip, for the NUM, said it was opposed to any “sort of unlawful intimidation”.

“No event of this kind would have been sponsored by any structure of the NUM,” he said.

The commission heard that Mabuyakhulu was shot, assaulted and left to die by men associated with the NUM on August 11.

He is employed at Lonmin Platinum’s Karee mine, where rockdrill operators went on strike in demand of a R12,500 a month wage last year.

“We need the money. The work we do is extremely difficult,” he said.

The commission heard that in August, rockdrill operators decided  that no union could represent them when speaking to mine management  about wage increases.

He said one of their reasons was because “it had become clear that NUM indicated that it would not be able to discuss wages for rock drill operators”.

On August 10, five representatives went to speak to mine management, which informed them that the NUM had told the mine not to speak to striking workers.

The workers then agreed they would go to the NUM’s offices for clarity.

On the morning of August 11, a group of about 3000 striking workers gathered at the Wonderkop Stadium.

They were told people had been shot by NUM members, and that miners had been accosted at a bus station and forced, at gunpoint, to return to work.

He said that as the group walked to the offices it came across a  group of NUM members singing songs. They heard two gunshots and started running.

Mabuyakhulu was shot in the back.

Recalling the shooting, he said: “No one was prepared to help another man; it was difficult, because we were all running away….  NUM members were following from behind and found me lying on the road.”

When the men, dressed in NUM attire, asked him where he worked, Mabuyakhulu said he lied to save his life.

He told the commission one of the men accused him of lying, and of being a member of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu).

“Then one man appeared from the side and said ‘let’s finish him up’,” he said.

Mabuyakhulu said a man on his left had a spear and repeatedly hit him with the handle, until it broke. Another man in white overalls and a NUM T-shirt stood in front of him with a butcher’s knife.

“I felt a blow on the back of my head and lost consciousness. After they left me, I came to and I tried to crawl away…”

The commission heard that Mabuyakhulu was unable to say which day he regained consciousness, and was not aware which hospital he was taken to for treatment.

“It’s with the help of the Almighty that I survived. Apparently my time had not come as yet,” he said.

A short video of a group of men walking with sticks, metal objects and pangas was shown to the commission.

“Those are the men that attacked me,” Mabuyakhulu said, pointing  to the television screen in front of him.

He told the commission that a statement made in his name on August 17 was not completely correct, and that the signature was not his.

He asked show the commission his injuries, explaining that although the mine had declared him fit to go underground, he felt he was unable to efficiently do his work.

He told the commission that Amcu could not negotiate wages, because it was not a “recognised union”.

The commission is probing the deaths of 44 people during an unprotected strike at Lonmin Platinum’s mine in Marikana.

On August 16, 34 striking mineworkers were shot dead and 78 were  injured when police opened fire while trying to disperse a group which had gathered on a hill near the mine.

Ten people, including two police officers and two security guards, were killed near the mine in the preceding week.

The commission resumes on Friday morning with the cross-examination of Mabuyakhulu. – Sapa