Innholdsfortegnelse for 9/20/2020 i City Press

Ministerial adviser Nqaba Nqandela’s shadow looms large over the R3.75 billion laptop tender sponsored by the department of higher education, science and technology to mitigate the impact of the national lockdown on the academic progress of poor students under government’s financial aid scheme. In May, Higher Education, Science and Technology Minister Blade Nzimande chose Nqandela to head a task team that would facilitate the urgent procurement of 750 000 devices to help students during the national state of disaster, which was declared to manage the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. When National Treasury rejected the proposed deviation because “the procurement does not meet the definition of emergency”, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) took over the tender process and Nqandela was again invited to participate in the bidding…

After more than six years without a job, Margaret Mbangatha* was ecstatic when she had the opportunity to finally work again – only to have the position snatched away not long after it had arrived. The 35-year-old mother of one started working as a domestic worker in January, but, just three months later, she lost her job as the country went into lockdown to curb the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus. “I was happy to have finally got a job after all the years of not working, but my joy did not last long and the situation kept getting worse, month after month, after I had stopped working,” she said. Mbangatha, who hails from the Eastern Cape and currently lives and works in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal, has no one to depend…

The proposed renaming of East London Airport to King Phalo Airport has been met with resistance from some traditional leaders in the province, who claim it is undermining them. This comes after the Eastern Cape Provincial Geographical Names Committee published proposed new names for four places on August 27. The proposal included changing the name of King William’s Town to Qonce, Berlin to Ntabozuko, East London to KuGompo and East London Airport to King Phalo Airport. However, traditional leaders of AmaGqunukhwebe in Tyolomnqa in East London have voiced their unhappiness with the airport name change – Phalo was one of the ancient kings of the Xhosa nation. Instead, they want the airport named after Chief Pato of AmaGqunukhwebe because they claim the land on which the airport is situated falls…

City Press has received several complaints from readers who are unhappy with the way their payment holidays have been managed. Many bank customers believe they were not fully informed of the consequences of taking a payment holiday. In some cases, they were even given a payment holiday without requesting it. The acceptance of a payment holiday would have automatically extended the period of the home loan, which would allow customers to continue to pay the same instalment amount as before the payment holiday, but results in a longer time to pay off the bond. Where customers initially took a payment holiday but then decided to make the instalment payments without opting out of that arrangement, they will find that their statements still show the extended home loan period. If you…

As a person who grew up in a violent home, I’m triggered every time I come across stories of women and children who suffer abuse at the hands of men. Although my grandfather didn’t raise his hand to me, probably because I was little, I remember crying after every attack my grandmother and my uncles – who were teenagers at the time – endured. Things were better when another man, who was slightly older than my grandfather and lived at the back in our yard, was around. My grandfather told me we were related, but I knew we weren’t. He wasn’t born in either of my grandparents’ families, but shared the same clan name as ours, which – in African culture – certified him as kin. My grandfather was usually…

Ten years ago, I was appointed vice-chancellor of Unisa. Inspired to lead with inclusivity in mind, I took up the baton from my predecessor, Professor Nyameko Barney Pityana, with vigour and excitement at the opportunity to take Unisa to even greater heights. As the newly inaugurated principal and vice-chancellor, I embarked on an agenda to ensure that Unisa realised its undoubted potential to be a dynamic, engaged, high-performance African university. To that end, we began the year by embedding the notion and practice of servant leadership. This notion was birthed by the need to move away from a hierarchical mode of leadership to one that is based on teamwork and community. To this day, I can attest to the fact that driving servant leadership has provided me with the opportunity…

The municipal sphere of government is the level that is closest to the people. Many basic services are delivered by local municipalities, and local ward councillors are the politicians closest to communities. The important role of local government in the development of communities is a constitutional imperative. Chapter 7 of the Constitution gives the objectives of local government as follows: • To provide democratic and accountable government for local communities; • To ensure the provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner; • To promote social and economic development; and • To promote a safe and healthy environment. One of the issues that South Africa’s 270 municipalities have to deal with is housing. The Housing Act 107 of 1997 states that every municipality must, as part of its process…

French tennis player Gaël Monfils has revealed that he was the target of a barrage of racist abuse on social media after his second-round exit from the Italian Open this week. In an Instagram post starting with the warning “watch your eyes”, the world number nine shared a few of the abusive messages that made reference to his skin colour and called him a “loser”. The 34-year-old player often responds to the abuse directed at him and his family with emojis of black hands. The abusive comments he received include one fan calling him a “stupid black monkey” and a “slave”. “Unfortunately, I gave it everything, but [it] was very bad,” he wrote above one insulting post after Thursday’s match. “Not a good evening, but I hope to come back…

Mamelodi Sundowns coach Pitso Mosimane has not just brought silverware to Chloorkop, he has also earned the club more than R100 million in prize money. In his eight years at the helm, the coach affectionately known as Jingles has brought 11 trophies to the Brazilians. The 56-year-old has won five league titles, the CAF Champions League, the CAF Super Cup, and two Telkom Knockout and Nedbank Cup trophies. The most prize money Sundowns won in a competition came from the CAF Champions League, which earned them $1.5 million (R21 million) in 2016. When the PSL’s Q-Innovation winnings are added to the earnings, the total goes up to R116.3 million. No other club in the PSL came close to this level of success over the past decade. The Orlando Pirates double…

Cricket SA (CSA) board member John Mogodi this week went against the grain by claiming the organisation’s much-maligned board of directors were the right people to take the game forward and out of its current crisis-a-week existence. The comments made by Mogodi – a registered accountant who is also the president and chair of the board of Limpopo Impala Cricket – come after widespread calls for the CSA board to resign en masse in the wake of a crisis of leadership that has seen the game in consistent meltdown mode since December. The SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) – the country’s governing body for all sporting codes – was the latest organisation to voice its lack of trust in the CSA leaders’ competence, with its acting president Aleck…

Would-be DA leader Mbali Ntuli has been so robust and forthright in her criticism of the party she belongs to that her detractors have concluded that her true intentions are to collapse it, rather than build it. While preparing to go up against interim party leader John Steenhuisen for the leadership of the party at its congress next month, Ntuli has taken on the hierarchy of the DA, shaking up the status quo. Western Cape member of the provincial legislature Bonginkosi Madikizela recently commented that Ntuli had been behaving like someone who did not want a leadership position. In a statement, Steenhuisen said that, rather than going public about the party’s problems, he used the avenues of the federal council and the party’s recent virtual policy conference to explore how…

As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20 – and nowhere is that more true than in the healthcare sector, as many begin retrospective takes on the virus outbreak that brought the world – including this country – to a standstill. Six months after South Africa’s first confirmed case of the deadly Covid-19 virus – which spread across the country and has so far infected more than 655 500 people and killed more than 15 700 – medical professionals at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital have offered rare insights into the challenges they faced and the lessons learnt. These ranged from delays in creating Covid-19-designated areas for patient treatment and shortages in personal protective equipment to the time taken for test results to come back due to a lack of on-site…

Poetry is subjective. It’s not just about words, but also about having the ability to tell a story in a way that enables the reader to visualise the pictures the poem paints. This is how poet Emmah Mabye expresses herself, and she describes poetry thus: “It’s when words are visually inviting, [painting] a picture of what words on a paper are. It’s when the tapestry of what is written makes you feel like you are there, within what has been written about.” City Press speaks to Mabye (34) at her home in Midrand about the outlet that poetry offers her. Her words address societal issues such as discrimination, sexism, segregation and gender-based violence. She says her poetry addresses “issues which speak to me, of me, about me or about others,…

In its research for stories to be included in South Africa’s leading heritage series, Our Story, which City Press has been running extracts from for the past few months, SA Heritage Publishers discovered a collection of writings that can only be described as a treasure trove of South African culture and history. The collection is made up of 891 writings in seven indigenous languages – siSwati and isiNdebele were not written languages at the time the works were compiled – written between 1930 and 1950 by 187 people in their mother tongues. It is estimated that there are between 15 000 and 20 000 typewritten A4 pages in the collection. The writers range from the well-known author and journalist RRR Dhlomo to a number of named but unknown South Africans.…

After having reduced the repo rate at the previous five Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meetings, the SA Reserve Bank decided to keep its key lending rate unchanged on Thursday, at 3.5% after a 3-2 vote. The decision came after a massive second-quarter GDP contraction, lower inflation figures, high unemployment, and reduced economic and business activity. On September 8, Stats SA released its second-quarter growth in GDP figures, which showed a contraction by 51% on a quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted and annualised rate, extending South Africa’s technical recession to four consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Stats SA showed that GDP shrank 17.1% year on year, compared with market expectations of a 16.5% slump, reflecting the impact of the country’s stringent lockdown restrictions to try to curb the spread of Covid-19. Reserve…

South Africa’s economy has been on life support for some time, with growth contracting over the past four quarters. This has, in no small measure, been exacerbated by the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, which almost brought the global economy to a standstill. The SA Reserve Bank stepped up and expanded monetary policy by slashing interest rates; banks allowed payment holidays; the temporary employer-employee relief scheme went some way towards mitigating salary and business losses; welfare cheques were issued; and the UIF shored up its reserves to pay out almost R30 billion. Treasury asked for and was granted loans by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to buffer the fallout. Make no mistake, though, the country’s finances are far from secure. Unemployment is projected to rise to a staggering 50%.…

Selective risk EFF leader Julius Malema does not mind occasionally breaking the law, but what he cannot stand is the inconvenience of being in court to answer for same. This week, Juju was very irritated at having to attend court to face charges of assaulting a cop. Malema said: “It was unnecessary for us to come here today because we are going through a pandemic. Any court that requires us to be here is risking our lives.” But Juju was reminded that, just a week before, he did not fear risking infection when he and his supporters besieged Clicks stores around the country. Keep dancing This week, national cupcake Cereal Ramaphosa tried to add a light touch to his family-time addresses about Covid-19. After speaking about lockdown regulation changes, Ramaphosa…

In among the excitement of rugby returning courtesy of Super Fan Saturday next weekend, the game will have to cautiously pick its way through how it deals with the #BlackLivesMatter (often abbreviated as BLM) movement. To suggest that the observation of #BlackLivesMatter has been seamless in Formula One, the English Premier League and the rest of the free sporting world would be disingenuous, but it hasn’t quite left the earth as scorched as it has in South Africa. Having begun with an innocuous comment by Proteas fast bowler Lungi Ngidi, the fallout in cricket was such that the sport now has a transformation ombud to deal with racial discrimination in the game, the recriminations elbowing for room with Cricket SA’s boardroom scandals. Seen as the last custodian of the “old”…

Freddy Zungu might not have kicked a ball for Mamelodi Sundowns, but he is a club legend in his own right. The Sundowns kitman is the most decorated member of the Tshwane powerhouse, having won almost every medal in local football with a club he joined as a driver in 1990. These include the prestigious CAF Champions League and the Super Cup, which he keeps separate from the rest because he ranks them as career highlights. While the 56-year-old has lost count of his gold medals, he’s still hungry for more – one in particular. “We’re still chasing the MTN8 title and I’ll be happy for coach Pitso [Mosimane] to add that one to his collection, too. It’s the only missing medal for the club so far,” Zungu said a…

Kaizer Chiefs are expected to announce Arthur Zwane and Dillon Sheppard as assistants to the club’s newly appointed head coach Gavin Hunt. City Press has learnt that the two have been recommended for the vacant position, which was occupied by Shaun Bartlett last season. Bartlett followed sacked head coach Ernst Middendorp out of Naturena last week after the former Bafana Bafana striker’s contract was terminated. Last week, City Press reported that Zwane, who has been in charge of the club’s reserve team in the MultiChoice Diski Challenge, was in the running for the position. Also linked to the job were two other Chiefs icons, Doctor Khumalo and Ace Khuse. It has now emerged that Zwane got the nod ahead of the two legends. It is believed Khumalo has now been…

Cassper Nyovest’s latest album is evidence that he has evolved as a hip-hop artist – this is the best album of his music career, judging by how it has been received by his fans. Many have described Nyovest, whose real name is Refiloe Phoolo, as an entertainer, but hardly as a top songwriter and producer. But his much-anticipated 21-track album, Any Minute Now, looks set to prove his detractors wrong. He really outdid himself this time with the composition and arrangements. Nyovest (29), has grown as an artist since his debut studio album Tsholofelo was released in 2014. The new father’s fans have already given his latest offering the thumbs up. Any Minute Now is a tribute to his infant son Khotso, who is named after his brother. The album…

With national lockdown restrictions lowered to alert level 1, the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) is set to resume by-elections, which were postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, following consultations with Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, as well as the represented political parties, via a special national party liaison committee meeting that was held on Thursday. By-elections that were initially scheduled to take place on March 18 and those scheduled for December will now be combined in all nine provinces across 461 voting districts and will be held on November 11. The IEC’s deputy CEO for electoral operations, Masego Sheburi, said the commission had been communicating with various stakeholders, and Thursday’s national party liaison committee meeting had culminated in a unanimous agreement that, since lockdown level 1…

Responding to the recommendations for the department of basic education, which included that it should ensure that undocumented, asylum-seeking refugees and children of foreign nationals were not denied access to education due to a lack of documents, spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said a high court judgment in the Eastern Cape in December ordered the department to amend the admission policy, particularly regarding pupils without documentation. “The department has been working to fix the policy, and issued a circular to all schools informing them about the implications of the judgment. We welcome the report by Human Rights Watch as it assists in tightening the policy in regard to pupils from other countries who don’t possess identity documents,” Mhlanga said. The other recommendations for the department included that school reporting protocols should be…

Complaints about vigilante-style attacks, allegedly masterminded by a council speaker in the farming and mining town of Delmas in Mpumalanga, are piling up, but the police in the area have not taken any action. Khaya Segone (42), speaker of the Victor Khanye Local Municipality, is alleged to be the leader of a mob that is terrorising the town. The gang is accused of attacking politicians, municipal officials and community members who dare to differ with Segone on any issues – from politics and jobs to business opportunities in the nearby coal mines. But Segone has denied that he was behind these raids, carried out by thugs clad in yellow overalls. Last year, former mayor Eva Makhabane was forced to quit her job after her relationship with Segone became unsustainable. From…

Could the cellphone start World War 3? If you consider how easily wars start, it is not such a far-fetched idea. The Rwandan genocide started when the president of that country, Juvénal Habyarimana, was assassinated. His plane was shot down above Kigali International Airport on April 6 1994. Habyarimana was a Hutu. Soon after the assassination, nearly 1 million Tutsis were killed in revenge. World War 1 started after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by Bosnian Serb teenager Gavrilo Princip. It is estimated that close to 40 million people were killed during that war. China and the US have fought two proxy wars in the past – first in the Korean War and later in Vietnam. Perhaps there has never been peace between China and the US,…

I am a 20-year-old woman and I feel unsafe in my own country. I watch movies of people living in other countries, walking around safely and confidently without the fears we face here. I use public transport to move around and it feels like an extreme sport. I avoid walking alone almost everywhere I go, and I constantly look over my shoulder to check whether someone is following me. I cannot plug in my earphones when walking because that is a signal to kidnappers that I am not aware of my surroundings. What are the chances of my getting into a relationship with an abusive man and what are the chances of my finding the courage to leave such a relationship? If South African statistics are anything to go by,…

The selling of PSL clubs is back in the spotlight – and it’s irritating the hell out of football fans. There can’t be “business as usual” when such transactions leave the players and coaching staff in the lurch. The sale of Highlands Park is a case in point. It was disturbing to hear that some players learnt about the deal only recently, when it was already signed and sealed. It seems those in charge didn’t have the decency to inform those who’d be affected in advance. Not so long ago, the Bidvest Wits sale to first-division campaigners Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila also created panic and even left head coach Gavin Hunt without a job. The news of the Wits transaction was officially relayed to the team on the cold Tuesday morning…

I am angry, and only President Cyril Ramaphosa can put a smile on my face again. I believe that the president missed a golden opportunity during his address to the nation on Wednesday to prove us wrong – us who doubt his dance moves. After that April blooper when he tried to put on a face mask, the president had a chance to redeem himself when he announced the country would move to lockdown level 1 today at midnight. All he needed to do was give us a taste of what to expect on Heritage Day, after he challenged South Africans to take part in the global Jerusalema dance craze – just like he demonstrated the elbow greeting. CR has nowhere to run this time – he has to come…

While former Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi may have been a thorn in the side of the apartheid government, he was certainly not the “anvil on which apartheid was broken”, as has been claimed by political scientist Henning Melber in various publications. Melber, who approvingly cites this claim by former Anglo American chairperson Gavin Relly, does not further explore Relly’s relationship with the KwaZulu homeland leader. No analysis of Buthelezi’s role is complete unless his relationships with businesspeople and white politicians are factored in, as he was able to capitalise on these links in dealings with the Nationalist government. The failure to include the specific structural dynamics of regional politics leads to an exaggeration of the power enjoyed by Buthelezi as a homeland leader. Buthelezi’s undoubted charisma, his…

At its 54th national conference in Nasrec in 2017, the governing party was honest enough to acknowledge the challenges it faced as it marked its centenary. Among them were “a loss of confidence in the ANC because of social distance, corruption, nepotism, arrogance, elitism, factionalism, manipulating organisational processes, abusing state power and putting self interest above the people”. “Even the strongest ANC supporters agree the ‘sins of incumbency’ are deeply entrenched,” the party said. The conference further noted that “many organisations and thought leaders have become critics of the ANC and its leadership. And we are losing much of our influence and appeal among students, young intellectuals and the black middle class. “While we know that much of the ANC and government are not affected by this cancer, the movement…

Over almost two decades, disadvantaged children in Mpumalanga’s Bushbuckridge area were excitedly playing cricket thanks to the efforts of one school teacher. But, two years ago, the project came to a grinding halt. Vincent Mokoena’s project died in 2018 after the Mpumalanga Cricket Union, which allegedly gave too little support to developing the sport in the area, cut off its scant patronage. Mokoena (50) from Tekamahala village, 30km from Bushbuckridge, had juggled his full-time teaching job at Tamajane Secondary School with organising and coaching grassroots cricket at 240 schools since 1999. Over the years, he pleaded with the union to increase its support, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. “The union did not fully support us and would give us leftovers. My young players shared a bat in training,…

As members of the fourth estate, we are not only expected to provide people with information, we are also duty-bound to educate our readers on various issues through editorials and columns. Today, I am here to share vital information on a topic I have been schooled on – a protest in football. This follows last weekend’s Nedbank Cup final between Mamelodi Sundowns and Bloemfontein Celtic. Sundowns’ victory was marred by controversy after it emerged that they had a player on the bench who not supposed to be there because he had been suspended. Celtic lodged a protest, albeit later in the game. PROTEST Contrary to what many believe, the intention of a protest is not to punish the other party. When you lodge a protest, you are merely warning your…

When the Sharks play the Bulls on Super Fan Saturday at Loftus Versfeld, the home team is guaranteed to have a whopping 10 fewer familiar players in its starting lineup than it did when the two sides met in the opening round of Super Rugby BC (before Covid-19) in January. Said players no longer draw a salary from the Pretoria franchise, having either been culled by new director of rugby Jake White or taken advantage of the untimely May transfer window opened due to the Covid-19 outbreak by signing with overseas clubs to avoid pay cuts domestically. In the other half of the double-header, between the Lions and the Stormers, the Cape Town side faces similar unfamiliarity with its opponent, as the Johannesburg side has also lost a host of…