Pretoria News Weekend Saturday, January 30, 2021

FIRST COVID-19 VACCINES TO ARRIVE ON MONDAY IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN SIYABONGA MKHWANAZI siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za AFTER months of waiting and criticism of government for not ordering them earlier, the first consignment of Covid-19 vaccines is due to arrive from India on Monday. This makes South Africa only the second country on the continent to get vaccines after Morocco received its first batch. Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced that the first one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine would leave the Serum Institute of India tomorrow, to be followed by a further half a million does later in the month to cover the health-care sector. The government is planning – in its biggest logistical challenge – to immunise 40 million people or 67% of the population by the end of…

LATEST COVID STATS THE cumulative number of Covid-19 cases identified in South Africa is 1 437 798, more than a quarter of them in Gauteng. While 7 150 new cases were reported on Thursday, with 555 more deaths, the figures do appear to be in decline. In the last seven-day period there were an average of 8 142 cases a day reported, compared to over 18 000 during a similar period in mid-January. The cumulative total of tests conducted to date is 8 156 239 with 48 406 new tests conducted since the last report. The recovery rate is 88.3% with 43 105 deaths in this country to date. Staff Reporter…

Gauteng ready for vaccine, not ready to lift alcohol ban NORMAN CLOETE norman.cloete@inl.co.za GAUTENG is not ready to lift the ban on the sale of alcohol, according to Premier David Makhura. But he did concede that numbers were going down and the province was ready for its vaccine roll-out to start next week. At a media briefing he also slammed a Sunday World report that he had been “fingered” in a PPE corruption scandal. “I will not play in the mud. I have a clear conscience. In the last seven years, I have not sought to enrich myself or a comrade of mine,” said Makhura. The Gauteng Provincial Coronavirus Command Council addressed a media briefing to inform citizens of the state of readiness for the vaccine roll-out. The council said…

COLUMNIST PUTS DOWN HIS PEN AFTER 20 YEARS MATHS have never been my strong point, but by my reckoning I have penned well over 1 000 Laid Back columns over the past 20 years – the first one was in 2000. I didn’t miss one week. Whenever I went on leave, I ensured that I wrote one (or two) in advance. I did, in fact, start writing Talk Today columns in 1995, the year I began work at the Pretoria News, and the first one was about the one-year celebration on the then-Strijdom Square of the 1994 elections (I had just returned from living 12 years in exile in the UK to start work at the ’News). The constant elements in my musings have been politics and rock ‘n’ roll.…

IEC: Political party funding act set to kick off SAMKELO MTSHALI samkelo.thulasizwe@inl.co.za THE Independent Electoral Commission said yesterday that its final preparations for the implementation of the Political Party Funding Act were now well under way with the act set to commence on April 1. In a media briefing, the commission’s senior leadership outlined plans around the implementation of the act and what its regulations meant for political parties. The commission said that when the act commences it will open the transparency envelope around the issue of party funding and that this would allow for investigations to be possible when misdemeanours occur. The commission’s deputy chairperson, Janet Love, said that the commission would table an annual report in Parliament with a record of all donations across the political spectrum while…

EYE IN THE SKY…