Innholdsfortegnelse for 2023-04-19 i Pretoria News

A LEADING Centurion law firm and its director obtained an interdict against a disgruntled client who had been badmouthing the company and the lawyer in a series of emails to various entities. She referred to the lawyer as being a “fraudster”. Lawyer Johan van Greunen turned to the high court sitting in Bloemfontein, as he said he could not simply sit back and allow Hilda McGovern to continue defaming him and his firm, Van Greunen & Associates. The lawyer, who has also served as an acting judge in the past and who has an unblemished reputation, told the court that McGovern, a businesswoman, simply would not stop her badmouthing campaign. She wrote several emails and letters in which Van Greunen and others are referred to as fraudsters. The recipients included…

South Africa’s most vulnerable struggle to stomach food hike prices and to help, Afrika Tikkun, a non-profit organisation, keeps thousands of hungry children fed daily. The organisation has voiced its concerns about the rising food supply challenges. They alleviate hunger and fight malnutrition in the country, investing in the development of disadvantaged youth – from cradle to career – by providing a holistic set of education, health and social services to nudge the young into adult success. Established in 1994, Afrika Tikkun is authentically South African and, said CEO Agnes Sibanda: “We are recognised both locally and internationally for our commitment to the holistic development of young lives in impoverished communities. We are an organisation that prides itself on being partnership-focused and working alongside local and global organisations to build…

Explosions rocked the Sudanese capital Khartoum yesterday, the fourth day of fighting that has claimed nearly 200 lives despite growing international calls for an end to hostilities that have spawned increasing lawlessness. A weeks-long power struggle erupted into deadly violence Saturday between the forces of two generals who seized power in a 2021 coup: army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Underscoring the chaos, the US said one of its diplomatic convoys was fired upon, and the EU said its ambassador was attacked at home. Aid groups have reported looting of medical and other supplies. Battles have taken place throughout the vast northeast African country and there are fears of regional spillover of the conflict that has seen…

The number of Afghans in poverty nearly doubled to 34 million as the nation was racked by the collapse of the US-backed government and the Taliban takeover, the UN said yesterday. After the US-backed republic fell in 2021, vast foreign subsidies were halted and aid programmes dramatically cut back as many countries refused to deal with the Taliban authorities in Kabul. In December, those NGOs still providing vital help were dealt a further blow by a Taliban government order barring Afghan women from working for them. This month the curb was extended to the UN’s Afghan female employees and the organisation said it now faces an “appalling choice” over whether to continue its aid schemes. Yesterday, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) released a stark new assessment of 2022 data estimating…

Brussels: Environmental groups lodged a lawsuit against the European Commission yesterday to challenge its definition of natural gas as a “green” energy source. Another NGO, Greenpeace, sued the EU executive separately for deciding that nuclear energy was worthy of its sustainable investment label. The legal actions at the European Court of Justice come a year after the EU established its so-called “taxonomy”, a classification list of energy sources deemed sustainable as it seeks to shift to a carbon-neutral future. Nuclear power and natural gas were included, considered “trans-itional” sources worthy of breaks for green financing. | AFP…

Beijing: A fire in a Beijing hospital has killed 21 people, the state-run Beijing Daily said yesterday. Emergency response teams first received word that a fire had broken out at the Beijing Changfeng Hospital, the report said. The fire was extinguished about half an hour later and rescue efforts continued for about another two hours, by which time a total of 71 patients had been evacuated and taken to another location. The death toll was put at 21 by 6pm, it said. The cause of the accident was under investigation. Social media users posted videos of people sitting on external air conditioning units, while others, clinging to ropes, jumped from the building. | AFP…

PROTEAS white-ball coach Rob Walter may have been involved in robust discussions at Cricket South Africa’s annual coaches conference on Monday, but he no doubt would have been keeping one eye on Bangalore. At the conclusion of the international season, Walter proclaimed that he would be spending the off-season “mostly watching the IPL.” And if he did indeed tune into Monday’s action, Walter would have noticed that his burgeoning all-rounder Sisanda Magala was not able to take the field due to a hand injury and that Wayne Parnell (1/48) faced a baptism of fire on a batting paradise at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. However, he would have also received yet another strong message from former Proteas captain Faf du Plessis who he is by no means a spent force. In fact,…

AFRIMAT’S headline earnings per share is expected to fall 13% to 18% for the year to February 28, but the mid-tier mining group remains debt free and well capitalised to be able to execute its growth strategy. The share price slipped 2.97% to close at R49 on the JSE yesterday, some 27% below the R66.60 that it traded at a year ago. The construction materials, industrial mineral and bulk commodities mining group said in a trading statement yesterday that earnings per share were expected to decrease by between 15% and 20% compared to 560.7 cents for the year ended February 28, 2022. Headline earnings per share were expected to be between 445.2c and 472.3c, representing a decline of between 13% and 18% compared to 542.9c for the last financial…

A Cape Town-based beauty salon owner has revealed that convicted murderer and rapist Thabo Bester and his girlfriend Dr Nandipha Magudumana hired him last year, in November 2022, to recruit girls for their modelling agency known as “imedia”. Speaking exclusively to Independent Media, the beauty therapist, trading under the name “Taffy Tally Marz”, also known as “Talent”, revealed that Bester and Magudumana paid him handsomely for recruiting “beautiful girls” for them. At the time he was hired by the couple he was not aware of who Bester was until he appeared in the news after it was exposed that Bester and his girlfriend were the “most wanted” by the country’s law enforcement agencies. “I met Thabo Bester in November 2022. He first came to my salon for a haircut. We…

THERE are more than 150 000 vacant funded posts in the national and provincial government – at a time of deterioration of public confidence in the government’s ability to deliver quality and effective services. Minister of Public Service and Administration Noxolo Kiviet revealed these statistics in a written reply to questions from DA spokesperson for Public Service and Administration, Dr Mimmy Gondwe, in Parliament. Gondwe asked the minister to give details of the total number of funded posts currently vacant in the public service, and the breakdown of the specified numbers in the national government and each provincial government. She also wanted to know the reasons for the funded posts remaining vacant, and by what date was it envisaged that the positions would be filled. In her reply, Kiviet said…

WITH social media platforms having taken over the globe as a popular means of entertainment and communication, the doors have also been opened for harassment and cyberbullying to rocket. For this reason Specialist Security Services has called on users to immediately report instances of cyberbullying, and raise awareness to keep the trend at bay. The service’s Mike Bolhuis said while social media had brought many benefits, it had also given rise to a disturbing trend of cyberbullying. He described cyberbullying as the use of electronic communication to harass, intimidate or embarrass someone, which could have serious consequences for the victim’s mental health and well-being. Bolhuis, who works as a specialist investigator within the Serious Violent and Serious Economic Crimes unit, said creating a safe and inclusive online environment for all…

Recent academic studies by Edson Leroy Meyer and Ochuko Kelvin Overen reported that in South Africa, more than 3.5 million households do not have access to modern energy for lighting, cooking and heating. By the government’s own admission, the electrification of a 5% to 10% annual rate is insufficient for the country to achieve universal access to the grid by 2030. The report by Meyer and Overen suggests a new energy policy that recommends supplying 50kWh/month of electricity through renewable energy sources. The most successful and comprehensive application of a renewable energy policy to address poverty in rural areas is the experience in China. As part of the poverty reduction programme, a solar photovoltaic poverty alleviation project was introduced that is easily accessed and maintained. China set up solar…

The Kremlin said yesterday that President Vladimir Putin had visited two front-line regions in Ukraine, prompting Kyiv to brand it a tour of the scenes of Russian “crimes”. Moscow portrayed the trip as a marker of its control in occupied Ukraine, but Russia does not fully hold those areas despite claiming them after a widely condemned annexation. Putin’s visit to Kherson and Lugansk, only made public a day after it happened, came as China’s Defence Minister, Li Shangfu, was in Moscow to demonstrate what he called Beijing’s “determination” to stronger Russia ties. Moscow has been seeking allies to confront the West as its war in Ukraine causes immense destruction and suffering but has not neared Putin’s goal of capturing control of the country. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it was…

Swedish Radio has announced that it is quitting Twitter, the first major European public broadcaster to join three from North America that left the social media platform in the past week. Swedish Radio said Twitter had lost relevance for a Swedish audience, not blaming a new policy by Twitter, under owner Elon Musk, to label more public broadcasters as government funded. US broadcasters NPR and PBS and Canada’s CBC quit Twitter after it added new labels to its accounts, designating them “government-funded media”. That change appears to have been applied in North America but not in Western Europe, where they are labelled “publicly funded”. Gillinger said it was worrying that Twitter had reduced its workforce and that it could affect Twitter’s ability to handle bots, disinformation and hateful content. Twitter…

LONDON: Britain has sanctioned an individual suspected of financing Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, as part of an effort to “disrupt an international terrorist-financing operation”, the British government said yesterday. The government said it had used domestic counter-terrorism powers for the first time to freeze all assets and economic resources belonging to Nazem Ahmad in the UK and barred anyone in the country from doing business with him or any of the companies he owns. Ahmad, who was sanctioned by the US in 2019, has an extensive art collection in the UK and conducts business with British artists, galleries and auction houses. | Reuters…

Moscow: Moscow has opened a new criminal case against Russia’s top opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, who is already serving a nine-year prison sentence, his spokesperson said yesterday. Kira Yarmysh said it was the 10th case against the Kremlin critic, who was already facing up to 35 years in prison. Yarmysh said the administration staged a “provocation” against Navalny by placing an inmate “with personal hygiene problems” in his cell. The smell was so bad, Navalny “refused to go in there”, she said. According to informal prison “rules”, Navalny was expected to use force to kick the inmate out of his cell. “He told the guards that he would not do it because this convict was not to blame.” After being “hit and dragged into the cell”, Navalny “grabbed (the inmate)…

Going aggressively after clients who owe it billions in outstanding loans THE LAND BANK has decided to approach the National Treasury and ask it to help with conducting a forensic investigation of third-party agents who were disbursing and managing more than R10 billion debt owed to it in bad loans. This comes after the Land Bank aggressively went after clients who are owing it billions of rand in outstanding loans after it resumed new lending activities to commercial farmers after a two-year hiatus. Non-performing loans are part of the reasons why the cash-strapped bank entered a serious liquidity crisis when it failed to make interest payments due on its R50bn borrowings in April 2020, triggering a cross default on substantially all of its borrowings. Land Bank chairperson Thabi Nkosi…

Policy denying free health care services to asylum seekers, the undocumented or the stateless declared unlawful The Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, has upheld the right of all pregnant and lactating women and children under 6 to access free health services at all public health establishments, including hospitals. This is irrespective of their nationality and documentation status. It was ordered that the Gauteng regulations and a policy, introduced by the Gauteng Department of Health in 2020, which denied free health care services to pregnant and lactating women and young children who are asylum seekers, undocumented, or persons affected by statelessness, are declared unlawful. The Gauteng Department of Health was ordered to amend its policy by October 16 this year. It was also declared that any other similar policies or circulars that…

The North West government has appointed experts in finances to help its struggling municipalities with financial recovery plans after eight of them were placed under administration by Finance MEC Motlalepula Rosho. This was announced by MEC for Co-operative Governance, Traditional Affairs and Human Settlements, Nono Maloyi, following their provincial cabinet meeting over the weekend. Maloyi said several municipalities in the North West were experiencing challenges that impacted on their ability to render services to the citizens. In November 2021, Exco resolved to place the eight municipalities under mandatory intervention (in line with section 139(5) (a) and (c) of the Constitution, read together with section 139 of the Municipal Finance Management Act. Among them were the Naledi Local Municipality and Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality; Madibeng Local Municipality and Kgetlengrivier…

THE proposed zero wage increase by the City of Tshwane is likely to put the municipality on a collision course with municipal workers. The unions SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union were yesterday locked in a meeting with senior City officials over this week’s announcement that workers were unlikely to get salary increases in the next financial year. The Pretoria News understands that unions were unhappy with the possibility that their members would not receive salary increases. At the time of publishing, union leaders were yet to communicate their formal standpoint on the proposed 0% hike. Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink, said the City’s wage bill was already exorbitant, with at least 39% of the municipal budget spent on salary payments. Finance MMC…

Tickets for Africa’s grandest horse- racing affair, the Hollywoodbets Durban July 2023, are now on sale at Ticket- Pro. The highly anticipated event is set to take place on July 1, with 50 000 people expected to attend. It is also revealed that the Ticketpro kiosk will be available at Hollywoodbets Greyville racecourse at Gate 9, starting on June 19. A general access ticket provides front-row seats to the racing action from the grandstand and track-side lawns, live DJ performances, the runway, and public fashion competitions. With its theme announced as “Out of This World”, the event will showcase the fashion side of entertainment. A stellar line-up of top equines, a star-studded cast of punters, celebrities and designers at play, coupled with entertainment and hospitality on a “cosmic scale”, are…

WHILE everyone is excited about Thabo Bester and Dr Nandipha Magudumana, the story might go much deeper than this action-packed movie. The story behind the story could be much more than what meets the eye. The Thabo Bester saga concerns something that no journalist wants to talk about; profits and corporate power in the South African prison industrial complex. It also concerns the globalisation of production and entrenched corporate power that stand to collapse many developing countries worldwide. Tracy Chang and Douglas Thompkins argue that “the prison industrial complex comprises two major segments: prison privatisation and prison industrialisation”. Most prisons are run by the Department of Correctional Services. However, there are a few private prisons that have been contracted out to private companies. The privatisation of prisons is a controversial…

A suspected Palestinian gunman opened fire at a vehicle in Jerusalem yesterday, wounding two Israelis and at least six Palestinians were injured during clashes with Israeli forces during an arrest raid in the occupied West Bank, officials said. An Israeli military spokesperson said soldiers in the West Bank city of Jenin, which has seen frequent Israeli raids over the past year, were apprehending suspected militants when they came under heavy fire. The Palestinian Health Ministry said six Palestinians were injured in the clashes and the military said there were no Israeli casualties. In Jerusalem, Israeli police said they were in search of a suspected Palestinian gunman who shot into a car wounding two in the Sheikh Jarrah area of East Jerusalem, a site of serious friction in recent years between…

TUNIS: Tunisian authorities yesterday banned meetings at all offices of the opposition Ennahda Islamist party and police closed the headquarters of the Salvation Front main opposition coalition, party and official sources said. Ennahda fears the move will pave the way for banning the party and comes a day after police detained Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, the most prominent critic of President Kais Saied and three senior officials, the party said. Police raided the party headquarters and evacuated all those present to start a search that will take days, party officials said. Police also prevented access to the headquarters of the Salvation Front party. | Reuters…

KATHMANDU: A mountaineer from Northern Ireland died while descending from the summit of the world’s 10th highest peak, and an Indian climber was missing on the same mountain, officials said yesterday. Noel Hanna, who had climbed Mount Everest 10 times, scaled the 8 091m Annapurna peak in west Nepal on Monday, but died overnight in Camp IV. The Department of Tourism said the circumstances of Hanna’s death were unclear. It said an Indian climber, who fell into a crevasse on Annapurna, had been missing since Monday. Two other Indian mountaineers, caught up in bad weather while climbing Annapurna, were being rescued. | Reuters…

Kuala Lumpur: Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh spoke up yesterday for diversity and women’s empowerment in the entertainment industry, saying “we should never allow somebody to put us in a box”. She was speaking at her first news conference in her home country since her historic best actress win – Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win the Academy Award – for the sci-fi action comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once – the Malaysian star said: “I don’t believe that just because we are women, we are a weaker sex.” | AFP…

ALTHOUGH they can still finish fifth for a more favourable quarter-final, the Bulls won’t have their calculators in hand, trying to figure out exactly they’ll end up on the United Rugby Champions (URC) log should they win and other results go their way this weekend. Instead, they want to put all their focus on delivering another quality performance against Leinster at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday (kick-off 4pm), to build up momentum and give them the best chance heading into the play-offs. Some might say the Pretoria side will face the B-team of the Irish giants, but the Lions, playing in the curtain-raiser on Saturday, can tell the Bulls just how dangerous Leinster can be, even without some of their stars. The Dublin-based team came up with a spirited comeback to…

A transgender basketballer was barred yesterday from playing in an Australian women’s competition, with the sport’s governing body acknowledging it was a “complex area to navigate”. Lexi Rodgers had applied to play for semi-professional regional league side the Kilsyth Cobras, sparking debate and leading Basketball Australia to convene a panel of experts to look at the matter. The panel, which included a medical officer and a sports and exercise physician, ruled Rodgers ineligible. “As the governing body we acknowledge we’re still on a path of education and understanding,” Basketball Australia said in a statement. “To aid us in developing our framework, Lexi will provide feedback and advice from her experiences. “The balance of inclusivity, fairness and the competitive nature of sport will always be a complex area to navigate, and…