By Obakeng Maje
Kimberley Police are investigating a case of possession of drugs after the arrest of two suspects with approximately 30kg of suspected mandrax pills with an estimated street value of R1.2 million.

On Saturday at approximately 00:05, police received information that two people with suspected Mandrax pills were held by police deployed to work at Shosholoza Mail in Kimberley Train Station.

Kimberley police swiftly attended to the complaint and a 72-year-old man as well as a 49-year-old woman were found to be in possession of about 12 439 suspected Mandrax pills which were contained in two bags.

“The two suspects were immediately arrested and the drugs were confiscated. They will be charged with possession of drugs. During this time of their arrest the two were in a train that was coming from Johannesburg to Cape Town and their exact destination is unknown at this moment” lieutenant Donald Mdhluli said.

Whilst on the scene police managed to also search and arrest a 42-year-old man for being in possession of about 1.8 grams of cocaine. He is also facing a charge of possession of drugs.

Three were detained and are expected to appear before the Kimberley Magistrate Court on Monday.

The Kimberley Cluster Commander, Major General Jean Abrams applauded the SAPS members working at Shosholoza Mail as well as the Kimberley police as they displayed their commitment to their work. She said this is “a job well done” and reiterated that “the police will continue to ensure that the society is safe and free from drugs, even if it means doing stop-and-searches on daily basis in trains, taxis, private cars, liquor outlets, and everywhere where we suspects that drugs can be found”.

The investigation continues.   
-TDN
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By Obakeng Maje
Rustenburg- Police have scored a major victory in the ongoing fight to curb illegal trade in precious metals when they arrested two suspects for possession of platinum in Rustenburg.

On Thursday police deployed for Operation Platinum Belt were busy conducting patrols at Rustenburg bus rank when they spotted two suspicious-looking men inside a stall.  They searched them and recovered platinum weighing 208 kg and 22g of dagga hidden in their bags. The suspects, aged 26 and 30 failed to give a proper explanation on how they acquired the recovered properties, says North West police.

“During the same operation, police also arrested a Nigerian national,28, for possession of two rock tablets. Another two suspects were arrested and pirated DVDs worth an estimated street value of R5000 confiscated” captain Pelonomi Makau said.

The suspects are due to appear at Rustenburg Magistrates’ Court on Monday facing charges varying from possession of platinum, possession of drugs and Counterfeit Goods.
-TDN
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By Obakeng Maje
Vryburg- The fight against non-ferrous metals related crimes became successful when three suspects were apprehended for theft of electrical copper cables on Thursday in Vryburg.  

North West police said the arrest came after the town was left dark due to alleged theft of electric copper cable after 22:00 on Thursday. 

“It is alleged that a team contracted to ESKOM and known as Combined Private Investigation that was deployed in the affected area, immediately conducted a search.

“They allegedly searched electric power line and the field along N14 road where three males were found in possession of 450 metres of electrical copper cables that were apparently stolen from the power line near Vryburg” captain Pelonomi Makau said.

The police were called to attend the scene where three rolls of electrical copper cables were confiscated. The replacement value of the cables is estimated at R67 000. Three suspects,  aged 29, 38 and 46 were arrested for theft and being in possession of copper cables. 

The trio is due to appear in Vryburg Magistrate Court on Monday.  
-TDN
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Johannesburg – The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) is slow in its investigations, the portfolio committee on telecommunications and postal services said on Friday.

“The portfolio committee… is concerned about the slow pace of the investigations by the SIU into some entities of the department,” chairperson Mmamoloka Kubayi said in a statement.

The committee received a report from SIU head Vasantrai Soni on progress in outstanding investigations into entities within the department, as proclaimed by the president.

Kubayi urged the SIU to urgently find speedy resolutions.

SIU spokesperson Boy Ndala said he could not comment on the matter as he had not seen the committee’s comments.

SAPA

Durban – South Africa has achieved much in health since the era of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, but South Africans are still getting a raw deal, a health conference in Durban heard on Friday.

“We have poor health outcomes despite good policies,” Salim Abdool-Karim, director for the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa, told an SA Medical Association conference in Durban.

“Health outcomes are disproportionately poor.”

He said since Tshabalala-Msimang stepped down as health minister in 2008, the government’s decision to implement the world’s biggest antiretroviral programmes had a major impact on South Africa’s mortality rate.

A quarter of all people in the world receiving antiretroviral treatment were in South Africa.

The rate of mother-to-child HIV transmission had fallen almost 10-fold, from 27% to 2.7% of newborn babies being infected.

There had been other improvements in health, such as a slight decline in tobacco consumption.

The country was unique in that it carried an exceptionally high health burden, he said.

Some 17% of all HIV infections globally occurred in South Africa while it had less than 1% of the world’s population.

The country had 5% of the world’s tuberculosis cases.

Injuries caused by violence were higher than the global average, with South Africa accounting for 1.3% of such injuries.

South Africa had 1% of the world’s non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

Abdool-Karim said there was a steady increase in these diseases.

South Africa was unique in that it was affected disproportionately by several health problems at the same time.

Bangladesh, which had a population of about 150 million, spent less money per person on health and yet all its health indicators, such as infant mortality, matched those of South Africa, with a population of about 53 million.

SAPA

Johannesburg – EFF members sang about President Jacob Zuma and the money spent on Nkandla as they waited for party leader Julius Malema to address them on Friday night.

“u Zuma o thate i mali yethu” (Zuma has taken our money), they sang in Boksburg, on the East Rand, at an event to celebrate women’s month.

The song was a reference to the R246m spent on security upgrades to Zuma’s Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal homestead. Public Protector Thuli Madonsela recommended in her report on Nkandla that Zuma repay that part of the money not spent on security features, like a swimming pool, cattle kraal, and visitors’ centre.

Last Thursday EFF MPs disrupted questions to Zuma in the National Assembly by chanting “pay back the money”.

At Friday’s event about 100 Economic Freedom Fighters members dressed in red berets and overalls sang struggle songs as they waited for Malema, including one paying homage to ANC veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

SAPA

Cape Town – A police constable who corruptly smuggled Mandrax and tik to an awaiting- trial prisoner at the Swellendam Magistrate’s Court was jailed for eight years on Friday for corruption.

Constable Grandville Francke, 34, an orderly at the court, was unaware that he had been targeted in an under-cover police operation and that the prisoner in the cell was in fact part of the trap in March last year.

He appeared in the Bellville Specialised Commercial Crime Court before Magistrate Sabrina Sonnenberg, who also declared him unfit to possess a firearm.

According to the charge sheet, Francke handed a parcel containing three Mandrax tablets and three straws filled with tik to the prisoner in the cell and then went to a store in Swellendam where he received his R500 reward.

Francke told the court that he had given the parcel to the prisoner unaware that it contained drugs, and that he was soon afterwards sent to a shop to purchase chocolates for his supervisor.

On the way, a stranger had given him what he first thought was a R100 note but what turned out to be R500, to buy himself something to drink.

Because of the general hostility between the public and the police, he had accepted the money as a gesture of gratitude for his work as a police official, knowing full well that he was forbidden to accept gifts from the public.

When he realised that he had been given R500 and not R100, he could not “go chasing after the stranger to tell him he had given him too much”, Francke told the court.

He was unaware, at the time, that his acceptance of the money made him guilty of corruption, he told the court.

The magistrate disagreed with defence attorney Chantelle Morgan that Francke was entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and therefore an acquittal.

Instead, she ruled that his version was so inherently unlikely as to be rejected as false.

She said Francke, with seven years’ service, was an embarrassment to the police service.

A wholly suspended sentence, or correctional supervision involving a short period of imprisonment and then his release into house arrest, as suggested by the defence, was inappropriate.

Lenient sentences would cause the public to lose respect for the courts, and would encourage people to take the law into their own hands, she said.

She agreed with prosecutor Xolile Jonas that corruption involving police officials called for harsh punishment, as their job was to uphold the law, not breach it.

The message to the Swellendam community had to be that corruption would not be tolerated.

SAPA

Johannesburg – EFF leader Julius Malema has called on National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete not to push the party to shut down Parliament.

“One thing Baleka Mbete does not realise is that if all opposition walk out, they will have to collapse the Parliament,” he told party members in Boksburg on the East Rand, during a women’s month event.

“They must not push us to that level because we will go and have elections again.”

He was reacting to Mbete’s threat to suspend Economic Freedom Fighters MPs from Parliament following their heckling of President Jacob Zuma in Parliament on Thursday last week.

EFF MPs disrupted questions to Zuma in the National Assembly by chanting “pay back the money” and then refusing to leave the House when Mbete ordered them out.

Malema said opposition parties on Friday showed unity when they put their differences aside and refused to select a chairperson for the Nkandla ad hoc committee. They first wanted the committee’s mandate reworked to expressly include Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s findings on the R246m spent on security at Zuma’s Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, homestead.

Reasons

Malema said suspension would not silence the party. They would use the time to launch more branches.

“Jacob Zuma must know that the time for laughing in Parliament is over. He must give the right answers or what happened will continue. Suspend us and when we come back, we will start from where we left off,” Malema said.

Mbete has written to each of the 25 EFF MPs individually to give reasons why they should not be barred from the legislature for up to two weeks for disrupting presidential question time.

Malema earlier on Friday threatened to take the matter to court should Mbete not withdraw her plans to suspend his MPs by noon on Sunday.

He blamed the African National Congress for the formation of his party. If the ruling party thought the EFF was a problem, it had created the problem, he said.

Malema said his organisation was making MPs think twice when they had to account to Parliament.

SAPA

Johannesburg – A desperate Midrand father has taken to illegally protesting outside his baby’s mother’s workplace every day in a bid to get her to agree to let him see his child.
For more http://www.news24.com

Johannesburg – A claim for damages of at least R6m for the “wrongful suffering” of a child born with Down’s syndrome was heard in the Constitutional Court, The Times reported on Friday.

The mother, who cannot be named to protect the child’s identity, wanted the foetal assessment centre in Claremont to pay damages for failing to recognise that her unborn son was at “very high risk” of Down’s syndrome, according to the report.

Had she known the severity of the risk, she would have aborted the foetus, according to the report.

Instead of the parents having to bear the costs of caring for the child the foetal assessment centre should be responsible, she argued.

The High Court in Cape Town dismissed the mother’s application earlier this year.

The Claremont centre opposed the application.

Citing case law, the high court noted that such a claim, which would require a court to determine whether a child should have been born,”goes to the heart of what it is to be human, [something that] should not be asked of the law”.

But in the Constitutional Court, the mother denied basing her damages claim on “wrongful life”, instead making the novel claim of “wrongful suffering”.

She said that instead of considering whether her son should have been born the court should determine whether the centre’s alleged negligence should result in it paying damages, according to the report.

Judgment was reserved.

SAPA