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A British couple who retired to an isolated seaside home in South
Africa have been found dead in the boot of their Volvo after a suspected
violent robbery. Mr and Mrs Early were originally from
Britain, but had South African citizenship and had lived in Hebberdene for many
years.A passer-by made the discovery after spotting an apparently
unoccupied car which had crashed into a ditch in the town of Hebberdene, around
60 miles south of Durban in sub-tropical Natal province. Police called to the
scene at around 8pm on Thursday found electrical appliances including a
television and sound system inside the car along with the bloodied bodies of
Chris and Jennifer Early, 69 and 62, in the boot. They traced the car back to
the couple's home four miles away to find that it had been ransacked. Mrs Early
was reportedly shot in the chest while Mr Early was hit over the head with what
police believe was a bush knife, according to local reports. Police believe the
pair were in their house when robbers struck on Thursday and were murdered
there before being loaded into the boot of their own car. The robbers then
drove away, police believe, but shortly afterwards lost control of the car and
fled on foot. South African Police Warrant Officer Banie Pienaar said a
neighbour reported hearing a gunshot at around 4pm on Thursday. "It seems
that the gentleman was attacked outside their property in the driveway to their
home," he said. "It looks like his wife was attacked inside the
property. She had a gunshot wound to her chest. "It appears the bullet
went straight through her heart, so she would have died instantly." Police
spokesman Colonel Jay Naicker said the small community of Hebberdene had been
left "shocked and frightened" by the deaths. "This is a very
unusual incident in this area and has really sent ripples through the community,"
he said. "We are baffled as to they should try to move their bodies like
that. They could take whatever they wanted to there's just no reason for
it."
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Daily Telegraph,
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Daily Telegraph,
For
the England Football [Soccer] team, meanwhile, there was the added ignominy of
their stay in
-
Daily Telegraph,
Armed gunmen tied up and robbed Australian soccer fans at their hotel in
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HeraldSun.com.au,
Hundreds
of disgruntled World Cup security guards had to be dispersed by police using
rubber bullets and tear gas after a protest over low wages. About 300 workers
refused to leave the stadium in Durban following Germany's game against Australia on Sunday
night, claiming they had received only a fraction of the wages they were
promised. Last night, stewards in Cape Town were said to have staged a walkout
before the match between Italy and Paraguay, forcing police to provide security
themselves.
-
Daily Telegraph,
Three British students on a college field trip to South
Africa were killed yesterday in a horrific tour bus crash. Two 19-year-old
girls died instantly in the tragedy, which cast a shadow over today's opening
of the World Cup in Johannesburg. Last night, the dead girls were named in
tributes on Facebook as Sami Lake of Syson, Leicestershire, and Eleanor Payne
of Hinckley, Leicestershire. Dan Greenwood, 22, also of Syson, died later in
intensive care at hospital. Their four-wheel-drive safari vehicle skidded and
flipped over on mountain roads described as treacherous near the northeastern
city of Nelspruit. Robin Baard, spokeswoman for the Nelspruit Medi Clinic said
there were two casualties in intensive care, six in 'high care' and three in the
general wards. Two are scheduled to go into theatre today. Those admitted to
the hospital included the two course lecturers. Another four were discharged to
a hotel for the night where they joined three other members of the group in the
city, which is hosting World Cup games. The bus had come to rest close to the
edge of a hill and emergency workers feared it would roll over as they freed
the injured. Efforts were being made to bring staff and students home as soon
as possible. Police said no other vehicle appeared to have been involved in the
crash on the Bulembu Road a few miles from the town of Barberton. Officers were
last night waiting to interview the bus's Zimbabwean driver.
- Daily Mail, June
11, 2010
Thousands
of soccer fans stampeded the gates outside the Makhulong Stadium, in
Tembisa on the East Rand, where Nigeria played North Korea [the DPRK] in a
World Cup friendly on Sunday. It is believed chaos erupted at one of the gates
when officers were controlling access to the stadium. Around 20 people were injured in a stampede outside the
stadium. It is understood non-ticket holders barged through the gates earlier
to watch the game. One police officer was also injured in the incident.
Authorities shut all gates as a measure of crowd control leaving some ticket
holders stranded outside. "People were injured as a result of
the stampede. That is why we had to close the stadium",
said the police's Mveli Nhlapo.
- Eye Witness News,
When guests arrived for a braai on
Saturday on a farm near Potchefstroom, they discovered their host's body with a
chain around his ankles. The murderer presumably attacked 40-year-old Johan
Strydom with an iron rod at his gate on Saturday at about
- News24,
Another White baby has been attacked and beaten
nearly to death by ANC black thugs
- report sent by Snowy Smith,
A Dutch tourist has vowed never to set foot in
- Sunday Times (
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General De La Rey rides again! On Thursday
19 April, a group of brave young Boers [Afrikaners] showed some fantastic
initiative, and reclaimed their birthright in clear terms. As of yesterday
morning, Nelson Mandela Drive in Pretoria was renamed "GENERAAL DE LA REY WEG". A small
group bearing the Freedom Flag (the flag of the old Boer Republic of the
Transvaal - Die Vierkleur) arrived at the intersection of Proes Street and the
former Nelson Mandela Drive, and proceeded to plant a street sign. The name
plate was embedded in solid concrete. From this day on, every "Nelson
Mandela" street across South Africa will be known colloquially as
"Gen. De La Rey Ave"! In recent years, the racist anti-White ANC
regime has steadily been plundering and vandalising the property and heritage
of White South Africans, (with a special vindictiveness reserved for the
Afrikaners) renaming towns and cities founded by Whites (not a single one of which had existed before
the arrival of Whites). The terrorist regime went out of their way to victimise
especially Afrikaans monikers, but has received massive resistance with their
recent efforts to appropriate Pretoria, Potchefstroom and Lydenburg. Just last
week, the fat Black sheboon mayor of
Standerton in the Eastern Transvaal ordered the destruction of a Boer Great Trek
era monument, much to the chagrin of Whites countrywide. The destruction of our heritage is but a
single aspect of the genocide being perpetrated against White South Africans in
general. Numerous Whites are being exterminated daily, under the guise
of crimes such as hijacking and violent house invasions. Even unarmed,
cooperative Whites are being executed at point blank range, making it crystal
clear that robbery is a secondary motive - the primary motive is to kill - by ANC-regime sanctioned death squads roaming
our cities, towns and rural areas. Historically, every revolution the world has seen was followed by a phase
known as "The Terror" in which atrocities were committed against
certain targets. In South Africa, things are no different. The Black on White
genocide serves a dual purpose - one, to exterminate the White population in a
low level civil war under the guise of "crime", and two, to terrorise
the rest of the Whites into fleeing the country, so that Blacks can take
possession of their jobs and their houses.
- report sent by "Henry" (Pretoria), April 23, 2010
South African police are investigating whether there was a link between
homosexual sex and the murder of far-Right leader Eugene Terreblanche at him
farm. Police had earlier said a pay dispute led to the
killing of Eugene Terreblanche. Puna Moroko, the lawyer for Chris
Mahlangu, 28, the elder of two people accused of the killing, said that
"something shocking happened on that day". A police spokesman confirmed
that was among possibilities being investigated. Police had earlier said a pay
dispute had led to the killing of Mr Terreblanche, on the political margins
since his efforts to preserve apartheid in the early 1990s. "We are not
going to focus on one thing," said Musa Zondi of the Hawks investigative
unit, adding that a sexual link was among the many accusations being made over
the case. "We will investigate all pertinent facts that have a bearing on
the matter," he said. General Jan Mabula, head of the Hawks in the North
West Province, said the suspects' clothes were to be examined as part of checks
into whether there was a sexual link. Mr Terreblanche, the leader of the
Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), was hacked and battered to death on April
3 and found with his trousers pulled down after a murder.
- Daily Telegraph, April 12, 2010
Eugene
Terre'blanche may have been murdered after sexually assaulting one of his
workers, South African police confirmed yesterday. One of the two accused of bludgeoning
to death the 69 year-old Afrikaner told his lawyer that the attack was in
response to homosexual advances by his employer, who was buried last Friday.
"My instructions from my client are that there were sexual acts going on
and it sparked the murder of Mr Terre'blanche," Puna Moroko, attorney for
28-year-old Chris Mahlangu, told a local newspaper. Clothes belonging to
Mahlangu, and a 15 year old co-accused, who cannot be named, will now be
re-examined in the light of the new line of inquiry. Mr Terre'blanche was found
murdered and "unrecognisable" following a beating with a bar and
machete, his trousers were also around his knees. However, new accusations and
revelations are beginning to emerge which depict Mr Terre'blanche, a father of
one adopted daughter, as a sexual predator, who did not discriminate between
Black and White victims. The Afrikaans newspaper Rapport reported that a teenage member of Mr
Terre'blanche's movement, the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) had to be
taken to a safe house after alleging sexual abuse at the hands of the powerful
leader. Newly elected AWB leader Steyn van Ronge, confirmed that the teenager
spent nights alone "in Terre'blanche's arms" at the remote farm
house, but that the leader "felt sorry for him because his parents were
divorced." Mr Terre'blanche was murdered at a small cottage on his farm
outside Ventersdorp where he often chose to stay alone rather than returning to
be with his wife and daughter at the family house in the town, 12 miles away.
- The
The South African Government today
announced the introduction of a special "Soccer Tax" to take effect
on the 1st of June, just a few days before the World Cup kicks off. The £103
tax, which will be levied on all foreigners entering the country from 1 June,
will apparently be used to offset expenses incurred in readying the country for
the big event.
- message circulated by 1st
Contact,
"White farmers being wiped
out" says The Times UK
newspaper. The Times reported on
Sunday that "White farmers are 'being wiped out'" and that the ANC song "shoot the boer" was
fanning the flames Since 1994, around 3000 white South African farmers have
been murdered. Pieter Cillier, a fruit farmer, was shot twice in the chest
at Christmas time, while his daughter slept at his side. "They shot
him through the fridge from the back door - the bullets came straight through
here, into his heart. He never had a chance," says Pieter's brother,
Russouw Cillier. "More White farmers have been killed than British
soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes, we are at war here." In a remote
farming community in KwaZulu-Natal [Natal], Nigel Ralfe, a 71-year-old dairy
farmer, and his wife Lynette, were gunned down as they milked their cows last
week. Ralfe was critically injured while his wife Lynette died. The
Times article comes in the wake of the song "shoot the boer"
being banned in South Africa. Earlier this month, Julius Malema President of
the ANCYL, opened a public rally by singing "Dubula Ibhunu", or
"Shoot the Boer". "Malema's comments are creating an atmosphere
that is conducive to those who want to commit murder. He's an accessory to the
wiping out of farmers in South Africa" said Anton Alberts of the
right-wing Freedom Front Plus
party. The High Court in Johannesburg ruled on Friday, that the use of the
words is unconstitutional and unlawful. In a letter to his ANC counterpart,
Gwede Mantashe, the secretary general of the Independent Democrats, Haniff Hoosen said the current climate about
the singing of the song, is reminiscent of pre-1994 intolerance. "... some
amongst us have either failed to see the danger of our actions and words,
or simply do not care. "As a consequence thereof, they have regrettably
been unable to resist the temptation of hate speech and the blatant promotion
of racial intolerance and violence."
- The
South African,
Nigel Ralfe was milking the cows on his South African
farm, as he had done every evening for 50 years, when four men came into the yard
asking to buy milk. When the 69-year-old told them he had none to sell, he was
shot at point-blank range. Bleeding from wounds to his neck and arm, Mr Ralfe
was pistol-whipped before being marched to the farmhouse where his wife,
Lynette, was bathing the couple's three granddaughters, all aged under five.
"I had no choice but to tell my wife to come and unlock the back door. As
soon as she opened the door, they shot her three times. She didn't even have
time to speak," Mr Ralfe told The
Sunday Telegraph. Mrs Ralfe, 63, staggered into her bedroom, bleeding
heavily from the chest, and collapsed on her bed where she died soon after. As
the gang ransacked the house, the bewildered children emerged from the bathroom
to find their grandmother's body. "They were very confused and upset and
kept asking me what was wrong with granny. I told them to go to the other
bedroom, shut the door and stay in their beds. Luckily they listened to
me," Mr Ralfe said, speaking from Doornkop farm, in the Midlands of Natal where
his family has farmed for four generations. Eventually, the attackers fled,
taking only some binoculars, a phone and an old pistol. Despite his appalling
ordeal only two weeks ago, Mr Ralfe has returned to the 2,000-acre farm to
"keep working, keep going - what else can I do?" In South Africa it
is safer to be a miner than a farmer. At least two White farmers or their
family members are murdered every week. Last year alone, 120 were killed. With
a radical new policy on land expropriation being mooted by the ruling African
National Congress (ANC), talk in rural areas frequently turns to South Africa
becoming the next Zimbabwe. As one farmer said: "About a dozen White
farmers were killed in Zimbabwe in the last decade in an unlawful government
land grab. We lost 10 times that many just in 2009 - and we are in a country
where farmers are allegedly at peace with the government. What does that say
about our future?" The attack on Doornkop farm would normally receive only
modest media coverage, such is the frequency of rural violence. However it was
the third farm killing in a single weekend, all apparently without clear motive
and coming just a few days after a high-profile ANC politician repeatedly
chanted: "Kill the Boer" [farmer in Afrikaans], at a student rally.
The revival of the refrain by Julius Malema, the firebrand leader of the
party's Youth League, immediately prompted outrage among opposition politicians
and farmers' groups, who seized on the timing of Mrs Ralfe's murder. The
opposition Democratic Alliance's spokesman on safety issues, Sizwe Mchunu,
said: "It is our belief that this senseless attack was incited by the
proliferation of hate speech which is the hallmark of Julius Malema."
Demands that the president, Jacob Zuma, rein in his subordinate and force him
to apologise went unheeded. Instead Zuma claimed the chant "Kill the
Boer" to be a harmless "struggle song". But a spokesman for the Freedom Front Plus said: "Malema
was nine years old when Mandela was freed. He was never part of the 'struggle'.
If he sang the song today, it has to be judged in the context of 2010 and the
fact that farmers are being killed weekly." Malema has made no comment on
the latest development. Certainly, he seems confident of the unqualified
support of the president, who has tipped him as a future leader of the country.
At 29, Malema's position as head of the ruling party's Youth League gives him
enormous sway within the movement. While Zuma is disliked by much of the White
population, Malema is widely loathed as a quintessential example of the new ANC
elite. His lifestyle - he has three homes and a fleet of vehicles - comes under
regular scrutiny. But he has never been subject to a police investigation and
no allegations of corruption have been proved against him. The chant is now a
focus for a wide range of fears and resentments felt by the White population.
In particular, relations between the Black government and the minority
Afrikaners are at their worst since the end of apartheid. It is also an
unwanted reminder of the past as the country tries to portray a successful,
modern image in the run-up to this year's [Soccer]World Cup.
- Sunday Telegraph, March 28, 2010
The South
African government admitted yesterday that it was worried about violent
protests breaking out during this summer's World Cup. The country has been
rattled by escalating township protests over the past month, with impoverished
communities demanding access to basic services. Recent demonstrations have been
marred by shootings, arson and stonings, prompting the government to raise the
security levels as the June 11 World Cup kick-off nears. South Africa already
suffers from high instances of violence: carjackings are common and an average
of 50 killings are reported each day. "Obviously we are concerned,"
said Themba Masek, a government spokesman. "The violent and destructive
nature of some of the protests is unacceptable. We do not want to see these
demonstrations, especially during the World Cup, when the country's attention
and focus should be to be the best host ever." The head of the South
African army announced a security shake-up on Thursday in the face of
escalating violence. Lieutenant General Solly Shoke told a press conference in
Pretoria that the armed forces would take over responsibility for border
patrols on April 1 in order to free police to fight crime. "We are ready
to help where needed with the World Cup," he said. "All army leave
has been cancelled over this period. We will be on high alert." Organizers
are expecting 350,000 foreign visitors to attend the four-week football
tournament, which is being held in Africa for the first time. The economic
boost to the South African economy has been revised downwards, however, because
of slow ticket sales. Hotels are stepping up security to reassure fans they
have little to fear, despite the country's reputation. Private companies are
also offering their services to visitors concerned about safety. Lt Gen Shoke
said he did not expect any threat to the tournament. "This World Cup is
not about security," he said. "It's about enjoyment. People must be
allowed to come here and enjoy the soccer." The border patrols are part of
South Africa's push to prevent trafficking in drugs or people. The country
proposed its first direct legislation to target trafficking last week, with a
maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The new law will not be in place before
the World Cup, but South Africa will train police to use existing legislation
to tackle trafficking. Ngoako Ramatlhodi, the chairman of parliament's justice
committee said: "Anticipation of an increase in trafficking, especially
for sexual purposes, ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, has focused attention on
South African ability to deal with trafficking."
- Daily
Telegraph,
The dunes at
Monwabisi beach, used by tens of thousands of Cape Flats residents, are covered
in large patches of sewage. Normally treated upstream at the Zandvliet Waste
Water Treatment Works, the treated sewage flows along a stream through the
dunes before being piped out to sea. But on either side of the stream are
large, thick patches of stinking untreated sewage. During an inspection at the
site on Tuesday last week, City of Cape Town Utility Committee member Bertus
van Dalen said he was unsure of the exact cause for the sludge polluting the
dunes, but it was likely due to overflows from the Zandvliet treatment works.
This happened because the infrastructure was not maintained, he said - and the
problem of untreated, or semi-treated sewage spilling from Waste Water
Treatment Works, was becoming a national problem. DA deputy shadow minister of
Water and Environmental Affairs, Annette Lovemore, said only 32 out of
approximately 970 water treatment plants around the country complied with the
requirements for the safe discharge of sewage. With a compliance level of only
3%, South Africa's rivers and coastal waters are becoming increasingly
polluted, posing a danger to human health, as well as the environment. This
could cause major environmental damage to water sources, considering that with
an approximately 80% treatment works compliance level in the Western Cape, 27
of Cape Towns rivers and water bodies have unacceptably high levels of ecoli,
according to the City of Cape Town's Inland and Coastal Water Quality report for
the 12 month period ending September 2009. 16 beaches out of the 40 water
samples taken from the False Bay coastline failed to meet the stringent 80th
percent compliance that measures eight out of ten samples must contain more or
equal 100 indicator organisms and Monwabisi was one of the beach's to avoid.
While only six beaches out of 28 along the Atlantic coast failed the stringent
80th percent compliance test. Out of 27 inland systems including rivers and
wetlands the Soet River in the Strand area was worst affected as it once again
had a zero percent compliance meaning that sample results during the 12 month
period were all greater than 1000 counts (of faecal coliform - including E.
coli)/100ml. Water bodies commonly used for recreational purposes had the
following intermediate contact compliance levels Rietvlei 83%, Zeekoevlei 64%,
Zandvlei 64% and Milnerton Lagoon 25%. All which are similar to those of the
previous quarter. However the much anticipated report is yet to be released by
the department as it was delayed several times. Department of Water Affairs
media liaison officer Linda Page said the report would definitely be revealed
soon but was unable to give a specific date as we are busy liaising with the
municipalities. We trying to get the municipalities to perform better those
that were doing badly despite denying that the report was not released because
of its findings, she said. Van Dalen said rivers have also built up sludge over
the years with some even up to a metre thick as the situation aggravated due to
lack of clean up. He said there is no easy solution as infrastructure must be
able to cope with the demand coming through instead of spilling over. While
storm water and sewerage systems need to be upgraded regularly likewise with
capacity as demand was exceeding due to urbanisation, said Van Dalen.
"Ordinary maintenance such as drains being cleaned regularly is critical
to avoid sewerage spills."He said back yard dwellers are aggravating the
situation as storm water over flows into the system because they often don't
have access toilets facilities from their landlords despite paying rent. While
even if they did access water it was very little and therefore forced to dump
their night soil into the storm water drains in the morning, said Van Dalen.
Hence the polluted rivers from dirty storm water that drifted towards it while
rivers didn't need treating in the past as it was only rain that made up the
pure storm water. Dr Jo Barnes, senior lecturer in the faculty of health
science at the University of Stellenbosch, said water born diseases is expected
to increase because untreated sewerage is a carrier of it. Barnes said as the
crisis on our hands is not enough as there are people suffering from
malnutrition, Tuberculosis and HIV/Aids. She said apart from the mines,
informal settlements and failing municipal systems such as blocked drains and
overburdened sewerage works are the major source of contributors. Barnes said
rural areas and dorpies are even worse off because they use water for irrigation
purposes which unfortunately could have ripple effects.
- AfricanCrisis,
Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela has launched an astonishing attack on Nelson Mandela,
accusing the former president of failing black people. In an interview published
in a UK newspaper, she also called Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu a
"cretin". Her comments follow her surprise absence from the 20th
anniversary celebration of Mandela's release from prison on February 11. In
yesterday's unprovoked attack, she described the international icon [sic] as a
betrayer who had turned soft and let down the black people of South Africa. She
alleged that Mandela had become a "corporate foundation" who was
"wheeled out" by the ANC globally to collect money. She and Mandela
married in 1958, but divorced in 1996. Madikizela-Mandela, 73, who holds the
first position on the ANC's national executive committee, was interviewed by
Nadira Naipaul, the wife of novelist VS Naipaul, for the London Evening
Standard. Her comments have been met with dismay by an ANC spokesman who told
the Cape Argus that the party was distancing itself from the attack. In the
interview, Madikizela-Mandela was quoted as saying: "This name 'Mandela'
is an albatross around the necks of my family. "You all must realise that
Mandela was not the only man who suffered. There were many others, hundreds who
languished in prison and died. "Mandela did go to prison and he went in
there as a young revolutionary but look what came out. "Mandela let us
down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically we are still on the
outside. The economy is very much 'White'. "I cannot forgive him for going
to receive the Nobel (peace prize) with his jailer, (FW) de Klerk. Hand in hand
they went. Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart?
He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed." Dave Steward,
head of the FW de Klerk Foundation, immediately laughed off the slur. "If
Winnie Mandela is criticising FW de Klerk at the same time as Mr Mandela, then
Mr De Klerk would feel that he's in good company and on the right side of the
equation." Madikizela-Mandela also spoke of her own struggle against
apartheid, and admitted to having been scared. "Yes, I was afraid in the
beginning. But then there is only so much they can do to you. After that it is
only death. They can only kill you and, as you see, I am still here." In
addition, Madikizela-Mandela laid into the Truth and Reconciliation Committee,
chaired by Tutu, before which she appeared in 1997 and which implicated her in
gross violations of human rights. She said: "What good does the truth do?
How does it help anyone to know where and how their loved ones are killed or
buried? "That Bishop Tutu who turned it all into a religious circus came here
(Soweto). He had a cheek to tell me to appear. I told him that he and his other
like-minded cretins were only sitting there because of our struggle and
me." A spokesperson from Tutu's Milnerton office said hat the Archbishop
was in Washington DC and would respond, if he chose to, tomorrow. In the
interview, Madikizela-Mandela also claimed that the ANC was exploiting her
ex-husband. "Look what they make him do. The great Mandela. He has no
control or say any more. "They put that huge statue of him right in the
middle of the most affluent White area of Johannesburg. Not here (in Soweto)
where we spilled our blood. "Mandela is now like a corporate foundation.
He is wheeled out globally to collect the money."
-
AfricanCrisis,
An eldery couple was murdered in
their home in Tinmyne in Limpopo on Friday, police said. Superintendent Ronel
Otto said the couple, a man aged 70 and his wife, 54, were out in town when two
men arrived at their house in Tinmyne near Mokopane at around noon on Friday.
"The suspects overpowered two workers on the property, forced them into
the house and tied them up," said Otto. When the couple returned, they
were severely assaulted with stones. The couple was allegedly beaten to death
and left their bodies were left in a patch of grass next to their house.
"The suspects ransacked the house and fled in the couple's red Mercedes
Benz." The vehicle was later found burnt out next to a road, 20 km (12.5
miles) from the house.The two workers succeeded in freeing themselves and
walked approximately 2km (1.25 miles) to the Tinmyne Police Station to request
assistance. "The Police request anybody who might have seen the suspects
driving around in the car and who can provide more information, to contact
their nearest police station," said Otto.
- AfricanCrisis,
Yet another elderly couple have
been brutally murdered in the city, bringing to six the number of pensioners
killed in Pretoria over the past month. The bodies of Theuns Venter - who
celebrated his 85th birthday last week - and his wife Suzie, 83, were
discovered by their grandson when he returned from his night shift as a
security guard on Thursday morning. Police are also investigating the
possibility that the woman might have been raped. As neighbours and relatives
comforted each other outside the quaint old house on the corner of Mortimer
Avenue and Louis Trichardt Street in Mayville, the couple's dog finally came
out from underneath the furniture, where she had been hiding for several hours.
Police spokesperson Inspector Wanda Olivier said their grandson Hain
Engelbrecht, 32, arrived at the house at about 6.15am. Although the couple were
very security-aware, the front gate, security gate of the front door, the front
door and the back door were open. It did not appear that the doors and gates
had been forced open. Seeing that his grandparents' 1984 model minibus was
missing, Engelbrecht ran into the house. He found his grandfather in the living
room. "He was lying on his stomach and his hands and feet were tied with
electrical cables believed to have been cut from appliances in the house. We
suspect he was hit over the head with a blunt object," Olivier said. The
grandmother was lying in the passage. She was not tied up. It is believed she
was strangled with a piece of cloth that was found nearby.The couple's minibus
and Engelbrecht's PlayStation were the only items taken.
- AfricanCrisis,
A cooked human head, a liver and a basket
full of entrails were what police officers found when they searched the North
West home of a man who claimed to have eaten his relative. The remains belonged
to 57-year-old Gopolang Elias Serache, and he was killed and partially eaten
because his alleged murderer said he had been told by his ancestors to consume
human flesh. Serache went missing in Khunwana Village, near Delareyville, on
Friday, according to police. His family reported him missing yesterday, and it
was after investigators questioned the man with whom he was last seen that they
learnt of his fate. The 30-year-old relative had confessed to the killing,
police said. "He killed him with a knife on Friday at the old man's home
and then, using a wheelbarrow, carried the body to his residence. There, he cut
him into pieces like he was slaughtering an animal," said police spokesman
Superintendent Lesego Metsi. Police who arrived at the suspect's home could
smell decaying flesh, said Metsi. The dead man's head had been cracked open and
parts of the brain consumed. There were intestines hidden in a basket and a
cooked liver. "The man said his ancestors had instructed him to kill
Serache, then cook and eat him," Metsi said. This latest case of suspected
cannibalism comes as the Traditional Healers Organisation reported yesterday
that about 1,000 families nationwide had claimed that corpses of their dead
relatives had been harvested for muti before burial last year. "About 900
bodies had some parts missing, especially the breasts and genitals," said
Phephisile Maseko, national co-ordinator of the healers' organisation. He
expressed concern that in most cases, police were involved in protecting those
people - often wealthy businessmen - who bought human body parts in the belief
that it would boost their businesses.
- AfricanCrisis,
One of the main reasons why overseas
ticket sales for the FIFA World Cup are lagging behind expectations is South
African crime. And crime can only flourish if the country's law and order apparatus
does not function. Latest figures show South African ticket sales accounting
for 79% of the total, with just over 50,000 tickets sold in the US, 41,000 in
Germany and 15,000 in Australia. South Africa may face a serious setback
regarding this event which is supposed to be a showcase. What will be revealed
is the depth and breadth of South Africa's crime scourge, despite assurances by Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa
that R1,3 billion is budgeted to assure the safety of visitors to the FIFA Cup.
Thus policing and its concomitant functions of investigation towards ensuring
conviction are so integral to South Africa's future that the spotlight placed on the police is well deserved.
Unfortunately, the SAPS does not live up to its challenges - not by a very
large margin.
In August
last year, an agreement was concluded between farmers and the police that a
special Task Team would be appointed to fully investigate stock theft in the
Swartruggens area, where Mr. Rocher farms. This investigation never happened.
Daily incidents of poor police behaviour are reported in various media. The TV
programme Carte Blanche revealed last week in vivid detail how the "blue
light" police cars force people off the road. A
woman motorist and her husband were taken to a local station, beaten up and
harassed because they didn't move out of the way quickly enough. Other
reports have come to light of this type of banana-republic badgering. Between
2001 and 2009, the number of firearms lost by SAPS members or stolen from them
increased by 166%. The SAPS has now ordered 4,000 new Beretta pistols at a cost
of R16 million to replace the 3 000 odd that have been lost or stolen, and the
SAPS is "unwittingly fuelling the illegal arms trade"
declared the Democratic Alliance. Four thousand new pistols will be in
circulation because nobody can find the 3,000 that have disappeared. On 15
September 2009, Minister of Police Mthethwa announced that legislation
empowering police to respond more forcefully to dangerous criminals was close
to finalisation. But if police are not around to enforce legislation, and the
public is compelled to self defend, why would the public's
actions be any less justifiable than a policeman's in the same situation? South Africa's
crime conviction rate is one of the lowest in the world. In the 2007/2008 year,
the number of crimes committed was 2.03 million. Of these, only 0.25 million resulted
in convictions. One of the reasons - and there are many - could be the loss and
theft of police dockets. From 2002/4 to 2008/9, the number of case dockets lost
or stolen increased from the official figures of 343 to 668. The real figure is
probably much higher. There is a huge skills deficit. The June 2008 Business Day reported that 60% of evidence gathered at
crime scenes was unusable, due to poor collection which ruined the samples. The
report quoted figures from the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) which found
that of the 42,000 samples sent to the biology unit of the SAPS forensic
laboratory, 25,200 were not analysed. The ISS report found that forensic field
workers were insufficiently trained. It was estimated that only about 10% of
the 42,000 cases would eventually be analysed. (SA Institute of Race
Relations Fast Facts January 2010)
Official
statistics are dodgy at best. Reports are myriad of the SAPS doctoring crime
figures to make the picture less alarming and for other more nefarious reasons.
Recently, the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) found that crime
statistics at Mountain Rise police station in Pietermaritzburg were
manipulated. (Mail & Guardian Jan 29, 2010). As a result of the tampering Mountain Rise
was the top station in Natal last year, and station officials received bonuses
totaling R500,000 as a reward. Head of the station Hariram Badul has been
arrested with three other policemen from the station for allegedly defrauding
the state of R1 million worth of equipment, including computers which were
recovered during a police raid. Also recovered were 147 dockets, six case book
registers and three statistic registers. Many crimes were not registered on the
case administration system. A whistle blower who reported this was suspended
without pay. Badul had told his staff that only cases where the culprits were "easily
obtainable" were to be investigated. The rest of the
dockets were locked in a room. These unprocessed dockets were about to be burnt
when the whilstle blower approached the courts. He has since been reinstated.
Crimes that are heavily dependent on police action for detection have increased
remarkably - illegal possession of firearms and ammunition has increased by
nearly 50% from 1994 to 2008, drug related crime by about 135% and driving
under the influence by more than 110%. (SA Institute of Race Relations
October 2009) This reveals negligence and incompetence
within the SAPS which appears to be increasing. A Pretoria man who was attacked
and shot during a botched robbery was told by a station commissioner to "find
a private detective to look into the case". He was visited by a police officer in
hospital after the incident and asked to pay R10 000 for the private
investigator, and the man is now suing the SAPS. A woman died on the bathroom
floor of the Eldorado Park police station after three police officers took her
from her home for questioning after she had witnessed a crime. (The Star January 6, 2010) The woman, a thyroid sufferer, was held against
her will and died because of complications setting in because of lack of a
doctor's care. Deaths in police custody have declined from
334 in 2003 to 302 in 2007/8, but these are police figures and are in doubt.
The SAPS is an integral arm of the government, but it is unable to function
properly and this affects all walks of South African life. From farms to the
cities, the crime figures are not abating. The private security industry
flourishes, and without this group and our own defences, we would be all
victims.
- TAU
TAU SA
is highly distressed over the fact that their chairman of the West-District,
Mr. Wilhelm Rocher, had to spend a weekend in jail and is charged with murder
after he defended his life and property against criminals, as stated by his
president, Mr. Ben Marais. Information was received on Friday evening that
livestock was stolen. Mr. Rocher with some other farmers tracked the
thieves, confronted them and discovered that two of the animals were already
slaughtered and in the thieves vehicle. The thieves were armed and opened fire
after three warning shots were fired. One of the warning shots apparently found
its mark and hit one of the thieves in the buttocks. It seems that he died
of some other reason than the gunshot wound.
- TAU
South Africa Media Release, January 25, 2010
Police on Thursday arrested one of
two men who threatened in a television interview to kill fans at June's FIFA
World Cup, causing uproar among officials fearful that South Africa's high
crime rate will deter foreign visitors. The interview last weekend on the
private channel e.tv unleashed days of controversy over both crime and freedom
of the press after authorities issued subpoenas for two of the station's journalists
to reveal their sources. A man who set up the interview with the two
self-styled criminals was found dead earlier this week, apparently after
committing suicide, e.tv and police said. The two men, whose faces were
concealed, said on the programme they would commit armed robberies and murder
during the month-long soccer spectacular which is expected to attract 450,000
foreign fans. They said this was justified as revenge for colonial wrongs.
- AfricanCrisis,
A Camperdown woman fleeing a man
she believed might be a hijacker drove to a police station for safety. But
instead of finding refuge, she was assaulted by her pursuer, who turned out to
be a traffic officer, while police stood by and did nothing. To add insult to
injury, the woman was then arrested by Camperdown police. Farmer PJ Ward said
his wife, Jude, was driving in the fast lane along the N3 from Pietermaritzburg
when a man in a white unmarked twin-cab bakkie tried to pass her. As she tried
to move from the fast lane, the man placed a blue light on the bakkie's roof
and chased after her. 'He choked her and banged her head on the ground'
Suspecting a hijack attempt, Ward said, his wife decided to drive to the
Camperdown police station because she thought she would be safe there. "My
wife could not move immediately from the fast lane, so the man in the bakkie
put up his blue light and pressed behind her. After she moved, the man wagged
his finger at her. She decided to stop at a nearby police station for safety."
However, said Ward, instead of receiving the protection she sought, his wife
was assaulted in front of police officers. "When she got off her car, the
man, who was wearing a brown traffic officer's uniform, attacked her by
grabbing her neck and pushing her into the ground. He jumped on top of her and
grabbed her bag. All of this happened in front of police officers, who just
watched." He said the man, believed to be a member of the Road Traffic
Inspectorate's public transport enforcement unit, told his wife, while on top
of her, that she should look at his uniform and obey his orders. He said the
man weighed about 120kg and was in his thirties. "He choked her and banged
her head on the ground. These officers are supposed to protect the public, but
instead they use their positions to show that they have power and should be
feared," said Ward. He said his wife was traumatised by the assault and
even more shocked when she later ended up behind bars for not obeying an
officer's orders, while the traffic officer went unpunished. "What is
wrong with the law enforcers in this country? My wife was only trying to find a
safe place to stop so that she could talk to this man; instead, she was
attacked." Ward said his wife was checked by a doctor for internal injuries.
She was released on a warning to appear in the Camperdown Magistrate's Court
today. "Jude had bruises to her neck and arms, and was bloodied as
well," he said. "For 30 years I loved this country with all my heart,
but now all I want to do is leave. I am tired of living in fear, not only of
criminals, but of police brutality as well," he said, adding he was
determined to return to the Republic of Ireland. He said he would contact the
Irish Republic Embassy to report the matter and seek its assistance in leaving
the country. Ward said his wife had been involved in a similar incident with
local police last year, but they had decided not to report the matter for fear
of being victimised. "Now we will not keep quiet, and since we have made
this incident known, many people have come forward with similar horrific
experiences involving the people who are supposed to protect us." Road
Traffic Inspectorate spokesman Rajen Chinaboo said he did not have all the
details of yesterday's incident at hand, but he said that motorists should not
stop for people travelling in unmarked vehicles. This is how soccer spectators
and tourists in South Africa can be expected to be treated by the cops. Don't
say you haven't been warned. Rather DON'T COME! It's NOT SAFE.
- report sent by "Henry", South Africa,
A British
company is marketing "stab-proof" vests to football fans visiting
South Africa during the World Cup. A British
company, Protektorvest, earlier said it would provide stab-proof vests to tourists
who feared being mugged or stabbed while visiting the country for the Soccer
World Cup in June and July. The vests cost R510 and could be delivered free of
charge at any hotel in Johannesburg or Pretoria.
- The
South African,
Cape Town police on Monday denied
allegations that a British actress was "injured in a gang-related"
attack in Cape Town on New Year's Eve. Victoria Smurfit, who starred in the BBC
drama Ballykissangel, wrote publicly
about the incident for the first time in the Irish Mail on Sunday. She claimed the taxi she and her family had
been travelling in was shot at in the city centre, and that her elbow was
injured by broken glass. "It was kill a tourist day. And we were in the
way," she wrote.
- SAPA report,
"Manto is dead. Good. "
That was 5fm radio DJ Gareth Cliff's Twitter response to the forer health
minister's death this week. Within hours, bloggers and tweeters had launched a
cyber-attack on Cliff for his insensitivity, and now an ANC official is
demanding an apology. Former deputy health minister Renier Schoeman on Thursday
called on 5fm so-called shock-jock Gareth Cliff to apologise for his
"vicious" remarks on the death of former health minister Manto
Tshabalala-Msimang. Schoeman, a member of the ANC, emphasised he was not
speaking with any mandate or in any official capacity. "But, speaking as
an ashamed South African - ashamed at the tasteless crudity and insensitivity
of remarks by a fellow South African who should know better. "I had the
privilege of working with Dr Manto as deputy minister of health for about 18
months and during that period saw first-hand her total commitments to providing
adequate health care to all South Africans. Cliff posted on his Twitter
account: "Manto is dead. Good. A selfish and wicked bungler of the lowest
order. Rotten attitude and rancid livers - all three of them."
- The South African,
[Ed. Renier Schoeman was of course the
chief official of the National Party in Natal during the 1980s. His subsequent
admission that he is a member of the ANC is therefore yet further proof that
the NP was rotten to the core. Ed.]
Two girls, one aged three and the
other six, were raped in separate incidents over the weekend in Johannesburg
police said on Monday. Inspector Kay Makhubela said a woman laid a complaint
with the police on Sunday night after she found a little girl, aged three, at a
gate "shivering and unattended". "The complainant took the
decision after she saw the child could not even walk," said Makhubela. He
said the little girl was taken to a doctor and was receiving medical treatment.
The little girl identified her grandfather, aged 51, as the alleged
perpetrator. He was arrested on Monday morning and would appear at the Protea
Magistrates' Court shortly. In a separate incident, a six-year-old child was
raped in Jabulani on Saturday night. When her mother returned home around 7pm,
the girl told her she had been raped. The child was taken to hospital for
treatment and the mother opened a case of rape at the police station. The child
told the police a man, aged 66, raped her. The man was arrested and would also
appear in the Protea Magistrates' Court shortly.
- SAPA report,
Five people who are allegedly
members of a rightwing group called the Jessurum brotherhood were arrested in
the Boland area, the Hawks said on Sunday. According to spokesman Musa Zondi
the five were arrested last week after they fought and laid charges against
each other. "During the arrest, racist documents and literature were found
in their possession. They believe that Black people come from devil therefore
they are evil." Zondi said they were still investigating the cult and no
charges had been laid against them in connection with their beliefs yet. The
five, Johan Pretorius, 30, ex-cop and the alleged priest of the cult Peter
White, 45, Jan Roodt, 64, Linda Coertze, 44, and a 17-year-old youth, were
charged with attempted murder, assault with intent to cause grievous bodily
harm and possession of illegal firearms. They all appeared in court on Friday
and were released on bail. According to the Rapport
newspaper the group allegedly has links to the Suidlanders group, which in
turn is linked to the Boeremag. The Suidlanders believe that all white people
will be killed the day former president Nelson Mandela dies. The Jessurum group
apparently believes that Black people are "animals" and refused to be
questioned, touched by or receive food from Black police officers after their
arrest. Rapport said they had several
secret cells across the country, as far as Bela Bela in Limpopo province [Far
North]. Zondi could not confirm this as the hawks were still investigating. The
Jessurum group has even written a book called "Dimensions of
Apartheid" to explain their principles.
- SAPA report,
A security guard was shot dead
during an armed robbery at a Spar store in Primrose in the late afternoon on
Wednesday, Johannesburg police said. "Armed with assault rifles and
pistols the robbers entered the supermarket and shot dead one security
guard," said Captain Steady Nawa. He said the seven men then robbed the
store of an undisclosed amount of money before fleeing the scene on foot.
- AfricanCrisis,
A few dinner party comments fuelled by a few too many drinks
has landed Bruce Fordyce in the hot seat with the Human Rights Commission.
Allegations of Fordyce verbally abusing a woman at a dinner party with
prominent members of the art community formed part of a charge sheet Fordyce
was asked to answer to yesterday at the commission's offices. Fordyce's vitriol
apparently heightened when he discovered the object of his verbal attack was
Roberta McBride, a cousin of former "Umkhonto we Sizwe" [the ANC's
overtly terrorist-wing] operative Robert McBride. Fordyce won a record nine
Comrades Marathons, the first of his wins with some controversy when he wore a
black armband to mark the 20th anniversary of the Republic of South Africa. Fordyce and McBride were being hosted by a British friend who had gathered some of his
South African friends, shortly before the elections this year, for a dinner
party. Roberta McBride was sitting opposite Fordyce and a relative of DA leader
Helen Zille, when the "discussion" started. Initially the two men
were discussing the role of Helen Suzman and the lack of recognition afforded
her, with McBride weighing in by arguing there were countless others who went
unheeded while Suzman was afforded the protection of Parliament and was paid
for her opposition role. This stoked the fires with a heated discussion
following. A friend passing the discussion joked that the men should be careful
as Roberta was a McBride. McBride said she avoided Fordyce during the evening,
although he passed a number of snide comments her way. "I noticed he
appeared to be intoxicated," she said. Shortly before midnight McBride, on her way out and awaiting her children,
encountered Fordyce, who told her to vote for the DA. "I replied that I
was going to vote for the ANC because it was the only party that supported
affirmative action and BEE and the development of our people. Both Bruce and
this acquaintance (not Zille) told me that I didn't need affirmative action
since I was a 'coconut', which I found deeply offensive," McBride wrote to
the HRC. Fordyce then apparently turned to the case of Robert McBride, who he
called "a crook" who "should have been strung up by the
neck". The MK [terrorist] operative was convicted for his bomb attack on
the Why Not Bar in Durban in 1986 which caused casualties at the adjoining Magoo's Bar. He was later granted
amnesty before the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission". With her
daughters, 19 and 12, now beside her, Fordyce is said to have shouted that
McBride should not have been allowed at the party, ending his tirade with:
"Just f*** out of here! Go!". "My 12-year-old was
hysterical," said McBride. She herself had been deeply offended by the
outburst and approached the HRC to seek justice. But the commission seems to
have misinterpreted her complaint, sending a letter to Fordyce which misstates
some of the facts and puts the argument down to a difference of political
allegiance. On this version, Fordyce has denied all the allegations.
- AfricanCrisis,
[ Our very good friend Keith Hulse was seriously
injured in the Magoo's Bar explosion, his life
being heroically saved by our other good colleague Alan Mountford who rushed
him to the near-by Addington Hospital, in spite of the fact that his car tyres
had been flattened by the explosion. Ed.]
South
Africans are dying younger and in greater numbers, and HIV/AIDS is to blame,
according to a report released this week by the South African Institute of Race
Relations. Average life expectancy declined from 62 years in 1990 to 50 years
in 2007; it is projected to fall even further by 2011, to 48 years for men and
51 for women, according to the Institute's annual South Africa Survey. The
authors note that among 37 developed and developing countries, South Africa is
one of only six where life expectancy fell between 1990 and 2007, with only
Zimbabwe showing a steeper decline. The HIV/AIDS epidemic contributed to a 43%
reduction in population growth between 2001 and 2008; a fall in birth rates
also played a role. Although fewer children are being born, HIV/AIDS is
creating an increasing number of orphans: of the estimated 2.5 million children
who had lost a parent by 2007, more than half were orphaned as a result of
HIV/AIDS. According to the survey, by 2015, 32% of South African children will
have lost one or both parents to the virus.
-
AfricanCrisis,
A Pretoria
pensioner, who fought and survived both World War 2
and the Korean War as a fighter pilot, was found bludgeoned to death at his
home. Frans Swemmer, 89, was found dead in the garage of his Waterkloof home
yesterday morning by his girlfriend of 14 years, Anita Stander, 71. Stander
discovered Swemmer's badly battered body lying sprawled in the passage of his Orion
Street home where he had been dragged from the garage.
A blood trail and a brown leather shoe outside the front door indicated from
where Swemmer's killers had dragged him into his house. It is believed that
Swemmer, whose white Mercedes-Benz, pistol, clothes and household appliances
were stolen, was beaten on the head with a sledgehammer at about 7pm on Thursday night after he went to investigate the theft of
beers from his fridge in the garage.
-
AfricanCrisis,
A 37 year-old barman was shot and
killed outside the premises of Woodlands Sports Club in Durban on Monday
morning. Police Captain Thulani Zwane said the man was outside the sports club
when four armed men approached him. "It is believed that one of the armed
suspects carrying an AK-47 opened fire on the man, fatally wounding him,"
said Zwane. He said the four men then fled on foot and nothing was stolen from
the bar. Netcare 911 spokesperson Jeff Wicks said the barman had been walking
in the courtyard when he was gunned down. "As he passed through the door,
gunmen opened fire on him, with a high-calibre assault rifle's bullets hitting
him twice in the chest and once in the head," said Wicks.
- AfricanCrisis,
A major contributor to the
outspoken blog 'SA Sucks' has been arrested early yesterday morning by what was
called 'a massive contingent of police from no less than five different
specialist units, ranging from Organised Crime, Cyber crime, vehicle theft,
etc', who raided his home and confiscated all his computer equipment. Reporting
on the incident, the blog said that his door was ripped off, his wife was not
allowed to make calls, his children's cell phones [mobile 'phones] were
confiscated, and his little daughters were forced out of their
beds. Interestingly, the arrest is blamed by bloggers on White
informers and intelligence agents who are, they say, desperate to justify their
'right-wing desks' under the new Zuma administration. The blogger was released
early today, after the senior prosecutor refused to put the case against
him on the Court roll, referring to the fact that the case against him is
nineteen years old. 'SA Sucks' claims that the raison d'etre for its existence
is the mass media's white-washing of the low-level genocide of Whites which
started in the early '90s and has now reached unprecedented levels. The blog
says that 'the media' has through their cynical support of murderous
Marxist thugs managed to alienate so many of their readers that their
'despicable dereliction of duty' has now sprouted a 'veritable cottage
industry' of citizen blogging. One of the reasons for the popularity of 'SA
Sucks', it says, was the fact that readers could comment freely and that
'reader interaction was taken to new levels with blogs sprouting like
milkweed'. Criticised for its often crude and crass language, the blog is
nevertheless seen by many observers as a necessary outlet for the
frustration felt by many hites, and a useful indicator of their feelings.
Others have pointed out the fact that it does offer an accurate and
truthful account of the rampant terror and crime gripping the country.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
South
Africa will miss a 2014 deadline to redistribute a third of the country's
farmland from White farmers to the Black majority, officials say. Land reform
official Thozi Gwanya told the BBC the deadline had been pushed back to 2025
owing to a lack of funds. He said more than $9.6bn (£5.8bn)
was needed to buy the remaining land. Influential ANC official Julius Malema
has said land should be seized from White farmers refusing to sell - an option
already rejected by ministers. In 1994 almost 90% of land was owned by the
White community. Mr Gwanya said so far more than five million hectares have
been distributed and about 20 million hectares remain to be bought. He said the
current economic crisis meant the government had been forced to postpone its
redistribution plans. But he said South Africa's constitution stipulated that
land had to be bought - rather than seized - from the current landowners.
- BBC news
report,
Cosatu is to picket outside singer
Patti Labelle's Sun City concert this weekend at the playing of a CD with
lyrics insulting former president Nelson Mandela. The North West branch of the
Congress of SA Trade Unions said on Wednesday it would march to the resort on
Saturday to hand over a memorandum on its concerns. Cosatu has urged Sun City
to ban the security firm Falcon Security, whose chief executive officer Ben
Burger was arrested after the playing of the CD. Burger has already appeared in
court over the matter. Falcon Security has provided security at the
international resort for the past 14 years. The company announced earlier in
the day that its operations manager Warren Alberts had been suspended over the
CD incident. The company said it was investigating the playing of the CD at a
Sun International staff function on Saturday. On Tuesday, police claimed that,
during a competition, a CD was played "containing remixed lyrics of the
national anthem" which called former president Nelson Mandela a
"k*ffir". Burger appeared in the Mogwase District Court on Tuesday on
a charge of crimen injuria, and was released on bail of R1,500. In a statement,
it was said he attended the staff potjiekos family day at Sun City where
various CDs were presented to be played. He did not hear a 15-second snippet of
the song and was not near the company stand when it was played. However, he was
surrounded by police after someone complained.
- AfricanCrisis,
Right
on cue, as the so-called VVK is gearing up to register members of the 'volk' to register and take part in the election of an own
people's assembly, Eugene Terre'Blanche, the controversial leader of the so-called Afrikaner Weerstands
Beweging (Afrikaner resistance movement), has made a come-back in the media.
Brought back into the political limelight, Terre'Blanche is pounced on by
leftist journalists eager to regurgitate the old, worn and discredited digs at
the more conservative, poorer sections of the White population of South Africa.
Terre'Blanche held court to only about 30-odd Whites in his
hometown of Ventersdorp. The relative insignificance of the gathering did not
stop the left-leaning media from writing at length about 'South Africa's far-Right', consisting of 'as many as 60 marginal groups', the 'rousing words from the past', but especially the 'Nazi-style Afrikaner Resistance
Movement (AWB)' with its 'swastika-style flag' and its 'White
supremacist leader', made out to be the leader of 'apartheid South Africa' rather than the leader
of the AWB organisation. Analysts have pointed out that the
traditional White Left in South Africa, largely discredited by the way the
country has gone into decline under the sort of forced unitary, Black
regime it ushered in on May 10, 1994, is worried over the unmistakable feeling
of alienation among Whites and a growing desire to get out from under Black
rule. Hundreds of thousands of Whites emigrate, weakening the country's economic and structural backbone, while those who stay can only be kept
in line by force and necessity to survive. Hammered by the recession, and
literally terrorised by an ever-spreading wave of Black terror and
crime, very few Whites still believe the propaganda of 'the miracle of 1994', 'democracy', 'human rights' and the much-vaunted
safeguards of a supposedly independent judiciary. Instead, they are
increasingly looking for a way out. In what is seen as a renewed attempt to
control disaffected Whites inside known and easily-discredited 'resistance' structures, the so-called resurgence
of the AWB is seen by cynics as artificial, a desperate ploy to herd the
disaffected Afrikaners once again into a Nazi-labeled organisation that simply
cannot win.
-
Southern Cross Africa News, October 27, 2009
In
yet another Black-on-White killing in the Cape, Willem le Roux, 53, and his wife
Julie, 50, were brutally murdered on their small holding home near Plettenberg
Bay last weekend. Preliminary autopsy results indicated that the wife was shot
in the head, while her husband seemed to have been beaten to death. The killers
took two laptops, a cellphone [mobile 'phone] and a revolver
that belonged to the murdered couple.
-
Southern Cross Africa News,
Chris Hani's killer, Clive
Derby-Lewis, remains behind bars, apparently a year after the parole board
recommended he be released. He says that political meddling by the ANC
government is keeping him in jail. Derby-Lewis's claims were rejected by
Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula yesterday. Ministry
spokesperson Sonwabo Mbananga said Derby-Lewis had not served the minimum time
required for him to be eligible for parole. Derby-Lewis was sentenced to life
in prison for the 1993 assassination of the SACP leader. Hani was shot dead
outside his home in Boksburg. In a statement yesterday, Derby-Lewis said he had
been kept in prison unlawfully for the past 12 months for none other than
political reasons, although the parole board had recommended he be granted
early release. "Justice is not available to those in South Africa who are
deemed to be from the wrong political order," he said.
"Notwithstanding the price I have paid in prison time for being convicted
of killing Chris Hani, I have been left to rot in jail. The parole board...
recommended that I be released on October 15, 2008, said Derby-Lewis."
- AfricanCrisis,
[Clive Derby-Lewis was not
convicted of being Hani's "killer", but only with providing the
actual killer, the Polish immigrant Janusz Walus, with his gun - though even on
this count the evidence against Clive Derby-Lewis was highly circumstantial -
Ed.]
A farmer and his wife were
assaulted by two robbers on their farm near Fouriesburg in the Orange Free
State, police said on Thursday. Sergeant Mmako Mophiring said the couple were
watching television at about 8.30pm on Wednesday when two armed men entered the
house. "Apparently they entered the house through the back door which was
not locked." Mophiring said the couple was assaulted and the robbers
demanded firearms and money. He said the woman was allegedly sexually assaulted.
She was being treated at the Hoogland Medi-Clinic hospital in Bethlehem. The
men fled in a white Citroen with registration number SKK954GP. Mophiring said
police were looking for the stolen vehicle and the men, believe to be between
30 and 50-years-old.
- AfricanCrisis,
The country
has lost yet another crimefighter with the killing of Captain Charl Scheepers,
39, who was shot dead by an armed man who ignored the policeman's command to
drop his weapon. Yesterday, Scheepers's eldest son, Jean-Jacques, 18, sat with
his father's phone, answering one call after the other. "No, it is not
Charl, it is his son. Yes, it was him that was shot. No, he is not okay, he
died," he repeated over and over again. The Brooklyn crime prevention operational commander and his crew had been
reacting to a robbery complaint at the construction site opposite the Glenfair
shopping centre just after 10pm on Saturday.
Police Sergeant Lynnette Erasmus said they were told
that the suspects were still on the premises. Scheepers called the dog unit
before he and two colleagues moved to the site. They heard doors being broken
and, moving through narrow passages between the buildings, the captain peered
around a corner. He saw the gunman and shouted three times for him to throw
away his firearm. Instead, the man fired two shots. Scheepers spun around and
shouted that he had been hit. He clung to life for almost three hours, but died
just before 2am yesterday
while undergoing surgery.
-
AfricanCrisis,
"They killed my sister for a
cellphone, and also nearly killed my brother-in-law. It was the worst day of
our lives." These were the words of a distraught Hane Rumsey, whose sister
Isabel Schonken died on Saturday after being shot in the heart on a smallholding
in Welbekend, east of Pretoria. Her husband, Lars, is undergoing surgery at the
Life Little Company of Mary Hospital in Groenkloof today. A metal plate will be
surgically inserted into his skull in an attempt to repair the open fracture he
suffered after being hit over the head with a blunt object during the attack.
At about 2.30am on Saturday, Schonken's eldest daughter, Sonija Smit, who lives
with her husband Thinus in a house on the same plot as her parents, received a
call from her father, telling her there were robbers in their house. Thinus
went to investigate. But the robbers had already fled with Schonken's cellphone
[mobile ‘phone], leaving Thinus with the grim task of assessing the 56-year-old
Lars's injuries. When Thinus found Lars, he was bleeding profusely from a deep
head wound and asking where his wife Isabel was. Thinus found 55-year-old
Schonken lying dead on the floor of the guest toilet, near the front door of
the house, shot through the chest. "My first priority was to get Lars to
the hospital as fast as I could," Thinus said, adding that after he
notified the police, he put his injured father-in-law into his car and drove to
Wilgers Hospital. Rumsey, who also lives in a cottage on the property, said
there was an attempted break-in two weeks ago. She said that on Saturday the
whole family had been caught off guard. "I did not hear a thing throughout
the whole incident - not a gunshot, or a dog barking, or anyone screaming. I
only woke up just before Sonija phoned me. It was the strangest thing,"
Rumsey said. Lars was beaten badly with what seems to have been a wooden object
with some sort of metal tip. At some stage during the attack, Lars regained
consciousness, opened the safe and shot at one of the robbers. It has not been
confirmed yet if the robber was injured but a source close to the investigation
said Lars had hit and injured one of them. Rumsey said it appears as if
Schonken had fallen asleep in front of the television and was woken by a
gunshot. She added that despite electric fences and motion detection alarms on
the property, the robbers managed to gain entry into the house. "These
guys knew exactly what they were doing. They have been watching our movements
on the plot for a while now," she said. Rumsey said her sister was a
"very" strong character. "It is a great loss to the family. The
family is trying to be strong through this difficult time. All we can do is
take it a day at a time," Rumsey said. Smit said they were still waiting
for the autopsy results. "It's a
very difficult time for us children. But we are dealing with it as best we
can," she said. Schonken leaves behind her eldest child and only son,
Francois, and three daughters, Smit, Karin, and Alma. Police spokeswoman
Inspector Sanet Lourens said no arrests had been made. Lourens said
Bronkhorstspruit police had asked for and received three more police patrol
cars from Pretoria to clamp down on the recent spate of violent crime in the
rural areas around the city's east. "We are monitoring the situation and
want to ensure the greater Bronkhorstspruit, Boschkop, Cullinan and Welbekend
communities that we are doing our best to bring the perpetrators of these
violent crimes to book," said Lourens. Meanwhile, Barry Bateman reports
that Robert Anderson, 47, who was shot during a robbery at his home near
Bronkhorstspruit, is "doing very well" following surgery on Friday.
Anderson's son James, 18, was shot dead in the incident which took place at
about 1am on Friday. Anderson was shot several times in the upper body. James
ran to his parents' bedroom and struggled with the gunman. A second gunman shot
him in the back. He died on the scene.No arrests have been made.
- AfricanCrisis,
The
number of sexual offences and house robberies in South Africa has risen sharply
just before the country is due to host the football World Cup. House robberies
jumped 27% in the year ending in March, with nearly a quarter of a million
homes targeted. Sexual offences were up 10%. The murder rate declined slightly
but still averaged nearly 50 killings a day, the government said.
-
Daily Telegraph,
Police say they are baffled by the
brutal murder of a Pretoria pensioner, Willie Pretorius, whose mutilated body
was discovered in his home in Villieria at the weekend after his daughter could
not get hold of him and alerted authorities. According to police it is unclear
exactly how Pretorius was killed. They are also uncertain as to how many
suspects they are searching for. The 64-year-old man was tied up and stabbed
several times with at least two knives, one of which broke off during the
attack. It is suspected his fingers were cut off with a pair of garden scissors
and that the butt of his hunting rifle was broken over his head. Investigators
believe the attackers made off in Pretorius'
delivery vehicle and his blue Daewoo. They are asking anyone with information
to contact Crime Stop.
- report sent by Snowy Smith
(Durban),
An elderly American tourist leaving
OR Tambo [Jan Smuts] International Airport on Wednesday found himself trapped
in a minibus with a gang of hijackers who kept him hostage for more than half
an hour. When the gang finally abandoned the tour operator's minibus - after
failing to rip out the tracking device - it allegedly took the police more than
an hour-and-a-half to arrive at the scene. The police say they are
investigating the delay, but the tour company's Heinrich Kaiser said seven
police cars drove past the scene on the R21 highway but failed to stop even
though he had tried to wave them down. German-born Hartmut Dettler arrived in
South Africa about a week ago and flew out to Zambia [Northern Rhodesia] with a
friend. He returned on Wednesday and was picked up at the airport by his tour
agent. The 69-year-old was being driven in a minibus towards a lodge near Sun
City when the gang struck. At first they tried to pull the minibus over by
flashing their lights, but when the driver kept driving, they pulled up next to
him and shoved their guns through the windows. He had no choice and pulled
over. Several robbers leapt into the minibus and forced the two men onto the
floor between the seats. Dettler said they pulled him out of his seat. "In
the beginning they were very rough and threatening. They said they would shoot
us if we moved," he recalled. "Later they started taking my shoelaces
to try to tie us up. One guy pretty much sat on me." As the robbers drove,
they ripped apart the vehicle's dashboard searching for the tracking device.
According to the driver, Geoffrey Maladzhi, they were at the hijackers' mercy
for around 40 minutes. In that time, they had driven onto the R21 and were back
in the vicinity of the airport. Kaiser said the robbers cut a wire, which led
to the engine cutting out. They abandoned the minibus on the side of the road
and jumped into their own vehicle, which was following them. They robbed
Dettler of an expensive watch, a camera and about R300 in US dollars. Maladzhi
called Kaiser around 2pm. About 15 minutes later, Kaiser was on the scene and
began calling 10111. He tried to wave down several police cars but had no luck.
He eventually "half jumped in front of a police car", and back-up
began arriving around 3.40pm. "We were waving like crazy people. Imagine
if they (Maladzhi and Dettler) were injured," he said. "If police
don't stop this (these attacks on tourists) quickly, people will not come to
this country."
- AfricanCrisis,
A man was shot dead and his private
parts removed on Tuesday, [KwaZulu-] Natal police said. Inspector Mbongeni
Mdlalose said the 56-year-old man was killed on Tuesday morning in Mbongolwane
near Eshowe. "The man was on his way from his homestead to the main road
to get transport to Eshowe," said Mdlalose. The deceased man's brother
heard gun shots and the man shouting for help. "He found his brother's
body with several gun shots and also found that his genitals were cut,"
said Mdlalose. Police did not know the motive for the killing. Four people
apparently fled the scene. No one was arrested and police were investigating.
- AfricanCrisis,
His
[Tutu's] comments were made after days of rioting in
townships around Johannesburg and across the country, as poverty-stricken South
Africans, many of whom live in shacks and do not have running water and
electricity, demanded material improvement in their lives. Almost 90 people
appeared in court in Balfour, in Mpumalanga province [South-Eastern Transvaal],
on charges relating to the disturbances, which have seen burning barricades set
up, shops looted, foreign Africans targeted, and rubber bullets used by police
to disperse crowds.
-
Daily Telegraph,
On
Wednesday Wim van den Bosch, whose parents were murdered in a house robbery on
Good Friday, came close to losing his own life when he was shot as he and other
residents raced to the rescue of a friend's farm workers who were being
attacked by a gang of armed robbers. Bosch and the other residents were having
a crime-fighting strategy meeting when they heard gunshots at his friend Ken
Inngs's property. Their efforts were too late for Inngs's foreman, David
Malema, 35, who was shot dead when he walked in on his colleagues being
terrorised on their employer's Boschkop farm. About 10km [7 miles] away, farmer
Bob Round, 79, was gunned down as he fought off three robbers who had broken
into his smallholding in the Shere Agricultural Holdings on Thursday. He was
shot less than 12 hours after Malema bled to death as a result of a gunshot
wound. The murders are the latest in a string of attacks on Pretoria homeowners
which have claimed the lives of five people and left five seriously injured
over the past the 12 days. Despite the business community and homeowners
demanding answers from city authorities and police as to what is being done to
stop the seemingly unstoppable terror onslaught, the attacks are continuing.
Two of Round's suspected killers were caught shortly after the incident when
they fled across a hill into Faerie Glen where they opened fire on police dog
unit members and officers in a helicopter tracking them. Round was shot and
bludgeoned to death when he confronted his three attackers, who were stealing
his camping chairs from his Catherine Street home,
situated close to the Hans Strijdom and Lynnwood roads intersection. One of his workers who was getting ready for the day,
raised the alarm when he spotted the men breaking into his tool shed. Round,
who left his wife of 48 years, Myra, locked in their home, immediately ran outside to confront the men. According to the worker,
who police asked not to be named for security reasons, Round tackled one of his
killers and wrestled him to the ground. The worker was in tears when he
described to Myra how hard her husband had fought.
"He was all over them. They started kicking and hitting him, but he
carried on fighting. He would not fall down. He stood up again and again and
carried on fighting," the worker said, adding that he was finally
bludgeoned and shot after opening fire on the men. Myra found her husband sprawled against the wall of the tool
shed, his hand over his face. "When I heard the shots I tried to run, but
I have just had a hip replacement and I could only hobble. I kept calling him
telling him to hang on, telling him that I was coming, but when I got to him he
was gone. "I called his name and told him 'don't go', but when he did not
answer I knew he was dead. I kept on praying that he would wake up, but he
didn't. My Bob is gone," said Myra, wiping away tears. Round said
her husband was always concerned about his community's
security and would radio neighbours every night to check that they were safe.
"He loved this community and its people. What has happened is such a
waste. It is useless and is happening more and more," she said. Wim van
den Bosch, describing his attack, said he was grateful to be alive. Van den
Bosch was shot when he spotted a man with a torch near the farm. "As I
began to question him I saw him move and I turned. As I turned he shot me in
the chest," he said, adding that the robbers had escaped. Inngs said
Malema had bled to death after being shot when he confronted the attackers.
"He tried to help his colleagues and was shot," he said.
-
AfricanCrisis,
A Pretoria businessman was gunned
down during a robbery at his smallholding moments after his wife and a worker
had left to make a delivery. The murder of Nick Roets, 56, who was shot dead in
his Raslouw home after he was overpowered by an unknown number of assailants at
lunchtime on Tuesday, comes months after the collapse of a community watch
system in the area. Since the collapse, say neighbours, violent crime in the
area has skyrocketed, with no apparent end in sight. It is thought that the
gunmen caught Roets by surprise as he sat at his desk in the study where he was
apparently working on several of the business' financial books. Roets, who was
shot through the heart, is believed to have been killed with his own revolver,
which, according to the police, was among six guns that were stolen, along with
money and a laptop computer. It is believed that the gunmen took Roets's gun -
which he always carried with him after the family were attacked in their home
in 2001 - after overpowering him. As crying friends and relatives gathered to
comfort the Roets family, shocked neighbours stood outside their homes waiting
for news.
- AfricanCrisis,
A lady
friend of mine was beaten up in the Margate police station and hospitalized for
3 days as a result. My friend was beaten up by two Black police women using
batons in the station. She was badly injured and her brother says she seemed
concussed. They also ripped off her bra and top and she had to endure the
leering from the male holding cell next door for some hours. Disgusting! I have
offered my support to sue the minister and she did have her injuries recorded
by the district surgeon. We really need to keep
an eye on anti-White activities by the authorities. In recent months, there was
a story that they caught on film where Black Policemen were caught on camera
dealing harshly with a White man. The old White man then died in Police
custody. It was widely reported and there was video footage of the incident. Is
this how the law is applied to Whites? A friend of mine told me that at
Johannesburg Airport the Police every now and then catch a gang. There is
incredible crime at Oliver Tambo [Jan Smuts] international airport in
Johannesburg. My friend remarked that: they catch 1 gang of Black criminals,
but there are 20 other gangs that remain untouched. So, in this country Blacks
commit crimes and get away with it, but Whites, for virtually no reason, get
beaten up and even murdered by the Police and nothing happens to them? Is that
how the law is going to be applied?
- report sent via AfricanCrisis,
A renowned South
Africa academic is in a serious condition in hospital
after she was brutally attacked with a garden spade at her Centurion
[Verwoerdburg] home. UNISA criminologist Professor Anna van der Hoven, 64, was
beaten, throttled and then punched while taking a cup of tea to a worker
building a garden feature for her at her home on Wednesday. It is believed the
28-year-old man, who began working on the water feature on Monday, was waiting
behind a wall shortly after his employers left to fetch more building materials
and struck van der Hoven repeatedly over the back of the head and neck as she
walked into her garden. The man is then thought to have attempted to strangle
her from behind before punching her in the face until she lost consciousness.
The attack on van der Hoven, who lived alone with her three cats in Drummorgan
Security Complex, has sparked outrage and shock among fellow academics, who have
described her as a highly respected criminologist among the global academic
community. As well as lecturing, van der Hoven, until last year, served on the
council of the Criminological and Victimological society of southern Africa.
Police describing the attack said it happened shortly
after van der Hoven arrived home. "As she was walking outside taking the
labourer a cup of tea, he struck her over the back of the head before
throttling her and then punching her in the face. He then grabbed her handbag,
money and laptop computer before fleeing," said an officer. He said Van
der Hoven's neighbour's domestic worker was alerted to the attack when she
heard screams for help. "When she ran outside she saw van der Hoven lying
in the garden and the man running out of the property. "Fortunately the
domestic worker was able to give us a detailed description of the man who was
arrested in Lenchen Avenue," he said,
adding that the laptop was recovered. The officer said they were investigating
whether the suspect was linked to any other crimes. A neighbour, who rushed to
van der Hoven's aid when the alarm was raised, described her as an extremely
kind lady. "I was terrified. When I saw her she was covered in blood. Her
face was badly swollen and she was battling to speak. She was in shock and I
just held her," she said. She said people in the complex were struggling
to understand how something like this could happen, "especially to a
person who had such a soft heart". Dr Christiaan Bezuidenhout, a senior lecturer
at University of Pretoria's department
of social work and criminology, said the attack showed
that everyone, no matter who they were or their standing in life, was
vulnerable to crime. UNISA forensic investigation lecturer, Dr Rudolph Zinn, a
close contact of van der Hoven, decried the attack and said it illustrated the
violent nature of South Africa. Unitas
Hospital spokesperson Melisha Pather said van der
Hoven was admitted to the hospital's intensive care unit where she was in a
serious, but stable condition.
- AfricanCrisis,
Last night the 3rd
Degree programme showed how an old White man (Mr James Brown) was arrested at
Shoprite Kriel for taking a chocolate bar without paying for it. The sad side
of this case was that the old man had Alzheimers and he was man-handled, beaten
and sprayed with pepper-spray by the police officers who arrested him without
any probable cause for their behaviour towards him. He did not resist arrest
and they were not in danger at any stage, and if he was resisting or if he was
violent towards them or the personnel of Shoprite why was he not in handcuffs?
This old man did not even realize what he was doing and his doctor confirmed
that he was healthy; accept for the Alzheimers. His rights were violated, and
because he had nobody to assist him and was not allowed his right to a ‘phone
call, he never had the assistance of a family member or attorney. James Brown
died after being held at the Kriel Police station for 4 hours!! WHY? And why
was their a huge gaping wound on the back of his head? If you look at the
footage on the CCTV, there were no visible wounds on his body whatsoever while
still at Shoprite. What happened in that police station? Brutal and
unacceptable! Now they play the ignorance game, someone HAS to address these
acts of violence! This is not the only case where Police officers have
neglected and/or attacked people they arrest, and it’s time to STOP.
- report sent by A.A.N. (New
Zealand),
The levels of child abuse in South Africa
are increasing rapidly, a report by Solidarity
Help Hand said on Thursday. According to the study, a child is raped in
South Africa every three minutes. "This means that about 530 child rapes
take place every day," said Mariana Kriel, Solidarity Help Hand project director. She said a study by the
South African Youth Victimisation Survey in 2005 found that only about 11.3% of
child rapes were reported to the police. "This means that for every
reported case, an additional eight child rapes actually take place." The
report, released in Pretoria, indicated that 1,410 children were murdered in
2007/08. Attempted murder on children stood at 13.7% at the same period - an
increase of 22% compared to the previous year. Chief executive officer of the Solidarity Help Hand, Danie Langer, said
in addition to the 1,410 cases of children murdered, it was found that 45% of
all rapes in the country were child rapes. "The shocking reality, however,
is that these figures do not nearly reflect the true extent of the problem."
The report included interviews with other organisation working with children
revealed that the number of social workers were decreasing, due to lack of
support and salary. According to the report there were 12,500 registered social
workers in South Africa in 2007, difficult working conditions and poor
remuneration packages has resulted in people not willing to follow social work
as a career.
- AfricanCrisis,
South Africa is ranked 123 out of
144 countries on the Global Peace Index 2009, it was announced on Tuesday. "South Africa has fallen fifteen places
compared with GPI 2008," the Institute for Economics and Peace said in a
statement. It obtained unfavourable scores for, in order of most impact: the
level of violent crime, number of homicides, ease of access to weapons, level
of organised internal conflict, perceptions of criminality, respect for human
rights and likelihood of violent demonstrations. Favourable indicators were:
the number of heavy weapons, volume of major conventional weapons exported and
imported, number of displaced people, estimated number of deaths from organised
external conflict, potential for terrorist acts, military expenditure, number
of armed services personnel and United Nations funding. In the African region,
South Africa is ranked 21 out of 31 countries, behind Botswana [Bechuanaland],
Malawi [Nyasaland] and Gabon, ranked top three, and ahead of countries
including Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. New
Zealand tops the overall rankings as the world's most peaceful country,
followed by Denmark and Norway. Western or Central European democracies account
for 14 of the top 20 rankings. All five Scandinavian countries are in the top
10. The United States is ranked 83, registering a "significant
negative" for jailing a higher proportion of its population than any other
country in the index. The country ranked least at peace is Iraq - for the third
year running.Also at the bottom end of the rankings are Afghanistan and
Somalia.
- AfricanCrisis,
The attack on an elderly Pretoria
couple was politically motivated and was an example of "ethnic
cleansing", said the Transvaal
Agricultural Union on Saturday.
"Once again the impression is left that ordinary crime is the
motive for barbaric murders. In this case the farmer was first murdered while
he was milking in the shed, and thereafter his wife was murdered in the house.
This is the pattern of ethnic cleansing," president Ben Marais said. The
White 63-year-old farmer and his 60-year-old wife were found dead in their farm
in Boschkop, outside Pretoria on Friday. "He sustained a big wound on his
head. His wife had several wounds on her upper body. They both died at the
scene," said Jaftha. Their son made the discovery on Friday morning,
police spokesman Johannes Jaftha said on Friday. The farmer was found with a
"big wound on his head, while his wife had several wounds on her upper
body", Jaftha said. Marais ruled out robbery, saying it was "hard to
believe that elderly defenseless people are being murdered only for a cell
phone". He called on the farming community to "stay alert and protect
themselves where possible."
-
report sent by Snowy Smith (Durban),
Would-be robbers attacked Freedom Front Plus Gauteng [the PWV
area] leader Jaco Mulder and his colleague, Theuns Botha, in the Johannesburg
CBD, the party said on Saturday. They were attacked just metres away from each
other while stuck in a traffic jam in Smit Street on Friday, Mulder said in a
statement. They were making their separate ways to a Super 14 rugby match at
Ellis Park at the time. "Four men appeared out of nowhere, one held a
pistol against my neck and threatened to shoot me if I didn't hand over my
cellphone [mobile 'phone] and wallet," Mulder said. "I screamed at
the robber, grabbed his collar, and hit his head repeatedly against the car
frame, until he stopped putting up resistance." The "bewildered"
robber's accomplices grabbed him and fled when a policeman in an unmarked car
next to his, got out of the vehicle and pointed his firearm at them. Botha was
not as lucky. The robbers who attacked him got away with his cellphone [mobile
'phone] and wallet. Mulder said the Gautrain roadworks, non-functional traffic
lights, jay-walkers, lawless taxi drivers and absence of Johannesburg metro
police were making the area a "breeding ground" for robbers He said
FF Plus leader Pieter Mulder was also attacked in Bloemfontein a month ago.
"He was robbed of his cellphone and escaped unscathed, after delivering a
few punches to the robber," [Jaco] Mulder said.
- SAPA report,
Police say they have identified the
killer of a 34-year-old Durban woman who was murdered in her home this week.
Police spokesperson Glen Nayager said on Tuesday that the killer had been known
to the victim, Wayeeda Adham, and that she had let the man into her highly
secure Sherwood home on Monday night. "It is alleged that someone known to
her pressed the doorbell, and she recognised him and let him in." Nayager
said that the killer, who was said to have been in possession of two knives,
sat down and had a cold drink before killing Adham. Her body was found by her
daughter later that night. "We know who it is and an arrest is imminent.
We are still gathering statements and doing investigations." Nayager said
police had arrived at the scene at about 8pm and found Adham with multiple stab
wounds to the chest and stomach, and with her throat slit. The killing was
described by officers as "barbaric" and "gruesome". Netcare
911 spokesperson Chris Botha said that paramedics had arrived at the home at
about 7pm, but Adham was already dead. "No one could survive a laceration
(cut) like that to the neck. She would have been gone a few seconds
after," he said. Nayager said Adham's children had been in the home at the
time of the murder and were traumatised. The motive behind the killing is not
known.
- AfricanCrisis,
A house robbery in Rivonia,
Johannesburg, has left a man fighting for his life in ICU and a woman waiting
for HIV test results after she was bitten by robbers. A gang of about eight men
gained access to the house in Terry Place Road on Saturday when a domestic
worker was returning from the shops. Two men walked up to her and pointed a gun
at her head, demanding that she open the gate to the property. Ed Dednam and
his wife Laura came upon the robbery when they returned
home. Their son, Sean, 36, their daughter-in-law and grandchildren, a
three-year-old and a six-month-old, were in the house. Dednam said he and his
wife had seen two cars parked in the street and a man standing in the street
outside their home. "My wife opened the car window and asked if he was
looking for our
domestic. He said no. I pressed the remote to open the garage and saw tools
lying everywhere," he said. Assuming his son had made the mess, Dednam
went inside the house. When he opened the door to his kitchen he saw his
daughter-in-law lying on the floor with a man standing over her with a gun.
That was when he realised his house was being robbed. He
slammed the door and ran out of the house with a robber behind him shouting
that he would shoot. "I shouted to my wife to 'go, go, go' because she was
still in the car and I ran to a neighbour to
ask them to call the police." But his wife was not able to get away
immediately. One of the men
grabbed her hand and started biting her fingers to get her rings off. Another
man came from the other side and bit her on the arm as she was struggling. The
gang fled and the Dednams found that their daughter-in-law and domestic worker
had been beaten and their son was unconscious in the passage. Dednam said four
men had taken Sean to a bedroom where the safe was and had asked him to open
it. Sean had told them he did not live at the house so he did not know the
code. That was when they went to the garage to look for tools and came back to
smash the safe open with an axe. Sean was then brutally attacked. He was
strangled, hit on the head four times with a blunt object and kicked.
"They hit him and chopped four cuts in his head," said Dednam.
"They also kicked him. There was blood all over the show." Paramedics
took Sean to Sunninghill Hospital, where he is still in ICU. Netcare 911
spokesperson Nick Dollman said Sean appeared to have been tied up and beaten
until he was unconscious. He was taken to hospital in a serious condition. His
wife had been kicked in the head and chest. The children were untouched.
"It was over in a flash," said Dednam. "But everyone is very
shocked and my wife has to wait for HIV tests." The BLACKS are definitely
targeting the WHITES.
- report sent by Snowy Smith
(Durban),
Two policemen were killed by armed
Black killers during a firefight in Bloekombos, Cape Town.
When police confronted a group of armed men wanted for the shooting of a fellow
officer, the firefight that broke out was allegedly so vicious that one
constable described it as "war". When the shooting
stopped, Constable Nomathamsanqa Gilidobo of Bloekombos and Superintendent
Gregory Galvin of Kraaifontein were dead and a third policeman was injured.
Only one of the suspects was injured and is in hospital. The other four black
killers got away, having effectively won the firefight. Since South Africa was
handed over to Black rule, armed Black gangs have progressively become more
arrogant and daring, often taking on the police themselves, and, like in
this case, coming out on top. Last October Philippi police constable
Bulelani Ndita was shot during a shoot-out in Brown's Farm. In the same month,
Constable Makhikhaya Somdaka of Lingelethu West was shot and killed. In July,
35-year-old Inspector Lukas Nell of Parow was gunned down while chasing a
burglar in Tamboerskloof. This shooting came just three days after a police
captain was gunned down and killed in Langa. In yet another war-like firefight
between Black robbers and "new" South African police,
another two police officers were killed, this time in central Durban on
Tuesday last week. Only one of the robbers was shot dead - plus an innocent
truck driver, who was shot at the wheel of his truck, which then slammed into a
roadside tree. Another farmer has been murdered by Black killers. According to
police, an unidentified 70-year-old farmer was shot dead in his home in
Blinkpan near Middelburg on Friday morning. "The man and his wife were
asleep when four unknown men entered their house. The wife woke up at 1am when
she heard a noise and the farmer went to investigate. He was shot and
killed." Only one of the killers has been arrested so far.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
Another farmer has been
stabbed to death, this time in Matatiele in the Eastern Cape. The two
Black killers attacked the farmer in his house around 5.30pm on Saturday. They
stabbed him, stole his Toyota Hilux and fled, police said.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
Durban and Natal is stuffed. Durban
is the Mugging Capital of the World. Durban Pollution is horrendous. Almost
every river is very seriously polluted with sewerage. Durban Streets, Beach,
Bay and rivers very seriously polluted. The Beaches are stuffed. It's unsafe to
walk anywhere in town all the way to the Durban beach-front. Shutters, High
walls and Barbed wire everywhere. The stench of urine in every side road.
Durban has turning into a derelict dump, go look at the whole area around West
Street, Smith Street, Beach end, look at the shops and tourist facilities.
Extremely arrogant policemen who are NOT doing their jobs. Vagrants everywhere.
Lawlessness everywhere. Rates through the roof. Road Names we cannot pronounce.
Durban has one of the most hated, arrogant city managers in the world.
Sutcliffe. Out of control taxies. Special taxi lanes that no taxies use. Robots
(traffic lights) that never work. Totally blocked pavements where it is
extremely difficult to walk. Durban is one of the most dangerous towns in the
World. Muggers everywhere. Vagrants sleeping everywhere. Durban has become a
very unfriendly town. Definitely NOT a Tourists Mecca as falsely advertised by
Sutcliffe. It's getting worse by the day. Another Zimbabwe slum.
- report sent by Snowy Smith,
Durban,
Supper with his sons before
watching a soccer match, and a trip to drop off toys at an orphanage the next
day were not to be for dynamic advertising director Richard Cassels, stabbed
when six men stormed his tranquil Westville, Durban, home on Wednesday night.
Cassels was in his Queens Avenue home with his sons, Justin, 14, down from the
PWV area for the Easter school holidays, and Eric, 20, preparing dinner, when
the men entered the home, armed with knives and guns. After taking a
television, mobile phones and a pistol, they stabbed Cassels and fled. Two
suspects have been arrested and are due to appear in court this week.
Domestic worker Cecilia Sukude, who has worked for the family for 20 years
said: "I was in my room on the property on the night and didn't even know
what had happened until Justin and Eric came running to me. "Eric was
screaming that skebengas had come and Justin was just holding his head in his
hands and saying, 'my dad, my dad'. I ran up to the house and saw Mr Cassels
there lying on the floor. There was a lot of blood. It was terrible," said
Sukude, who now lives in fear, being alone on the property, "The security guard is also scared and
doesn't want to come on duty because he saw two men driving up and down looking
at the house for the past couple of nights.
"Mr Cassels was a lovely man and I already miss him lots. It's too
sad, especially when Jane (Cassels's ex-wife) and Miss Hayley (Cassels's
daughter) come over. It's just crying, crying and crying. Lucky I've cleaned up
most of the blood now, so they don't have to see it," she said. A friend
of Cassels, Garth Cameron, said the murder had left the family traumatised.
"Two years ago, Justin and his mother, Jane, were held at gunpoint and
robbed when they arrived at their home from school. Now he has had to see his
dad killed. Richard did not deserve this" said Cameron. We live in a
country where, unfortunately, crime is a daily norm, but there was absolutely
no need to murder Richard Cassels, especially not for a sound system and a flat
screen TV. Now his three young children are going to live forever with this
trauma and loss. The TBWA Group (for whom Richard worked) extended their
condolences to Richard's children Justin, Hayley and Eric and his family."
Richard joined the TBWA Group in Durban in 1996 as an Account Director. Three
years later he was appointed to the position of Managing Director for one of
the local divisions, TBWA-Hunt-Lascaris and subsequently joined the Board.
James Porter, executive chairman of the TBWA Group, Durban, commented
"Richard's passion was the advertising industry and its people; he
literally knew everyone. Our loss is the industry's loss. South Africa is the
crime and murder capital of the World. There are between 60 and 149 murders per
day in South Africa. According to the South African Police Services, 60 murders
per day. According to the Department of Home Affairs, 83 murders per day.
According to the Medical Research Council, 89 murders per day. According to
Interpol, 149 murders per day. Yet not a single one on SABC TV! The reason for
this under-reporting of murder and crime in South Africa could be the desire by
the ANC Government to change the growing reputation of South Africa as the
"crime capital of the world", this title is one any government would
desperately want to lose as it would cause any potential investor to take his
money elsewhere. Over 350,000 people have been murdered in South Africa since
1994 - under the ANC government. Over 750,000 women and children have been
raped in the 15 years of ANC rule
- report sent by Snowy Smith,
Durban,
In early March 2009, a gang of stinking Black savages broke
into the Allanridge (Orange Free State) home of Alice Lotter (78) and her
daughter Helen (57). The two defenceless women were beaten, humiliated, raped
and finally tortured in the most cruel and inhumane way. The Black apes
literally cut them to pieces with knives and broken bottles, while still alive.
Glass shards were forced into their vaginas and one of the ladies had her
breasts cut off, after which it was used to paint bloody anti-White hate slogans
on the walls. White police officers who investigated the slaughter were
severely traumatised and had to receive trauma counselling. Significantly, the
Lotter home was less than a block away from the local police station, said
police station manned almost exclusively by Black police. As is always the case
in such horrendous acts of White-hating genocide, the case received scant or
little attention in the mainstream media. The English language media completely
blocked any reporting of it, while the Afrikaans press hugely diminished the
shocking extent of the crimes. They simply reported that two women had been
murdered, but did not breathe a single word of the mind-numbing brutality and
shocking manner in which Alice & Helen were TORTURED to death. It is
standard operating procedure to downplay Black on White crimes, while the
opposite tactic is used for (extremely rare) White on Black crimes. Amazingly,
cops actually arrested a number of suspects, whose first court appearance was
set for yesterday in the nearby town of Odendaalsrus. For a change, the
normally apathetic Whites turned up in fair numbers - approximately 300 Whites
arrived at court to protest.
- report sent by Snowy Smith,
Durban,
Yet another White farming couple
has been brutally murdered by blacks on their farm. On Good Friday, the bodies
of the 63-year-old farmer and his 60-year-old wife were found by their son.
"It is alleged that the farmer was killed when he was milking his cows. He
sustained a big wound on his head. His wife had several wounds on her upper
body. They both died at the scene," said a police spokesman. As usual,
police are "investigating", and the killers have not been found yet.
A suspected gang of Black bogus
cops and soldiers has been targeted in police raids in and around
Pretoria. On Thursday last week, specialised detectives went through three
city suburbs in an attempt to capture those behind a spate of violent attacks
in Boschkop, Brooklyn and Garsfontein. In the first raid, police raided a
Lotus Gardens home, west of Pretoria, where they arrested a man who led them to
his suspected accomplice's house in Atteridgeville. Police also stormed a shack
in the Black township's Vergenoeg informal settlement and arrested a second
suspect and recovered three rifles, including a South African military issue
R-4 semi-automatic assault rifle and two magazines for the army issue firearm.
Further information led police to several other houses in Atteridgeville and
Olievenhoutbosch where they recovered an SANDF uniform, a police issue
bulletproof vest, televisions and a Sony music centre. Two Black men, who are
both 35 years old, will apparently appear in the Atteridgeville Magistrate's
Court soon on charges of possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition. The
use of police and army uniforms and equipment by Black robbers and killers has
become a regular feature of many attacks on White and Black victims under Black
rule, as control over such equipment has become lax and collusion
between serving policemen and robbers has increased. According to former
policemen, the recent raids have only uncovered the tip of an iceberg,
and attacks by bogus policemen, as well as criminal real police officers,
are expected to continue.
South African bank clients have
been warned, once again, to guard against armed gangs robbing them
after biggish cash withdrawals. In a publicisd case, In September last
year, Kevin Harbour walked into a bank carrying a silver briefcase. After
cashing a R3,000 cheque and. leaving the ABSA branch in Southdale, Jo’burg, he
was forced off the road by a so-called "bank queue gang" in a VW
Polo. Two of the Black robbers, armed with 9mm pistols, opened fire at Harbour
through both the passenger and driver-side windows of his bakkie. A bullet
struck Harbour, piercing his liver. Although he put his car into reverse and
managed to drive to a nearby hotel, he lost too much blood and died days later
in hospital. Clients leaving the security of the bank precinct carrying cash
have become "soft targets" for the Black killers, it is said. In the
past 12 months, at least five people have died as a result of such robberies.
One of those victims was a policeman and another was 27-year-old Anton
Dippenaar, who was shot in the chest in front of his three-year-old son. The
"new" South African police now call such crimes "client
robberies", while the banking sector refers to them as "associated
crimes", leading to accusations of them indulging in word play around the
rampant terror and crime in the so-called "new" South Africa, instead
of tackling the problem head-on. While police are still looking for Harbour’s
killers, his brother Craig hired a private investigator to help find his
brother's killers. During the course of this investigation, it turned out that
a "Bank Queue Gang" makes use of a "spotter". Spotters
blend in, wait in bank queues and look for a target. To make themselves appear
legitimate, spotters will deposit small amounts of cash or ask a teller for
change. Using a mobile phone, the spotter will then quickly pass on
information, describing what their target is wearing and where the money is
being held. Outside, the shooters will pick up the target and begin following
on foot or by car.
Armed Black gangs have been on the
rampage across Cape Town, killing several people in their homes and carrying
out brazen raids on at least two businesses over the past week. A Table View
man was shot dead in an apparent drug-related hit, a 92-year-old man was killed
by three men in his Strand home and a Brackenfell man was killed as he packed
for a family vacation. This comes after an attempted heist at a city
diamond store when an armed gang shot a sales assistant in a robbery at Canal
Walk shopping mall.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
A farmer and his wife were killed on their farm in Boschkop,
outside Pretoria, police said on Friday. Spokesperson Johannes Jaftha said the
63-year-old farmer and his 60-year-old wife were found by their son on Friday
morning. "It is alleged that the farmer was killed when he was milking his
cows. He sustained a big wound on his head. "His wife had several wounds
on her upper body. They both died at the scene," said Jaftha. He added
that the motive for the murders was not yet known. "It is also not yet known
if any belongings were taken from the house," he said.
- AfricanCrisis,
The City of Johannesburg is on the brink of financial
collapse because of its failure to collect rates and service fees from households,
the Democratic Alliance says. The city is owed more than R9-billion in rates
and services fees but has also shown a willingness to recover R2-billion. It is
further stated that the council has a bad debt provision of R7.3-billion which
could be written off. The DA levelled these allegations against the
municipality during a press conference at its offices in Parktown on Tuesday.
The DA said the council had more liabilities than assets. "The city's
current assets stood at R4.7bn at the 2007/2008 year end, and current
liabilities at R6.575bn. This reflects a ratio of assets to liabilities of 0.71
to 1. The ideal ratio for a local authority is better than 1 to 1. It means
that the city is technically insolvent," DA councillor and spokesperson on
finance John Mendelsohn said. Mendelsohn said the state of the city's finances
was compounded by the fact that more than 70 percent of sectional title owners
were not paying their rates and services. He said the city's woes began when it
introduced the new billing system in terms of the Municipal Property Rates Act
in July last year. "For the first time sectional title units became
individually rateable. This meant that the owners would have to be individually
billed. It also meant that the city would have to obtain the postal address of
every owner," Mendelsohn said. "Without those addresses people could
not be billed and money could not be collected." He further said that in
September last year, all councillors received a report that the municipality
had a total of 155,000 sectional title unit owners, but it only had 55,000
postal addresses. This meant that only
28 percent of owners were paying for their rates and services and the remaining
72 percent were not paying, the DA said. Mendelsohn also said the city had for
the past five months failed to provide the councillors with the billing and
collection reports, saying the last report received was in October last year.
"These reports reflected a disastrous decline in the percentage of rates
collected. The ideal rate is 95 percent collection of rates billings, which was
rarely achieved. The reports showed a steady decline to about 65 percent
collection of rates billed. "There can be no doubt that the inability to
bill all the sectional title unit owners is having a devastating effect,
coupled with the economic downturn," Mendelsohn said. He said he made
numerous attempts to have the matter discussed, but said the ANC, which has the
majority in the city, blocked all his attempts. Mendelsohn said the ANC undertook
to discuss the matter on March 12 but cancelled the meeting at the last moment.
"In the absence of current up-to-date billings and collection reports, and
cash balance reports, it makes it impossible to convey the true current
financial picture to the members of the financial and economic development
committee and to the residents of the city as a whole," Mendelsohn said.
The DA also raised concerns that City Power had already exhausted its
R50-million budget for the maintenance of street lights halfway through the
year - especially as between 20 percent and 30 percent of street lights were
out in the city. The DA also complained about the poor state of roads and
stormwater drainage.
- AfricanCrisis,
Imagine how you would react if Gordon Brown opened and
closed his election rallies by bursting into a song called “Bring Me My Machine
Gun”, swaying and jigging to the hypnotic chorus of this menacing ditty. And
how would you feel if the Prime Minister were alleged to be taking campaign
money from Colonel Gaddafi; faced 783 counts of fraud, racketeering, tax
evasion and corruption which somehow never came to court; and had been
acquitted of rape while his fearsome supporters mobbed the courthouse? Then ponder
how you would despair if, despite all these things, Mr Brown's party was
certain to win the election whatever he did or said. If you can picture all
this happening here, then you have an inkling of the horrible process South
Africa is now going through. Except it is much, much worse. It is also a
tragedy for Africa as a whole, a continent hungry for any reason to hope. And
it is grave news for the civilised world, which needs no more failed states.
Yet I can promise you I will be accused of alarmism and pessimism for saying
so, and quite possibly of 'racism' too. Why? All the soppy admirers of Nelson
Mandela - especially the BBC - gave the new South Africa a free pass when
apartheid ended 15 years ago. They wanted to believe this complicated and
important nation had become a sort of heaven on Earth where all tears were
dried and all problems solved. Mr Mandela himself, personally decent but
politically ineffectual and naive, served as both figurehead and figleaf for
the new order. The world ignored or forgave his continuing friendships with the
world's worst despots, and the fraudulent bungling that surrounded him. Now,
looking frail, bemused and ancient, he recently had to be helped on to the
stage by his suspect would-be successor, to endorse the grotesque rabble who
seek to succeed him. Once, South Africa dominated the nightly news for weeks on
end. Now the liberal media barely mention it. Why not? Because post-apartheid
South Africa is a failure. You don't hear about the terrifying crime. You don't
hear about the pestilence of corruption, or the absurd purchase of needless
submarines and aircraft for a country with no serious enemies except its own
elite. There is a little about AIDS, but nothing like as much as there should
be, given the acres of graves that commemorate the government's moronic
policies, of denial and folk remedies (including beetroot). Violent xenophobic
rage against uncontrolled mass immigration was played down both in South Africa
and abroad because it did not fit the smiley picture beloved by the Mandela
worshippers. And little is said about the unstoppable spread of shanty towns,
far outstripping state attempts to build proper houses for the poor.
Electricity blackouts - the invariable sign of a country on the slide - are now
frequent. The ill-run nuclear power station inherited from the apartheid
regime's [sic] atom bomb programme is beginning to judder and fail, raising
fears of an African Chernobyl. Then there are the overstretched water supply,
the railway system fraying at the edges and the unguarded borders open to
migrants and refugees from every destitute nation in Africa. It is largely
thanks to these new arrivals that wretched, instant slums sprout right up to
the edge of Cape Town's slick new airport, currently being expensively
modernized ready for the [Soccer] World Cup next year during which Mandela
groupies will doubtless once again swoon about the 'success' of the Rainbow
Nation. Of course much of tourist South Africa still looks like the American
West Coast: smooth six-lane highways, shopping malls, big houses in shady
gardens, all tended by cheap Black servants. But close to the prettiness is
fear and apprehension. Even in the lovely Cape wine country, squatter camps
have erupted on the outskirts of towns where chefs drizzle olive oil on to
fancy salads less than a mile from open sewers and gang wars among corrugated
iron shacks. Here is another world, much bigger than the tourist paradise, and
truly, cruelly poor. It is also increasingly hostile to the soft enclaves where
the new rich and the holidaymakers are apparently oblivious of the filth,
hunger, alcoholic stupor, drug-taking and wretchedness which lie just the other
side of every hill. Like ice and fire, these two societies cannot coexist
forever, and when one is 40 million strong and the other one tenth of that,
there is little doubt which will win. The only question is how and when the
dreamtime will end. In the coming weeks, South Africa seems to me to be taking
several definite steps towards its cold, shocking awakening - as a full member
of the Third World. The man who will lead it there is called Jacob Zuma.
Remember the name. You are going to hear a lot more of it. Zuma is wholly
African. He has at least four wives and 18 children. He has for years avoided standing
trial on fraud and corruption charges. Nobody seriously believes he ever will:
his approaching election is already spreading fear in South Africa's legal
establishment. Mr Zuma joined the Communist Party in 1962 (he only left a few
years ago), and has a dark and inadequately examined past as a much-feared
intelligence chief in the ANC'sruthless armed wing, Spear of the Nation. He
underwent 'military training' in the old Soviet Union in 1978, when the KGB was
very much in charge of such things. On April 22 he will become President of one
of the world's most important countries. Comrade Zuma, as his supporters know
him, certainly is not dull. And South Africa will not be dull either when he
takes over. Many fear it will rapidly become a lawless kleptocracy when he
comes to power, which he will do after a hopelessly one-sided and rather
crooked election. The grisly Winnie Mandela, a convicted fraud with a creepy
past, is number five on the ANC's parliamentary election list, despite the fact
that as a criminal she is legally banned from being an MP. She is expected to
be a minister in any Zuma government. Zuma's old friend and business partner,
Schabir Shaik, has just been released early - on medical grounds,
although almost nobody believes this - from a 15-year
sentence imposed in 2006 for fraud and corruption, including a payment to Zuma
himself. Jackie Selebi, the National Police Commissioner, is famous for asking,
'what's all the fuss about?' when taxed with the country's appalling levels of
crime and violence. He is currently suspended, accused of having - yes - a
'generally corrupt relationship' with a convicted drug smuggler and also
'defeating the ends of justice'. The once-admired Scorpions, a police
anti-corruption squad symbolising the country's determination not to follow the
rest of Africa into corrupt squalor, have been disbanded. So the approaching
enthronement of this sinister, populist one-time Zulu herd-boy really ought to
mark the moment when South Africa has to stop dreaming about ainbows and miracles, and recognise that
experience is usually a better guide to the future than hope. Zuma is
attractive in some ways. He has made his way up from utter poverty. He is a
fighter, a keen and hypocrisy-free lover of women and a cunning charmer. He makes
no pretence of being Westernised, and delights in wearing traditional Zulu
dress, leopardskin, loincloth and all. He has an excellent singing voice, as I
can testify. He comes from the deep heart of Zululand, where his home is
surprisingly modest but guarded by a modern security fence. It lies in the
Nkandla district, in the lovely Zulu highlands a morning's drive from the
Victorian battlefields of Isandlwana, where the Zulus destroyed a British army,
and Rorke's Drift, where a small British force survived against enormous odds.
South Africa's largest tribe are a proud fighting people, and Zuma will not be
a mild leader, as Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, his two forerunners, were. This, not
the far-off world of Cape Town, is the real South Africa. It is currently tense
and frightening, as well as obviously poor and ravaged by AIDS. Young men,
brought up in the warrior spirit, wander in angry and resentful groups,
strikingly unlike the more peaceful Xhosas to the south. My Zulu guide,
Emmanuel, is afraid I might be mistaken for a policeman or rival political
campaigner, so he lends me his jacket so I'll blend in better, and is pleased
when our car is caked with red mud, as he is afraid it looks too much like a
police vehicle. This area is generally run by the Zulu nationalist Inkatha
Party, and opponents have died at their rallies. Interlopers are unwelcome.
There are Zuma posters, but the ANC - mistrusted here as a mainly Xhosa party -
has to come into these districts under heavy police escort. The posters are nailed
on electricity poles about 15ft up, to stop Inkatha militants tearing them
down. 'People around here will vote for Zuma because he is a Zulu, but in spite
of the fact that he is from the ANC,' one local explains. The idea that tribal
loyalty doesn't matter any more in South Africa, spread for years by blinkered
optimists, seems absurd here - and tribal rivalry might well play a part in the
more troubled future, as it has everywhere else in Africa. This is also a very
old-fashioned place, where the price of a wife is still 11 cows, and polygamy
is normal. Zuma has already considered how to cope with this tricky detail when
working out which of his wives will be his First Lady. He explains: 'There is
no First Lady. If there is an occasion, one day we will have the wife we are
with, another day we will have another one.' He defends his domestic
arrangements by saying of his more conventional critics: 'Many of them have
wives, girlfriends and children that they try to hide. I love all my wives and
children and I'm proud of them, so I'm completely open about it.' Several of
his wives praise Zuma as a family man. Alas for him, another has indicted him
from beyond the grave. Kate Mantsho, mother of five of his children, killed
herself with an overdose in 2000, and left a devastating suicide note
denouncing him. In one harrowing passage she said: 'I hope it is true we will
meet again - but not as husband and wife. I dare not take that chance again due
to the bitter and most painful 24 years of married life I have gone through.'
South African coverage of this event was muted, and many journalists denounced
the small newspaper that broke the story. Zuma himself has carried on as if
Kate's note had never been published. He is above all a Zulu, a man who holds
to ancient traditions and customs. Whatever he can be accused of (and it is
quite a lot) he is not an urban liberal. He once spoke of how, in his youth, he
would knock down any 'pansy boy'. He has also said same-sex marriage was a
'disgrace to the nation'. He has hinted he might restore the death penalty. He
is keen on traditional medicine men. He thinks teenage unwed mothers should
have their babies taken away; that school prayers should be compulsory and that
there is too much sex on TV. He completely lacks the Westernised polish and
smoothness of Mandela and Mbeki. His political party, the African National
Congress, sometimes seems aghast that it has chosen him as leader. Too late.
The ANC's gruesomely Stalinist communist faction, the most powerful communist
party outside China, thought they could use him as a battering ram against the
more cautious Mbeki, a cold and solitary academic. Mbeki sought above all to
keep Western investors happy, thus disappointing the communist radicals who
wanted to invest in socialist projects. They hoped they could control Zuma or
perhaps push him aside after he had done their dirty work. But he is far
cleverer than he looks. At first sight he is the jovial double of the Michelin
man, bald, bespectacled and widemouthed. As he campaigns, he wears a Nelson
Mandela T-shirt (his aides sport Jacob Zuma shirts) and a bizarre black leather
cowboy hat. I watched him electioneering in and around the bleak and stony town
of Springbok, in South Africa's remote and conservative North West. He arrived
for a carefully staged visit to Elizabeth Cloete, a 49-year-old who dwells on
an arid hillside in a hovel made of plastic sheets, and lives by scrabbling
through rubbish dumps looking for saleable scrap - a trade that brings her
about £6 a week. Her neighbourhood is the bitter end of rural South
Africa, many of whose inhabitants exist, in a permanent haze of cheap drink or
drugs, defeated and without hope. Zuma must know that places like this, and
their still crueller and more violent urban equivalents, are evidence of the
ANC's failure, in 15 years of unrestricted power, to keep its ambitious
promises to the poor. He actually admitted later that day: 'We came here to see
the conditions. The conditions are extremely bad.'But when I tried,
courteously, to speak to him on the spot, having failed to obtain an interview
over several weeks, he brushed me aside. Worse, I was menacingly reproved by an
ANC apparatchik, outraged that I should dare to question the next President. I
was also upbraided by a smug, dreadlocked
member of the Johannesburg Press corps who sneered at me, 'This is
Africa, man, we do things differently here.' They certainly do. Zuma's
admission that conditions are dreadful was about the only truthful thing in his
speech, made to a few thousand listless supporters in a bleak rugby stadium on
the edge of town, after efforts to work them into a frenzy had failed. 'Viva
ANC!' shouted the master of ceremonies. No response. 'Viva Zuma!' No response.
And you can't blame them. Speaking in English, the future President has all the
charisma of an ashtray. The scripted slogans fall from his lips like blobs of
cold porridge. He talks of the fight against crime as if he were not himself
overshadowed by criminal charges and the unabashed friend of convicted crooks.
As he drones, the chatter from the audience becomes almost deafening. Most of
them do not speak English anyway. He wins a little applause for claiming that
corrupt officials will be removed. One departing member of the crowd openly
sniggers as Zuma declares: 'We don't want people to say that the ANC is a
corrupt organisation because of corrupt individuals.' But the multitude springs
back into life when Zuma switches to his native Zulu and, in a rich and
powerful baritone, begins to sing the song with which he will always be
associated, dancing and swaying as he does so. “Bring Me My Machine Gun” is
surprisingly catchy, and easy to join in. It only has two lines, and the second
goes, rather politely, 'Please bring me my machine gun.' What is he doing here,
in this arid dorp halfway to Nigeria? The truth is that the ANC faces a
rebellion, and is trying to quell it with a mixture of power and pay-outs. A
breakaway, called the Congress of the People (COPE), has just scored
surprisingly well in council by-elections near Springbok. Zuma's allies,
furious that for the first time they face serious opponents, have let their
rage show in ways which have rightly scared many peaceful South Africans. The
ANC youth league chief Julius Malema, a portly young loudmouth with a gift for
rabblerousing, has declared that his movement was ready to 'take up arms and
kill for Zuma'. He has since been made to apologise, but many are unconvinced.
Another ANC youth league militant said COPE 'behave like cockroaches and they must
be destroyed'. The word 'cockroaches' leaves a specially nasty taste in Africa.
Hutu fanatics repeatedly used the same insult to describe their Tutsi
neighbours in Rwanda, shortly before the 1994 massacres that horrified the
world. No African is unaware of this. Allan Boesak, a leading figure in COPE,
told me the ANC tries to silence his party by the crudest methods. He warns
that a Zuma government will mean 'far more concentration of socialist power,
less democracy, new laws to curtail the Press'. He also claims the ANC tried to
recruit him as a parliamentary candidate, assuring him it had plenty of money
for his campaign - including cash from the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi.
'They think they own democracy,' he says, and adds that public officials who
endorse COPE are harassed and denounced by colleagues: 'When we try to book a
venue, the hall is always "under repair", or if that fails they
organise discos next door to drown out our speakers.'In Springbok, the COPE
offices are just down the road from the ANC headquarters. Painted on the side
of the COPE building is a large arrow pointing directly at the ANC building,
and the words: 'Tell no lies'. The ANC response has been cynical beyond belief.
Ever since COPE did well in local polls, ANC officials have been promising free
food parcels to those who stay loyal to them. Regrettably, the tactic has
already won back significant support.
Judging by the Springbok rally's warm response to Jacob
Zuma's sing-song and the food parcel strategy, the ANC steamroller will triumph
here and almost everywhere else. The one place most likely to resist is the
Western Cape, the area round Cape Town itself and the heartland of Helen Zille,
the popular and effective mayor of Cape Town and leader of the Democratic
Alliance. She knows the Alliance must break out of being nothing more than a
white liberal party. But alas she is a white liberal, albeit a very impressive
one. I caught up with her at Stellenbosch University, where she was speaking to
an almost wholly white student audience, switching easily from English to
Afrikaans. Unlike Zuma, she is a witty, fluent orator. She does not break into
song, and critics joke that if she did it would be 'Bring me my cappuccino'
rather than 'Bring me my machine gun'. Her aides, however, point out that she
also speaks fluent Xhosa, Nelson Mandela's language, and that many of her
meetings are full of black and brown faces. But her cogent message really
appeals only to the well-educated, who are not influenced bytribal loyalties,
or open to bribery. Her words are heavy with fear for the future. 'The closed
crony system,' she warns, 'leads to power abuse and eventually to a criminal
state.' She urges her supporters to concentrate on reducing the ANC's vote and
get it used to the idea of real democracy. Otherwise it will misuse its
excessive power - something she warns 'inevitably leads to Zimbabwe'.
Liberation movements such as the ANC, she says, make bad democratic governments
because they believe their goal is to seize power. The diagnosis is impressive,
cool and clear. The cure: a real law-governed democracy, is attractive. But the
prognosis - a rigged and menacing election, a government founded on lawlessness
and an uneducated, cunning new leader, an African 'Big Man' with his roots in
tribe and tradition - is not so good. How distressing to think it might never
have come to this if the world had been more critical, and more interested,
during the long wasted years of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.Wide-eyed
idealism has let us down again, as it always does. It was not, as the
fashionable people claimed, a fairy story. History did not stop when Nelson
Mandela ended his long walk to freedom. They are not all going to live happily
ever after.
- Peter Hitchens, The Daily Mail,
Three men
were arrested after a man was shot dead during a robbery at a house in
Honeydew, Johannesburg on Wednesday, Gauteng [sic] police said. "The man
woke up after hearing noise around 3am and saw two men breaking into his
neighbour's house," said Director Govindsamy Mariemuthoo. The man, armed
with a gun, walked out of his house towards the robbers but was hit over the
head with a brick by a third robber who had been hiding. The man was disarmed
and then shot with his own firearm. The three stole various items from the
neighbour's house including electrical appliances, jewellery, an electric
guitar and an amplifier. "The stolen property was loaded into the vehicle,
belonging to the sister of one of the robbers. They fled the scene. The man was
certified dead by paramedics."
-
AfricanCrisis,
The
biggest joke so far this year is the ANC's pledge to fight corruption. The
ruling party's election manifesto lists crime and corruption as one of the five
priority areas for the next five years. The problem is that the ANC wouldn't
know corruption if it bathed in it. And it has been soaking in it. Yet, the
chaps at Luthuli House want voters to believe they will fight corruption. It
can't be. The ANC is the source of the problem; it has become a parasite
feeding on the state. To understand how Luthuli House has been financing its
multi-million rand election campaigns since 1994, just follow the money trail.
Those who give generously to the ANC's election machinery are hoping to collect
their rewards when government contracts are handed out. For such a system to
work, the ANC needs to appoint loyal cadres into strategic positions in
government and other state institutions. These appointments serve another
purpose: they enable ANC leaders to maintain control and keep discipline within
the ranks by dangling these positions as inducements for loyalty - in cash or
in kind - to the party. Julius Malema's loyalty to the ANC is not without its
price. The young man is not straining his vocal chords for nothing. Nor are the
people who are hanging onto Jacob Zuma's coat-tails. They expect to be
rewarded. The businessmen and women who have been swelling the ANC's coffers
all these years all did so because they were salivating at the prospect of
getting a slice of government contracts. There is now an even bigger price: the
government's R750 billion capital expenditure programme. The ANC will be able
to deliver on these expectations because of its control of the political and
administrative arms of government. As Pranab Bardhan, a professor of economics
at the University of California, Berkeley, has pointed out, there is usually a
distinction between bureaucratic and political corruption. But in communist
countries or one-party authoritarian regimes where there is not much of an
effective boundary between the ruling party and the state, this distinction is
almost completely blurred. For more proof that the ANC sees no difference
between itself and the state and its institutions, look at the launch of the
China-Africa Development Fund early this week. ANC treasurer-general Mathews
Phosa was accorded official status on the podium, alongside the Deputy Minister
of Trade and Industry, Elizabeth Thabethe, and the Chinese ambassador to South
Africa, Zhong Jianhua. One gets a sense that when the ANC says it wants to
fight corruption it means that it wants to fight independent corruption. It
means corruption that is not under its control. The spread of corruption that
is not controlled or sanctioned by Luthuli House threatens the ANC's grip on
power and its ability to raise money for the party's upkeep. Ask the Mafia
dons, they will tell you the same thing. The ANC would prefer corruption to
remain centralised; a proposition that would appeal to some businessmen because
centralised corruption is easy to deal with - efficiency is the word.
Decentralised corruption means more palms to grease, mostly of people who are
very far from the table where the decisions are made. Unfortunately, when the
general public good collides with the interests of the ruling party, there is
only one winner. The decision by the ruling party to buy the debtor's book of
one of the travel agencies involved in the Travelgate saga is a manoeuvre aimed
at protecting the ANC from another embarrassing episode, especially ahead of an
election. It would have been one thing - not that it would be acceptable - had
the ANC used one of its funders to buy the debtors book. No, it had to use
public money - my tax rands and yours - to cover up the fraudulent trail of its
members. That is from the same party that pledges to fight corruption. LOL -
that's laugh out loud; the ANC is in the house.
- The Star (Johannesburg),
Natal churches are increasingly becoming
soft targets for brazen criminals who rape and rob congregants during church
services, the province's churches said. "Criminals are now targeting
churches because they know that congregants are not armed. We need a
co-ordinated approach which will see police working closely with churches to
deal with this issue," said Pastor Vusi Dube of the eThekwini Community
Church. Police top brass have also admitted that churches have become soft
targets for criminals. "We have had a number of incidents where churchgoers
were terrorised by criminals. Women were raped while attending a night vigil in
northern Zululand and congregants were robbed of their valuables in Hammersdale
recently," said provincial police spokesperson Superintendent Vincent
Mdunge. Mdunge said the recent armed robbery at the Roman Catholic Church
monastery in Mariannhill outside Durban was another incident. The church was
forced to close its viable commercial dairy farm because brazen criminals kept
robbing it. The farm, which is a stone's throw away from the Mariannhill
monastery, had been robbed ten times in the past few years. The last robbery in
January was the final straw, the church said. A group of about 10 gun-wielding
criminals assaulted Konrad Diethei, a monk responsible for the farm, and stole
more than R10,000 in cash. The robbers also entered the monastery demanding
cash and valuables such as laptops from the priests. Mdunge urged churches to
report crime incidents so that perpetrators could be traced and brought to
book. "We also urge them to inform us if they are going to have big events
so that we can patrol. We have seen that criminals target big events because
they know that they attract many people," he said. Branches of the Durban
Christian Church had been robbed a number of times. "Our computers were
stolen a few weeks ago and the traumatic incident of them was when criminals
robbed us of our offerings of more than R10,000," said the church in a
statement. The church now has 24-hour security. Dube said members of his church
had been robbed outside the church a number of times. "We also caught
criminals stealing our sound system worth more than R30,000. "They were
caught red-handed by our security guard who alerted the police," he said.
- AfricanCrisis,
A Northern Cape woman was murdered
in a farm robbery, and her partner died later while being held hostage in a car
that the robbers stole and then crashed, police said on Wednesday. Captain
Cherelle Ehlers said three men broke into a house on their farm in Brandvlei
and assaulted the couple's housekeeper on Tuesday. When the couple got home at
about 5pm the robbers emerged and shot dead the farmer's partner, Loudine van
Blerk. They tied up the farmer, Willouw de Klerk Cilliers, and the housekeeper,
whose name was not immediately available. They were bundled into the farmer's
Toyota Corolla, but while speeding away the robbers rolled the car on the way
to nearby Williston. While two of the robbers kept watch over the farmer and
the housekeeper, the third robber went back to the farm and stole the farmer's
Toyota Hilux bakkie. He drove it back to his accomplices and their captives and
when everyone was in the bakkie they set off again. However, they crashed the
bakkie too, and Cilliers died on the scene from his injuries.Police arrived on
the scene after receiving a report of an accident and attended to the
housekeeper and arranged for two of the robbers to be taken to hospital, then
went to the farm and found van Blerk lying dead in the ransacked home.
- AfricanCrisis,
The Durban South Beach area where
local beach football is played is being polluted by large storm water pipes in
the sand on either side of the site. Also the beach football field is
disappearing because of devastating beach sand erosion. There is also another
pipe a few hundred metres south of the site on the beach. At high tide the muck
from these pipes is washed up onto the beach sand. An example of what enters
the pipes from pavements, roads, gutters and the rubbish bin areas of buildings
in the catchment area behind the beach: human and animal faeses - human and
animal blood - dead vermin - rotten vegetable peelings, meat, poultry, and
other foodstuff - used condoms and tampons - plastic, polystyrene cups and
plates - raw sewage - used syringes and broken glass etc.. It must be noted the
International Beach and sea "Blue Flag" status has been withdrawn
from Durban and Umhlanga beaches because of the poor quality of the sea water
and beaches caused my various kinds of muck and pollution. Bathers and surfers
have and are still suffering from ear, eye, nose infections and there have also
been incidences of Hepatitis B and Diarrhea. The Durban Metro manager Dr
Michael Sutcliffe should be held responsible for the serious predicament and
shocking state the area is in,
most probably because of the ignorance or stubbornness for not effectively
addressing and eradicating the totally unacceptable pollution problem. Recent
C.S.I.R. laboratory test results found there was a steep increase in the level
of human or animal sewage pollution at beaches during the last week of January
2009. Half of the municipalities 43 beaches were classified as being "very
poor" or unacceptable for swimming during that period. If the authorities
do not attend to the "Pollution Crisis" immediately they will get a
wake-up call if there is an outbreak of cholera or any other serious water-born
diseases that humans and animals could suffer and die from. I personally do not
swim in the sea or walk on the beaches barefoot that are polluted and also warn
my relatives and friends likewise. It would be encouraging to get a rapid
response from F.I.F.A and hopefully display this letter and the reply on their
website.
- letter sent by Mike Bloxham
(Durban),
One football stadium in South
Africa is unlikely to be completed in time for the Confederations Cup, the FIFA
World Cup Committee said this week. In a development likely to spur more
questions about whether South Africa will be prepared to host the 2010 World
Cup, the Port Elizabeth Stadium will not be used for the Confederations Cup, a
test tournament to be staged in the country in June. FIFA secretary-general
Jerome Valcke cited technical problems with the roof in Port Elizabeth, but
said that the venue would be ready for the World Cup. Port Elizabeth acting
mayor Bicks Ndoni objected, saying in a statement that his stadium would be
ready in time for the Confederations Cup. Two weeks ago, FIFA president Sepp
Blatter confirmed for the first time that a plan exists to move the World Cup
in the event of a national catastrophe. Valcke would not comment on where the
World Cup could be moved. He said a "Plan B" was particularly
necessary because cancelling the tournament at the last minute would prevent
FIFA from raising World Cup funds necessary to hold other tournaments. "If
something happens in a country that is out of your control... then you must
somehow have a way of saving the event and saving the value of the event,"
he said. The 2010 tournament has been plagued by stadium construction delays,
transport problems, the possibility of power outages and security fears,
leading to concerns the first World Cup set in Africa might have to be shifted
to another country. More than 50 people are killed every day in South Africa,
according to government statistics. Last week in Pretoria, Safety and Security
Minister Charles Nqakula said levels of crime "continue to be unacceptably
high".
- AfricanCrisis,
Rape survivor Jessica Ford has
urged other rape and abuse victims to speak out about their ordeal. The
22-year-old was gang-raped near Shongweni Dam west of Durban while walking her
dogs with her father in March last year. Ford, who addressed community members
at the St Agnes Church in Kloof says to relive a rape on one's own, is
horrendous. Her comments come amidst the 16 Days of Activism against Women and
Child abuse campaign. She says if rape victims don't speak out nothing will be
done. She advised that the only way to scare rapists away is to be vocal so the
perpetrators can be caught and convicted. While one of Ford's assailants has
been convicted to a 17 year sentence, four other minors will stand trial on
March 2, 2009, exactly a year after the incident.
- Report sent by Snowy Smith,
Durban,
Moments after telling his heavily
pregnant wife that his biggest dream was to hold his unborn daughter, a
Pretoria father-to-be, Johan Boshoff, 28, was gunned down in front of her.
"That’s the last thing he said to me. Those were his last words,"
said an emotional Grazietta Boshoff, 29. Johan, who owned the company Hand-O-Man which designed and developed
sporting fields, was shot dead on Saturday night in his Pretoria East home in
Savannah Hills Country Estate - described by residents as the safest security
complex in the capital. The couple had only hours before completed their move
into their new home, built close to Silverlakes Estate. As the two prepared to
go to bed, Grazietta, who is nearly seven months’ pregnant, was alerted to a group
of men breaking into their house by the barking of their dogs. The men, who
were armed with guns and knives, apparently dug a tunnel under the perimeter
wall near the N4 highway to gain access to the complex, which is surrounded by
high voltage electric fencing as well as CCTV cameras. Looking out of the
window, Grazietta spotted two men climbing through a window. Screaming for her
husband to lock and barricade their bedroom door, Grazietta watched in horror
as the robbers opened fire, shooting him twice as he tried to keep their
attackers out. After kicking open the door, the gunmen continued to shoot,
hitting Johan again as he lay bleeding to death on the floor.
As she hid in a corner to protect
herself and her unborn child, one of the gunmen tried to rip her wedding ring
off her finger. Unable to do so, the man tried to bite her finger off to remove
the ring. He was stopped by one of his accomplices as Grazietta pleaded with
him to leave her alone and allow her to take the ring off.
Grazietta managed to suck her ring
off her finger and give it to her attackers. As she tried to move towards her
dying husband, the men beat her before ransacking her house, stealing mobile
phones, jewellery and other valuables. Describing her husband as the most
adoring man in the world, a distraught Grazietta on Sunday said all he wanted
to do was hold his unborn daughter. Grazietta said the attack had felt like it
was never going to end. "I tried so hard to help Johan but they would not
let me. They kept on stopping me, " she said "It is clear that your
life is never safe no matter where you live. There is no such thing as a safe
place in South Africa. The proof is that I am a widow at the age of 29 and that
my child is fatherless because of crime."
- News24,
The owner of a lodge was shot dead
during a robbery in Walkerville, south of Johannesburg, Gauteng [sic] police
said on Wednesday. Four armed men entered the Malangeni lodge and conference
centre in Voortrekker Street at around 8pm on Tuesday and held up the owners
and staff, said Constable Teboho Lephoto. "They ordered everybody to lie
on the ground and demanded mobile phones and cash." It is believed that
there was a scuffle between the robbers and staff, during which a shot was
fired, killing the lodge owner Paulus Langa, 54. One of Langa's relatives, a
man in his 30s, was shot and wounded. When police arrived, they managed to
catch one of the alleged robbers, who was hiding in the house. The other three
fled with mobile phones and cash and were still at large.
- SAPA report,
Racial tensions fuelled by drugs,
alcohol and gangsterism exploded on the Bluff last weekend, resulting in
stabbings, rape, alleged drink-spiking and the imminent death of a 24-year-old
man who was hit on the head with a bottle and declared brain dead earlier this
week. This is yet another incident highlighting the violence in the Durban club
scene, where alcohol and testosterone have resulted in the deaths of innocent
people. Four men were killed at the Merseyside Pub in September after an
argument centring on penis size, while problematic Wentworth club
DaFlava@Revolution had its liquor licence revoked late last year after being
linked to murders, rapes, drugs, stabbings and gangsterism. Also last year, a
gang of men trashed the Frankie Bananaz pub in Hillcrest, leaving two seriously
injured and causing damage of thousands of Rands. Bok Town patrons reported
another two confrontations where people were stabbed, one in the face. Another
young woman claims her drink was spiked. Police confirmed that a woman was
raped and abandoned on Brighton Beach, allegedly by someone who was first at
Bok Town and had then moved on to another pub in the road, Hot Shots. A suspect
has been arrested. Bok Town manager Sid McLuckie said the incident could have
happened anywhere. Others claim it is a far more widespread problem.
- AfricanCrisis,
Gangs of
armed robbers have besieged a Pretoria suburb in
a spate of attacks in which two people were shot, a domestic worker raped and
dozens more terrorised. The five-day reign of terror in Pierre van Ryneveld
which began on Monday continued on Friday when business owner and mother of
two, Marina Bosch, was shot in the leg. Bosch was cashing up during the early
hours of Friday morning when three gunmen stormed her home shooting her driver,
Charles Smit, twice in the chest, critically injuring him before opening fire
on her. The gang escaped with cash, mobile phones and stock. The attack on her
Fury Street home came hours after a foiled attack on another woman in her home,
and shortly after robbers stormed the home of Cynthia Uren, attacking and
terrorising her and her children in a three-hour ordeal. The attack in Uren's
security complex home ended when she leapt from her car as the four gunmen
raced off with her and household appliances. "I was not going to let them
take me. I was rather going to be shot than dragged off somewhere terrible and
raped," she said. The gunmen are believed to have returned hours later to
attack another homeowner in the same complex where they held him and his family
up, robbing them of jewellery, money and mobile phones. The gang, according to
local community police forum members and police sources, is also believed to be
responsible for the attack on Neels Kruger and his children during the early
hours of Tuesday morning. The gunmen surprised Kruger's children as they were
saying goodbye to friends. Opening fire on Kruger's children when one of their
friends spotted them, the gunmen chased their victims into their Spitfire
Street home where they continued firing
indiscriminately before fleeing empty-handed when the house alarm was sounded.
Security guards who spotted the robbers fleeing along the R21 were forced to
abandon their chase when the gunmen shot out their vehicle's tyres. Less than
24 hours before the attack on the Kruger family, two gunmen, who may be
involved in the other attacks, attacked a domestic worker in her Collyer Avenue
home during the early hours of Monday morning taking turns to repeatedly rape
her at gunpoint. Bosch's husband Christo, who managed to hide his children
under blankets as the attackers rampaged through his house, said his family was
terrified. "These guys shoot without asking any questions. They don't care
whether you live or die," he said describing how his wife had pleaded with
them not to shoot her.
-
AfricanCrisis,
With the 2010 FIFA World Cup just over
a year away, police have uncovered a new fraud syndicate that targets wealthy
visitors staying in luxury hotels and guest houses. And they have already
exposed more than 400 ticket scams. Senior superintendent Kishor Harri, the
acting head of the Western Cape commercial crime branch, said police believed
syndicates were paying hotel staff for information on foreign guests. Harri
said police had arrested three suspects found with card- skimming devices,
which were used to capture data off the magnetic strip of a bank card.
"They then use the information for online purchases," he said.
- AfricanCrisis,
Whenever
farmers are attacked on their farms, or when members of public have problems to
be attended to by police officers, they have to put their trust on the
integrity of the local police officers. The Minister of Safety and Security now
has confirmed that many members of the SAPD cannot be trusted, with the effect
that members of the public cannot ask them for help. Of greater concern is
the fact that members of the police who could be corrupt, are
involved in the firearm re-licensing application process. TAU SA is also very concerned about the fact
that some of these corrupt police officers may enter law abiding citizens’
homes to inspect safes, and in this process could gain access to
sensitive information, which could be passed on to criminals. Can the public be
blamed for not being too willing to welcome members of the SAPD in their homes?
- TLU
SA/TAU SA Media Release,
A two-year-old girl was raped at
Zingqayi Village in Butterworth on Christmas day, Eastern Cape police said on
Friday. "The child went missing after playing with a one-year-old
boy," said Captain Jackson Manatha. "Her cries were then heard by her
next-door neighbour, who went into the house next door to check what was
happening... when she opened the door she saw a 22-year-old man zipping up his
trousers... the man then ran away when he saw the neighbour." Manatha said
he was not sure if the man was related to the child. The girl was in a stable
condition. Meanwhile, a 17-year-old girl was also gang raped at a party at
Xilinxa Village on Christmas day. "It is alleged that seven suspects
entered through a window, and found the girl in a room in the house the party
was at. "They then gang raped her and ran away... her parents then found
her in the room," Manatha said. No arrests were made and police were
investigating. Police also arrested a man for the murder of a 46-year-old woman
that took place on Friday at Mboya Village.
- AfricanCrisis,
A string of stabbings on Durban's
Marine Parade left three people dead on Tuesday night. Their bodies were found
along the same stretch of road within five hours. A paramedic, who would not be
named, said he attended to the first incident at 10pm when a 25-year-old man
sustained stab wounds to his chest. The man was declared dead at the scene.
Soon after midnight, paramedics were dispatched to the same location. "One
hundred metres from the first scene we found an 18-year-old male who had also
been stabbed several times. He was declared dead by paramedics at the
scene." Early in the morning, police and paramedics faced the third grim
discovery of the night when they were called to attend to a teenager who had
been stabbed. Her body was found several metres from the second. Point police
Captain Thembeka Mbele said the girl, thought to be from Verulam, was with her
boyfriend when two men attacked them around 3.30am. The men fled without taking
anything after stabbing the teenager twice. She died at the scene. Police
Director Phindile Radebe would not say whether the three stabbings were
related. "We are investigating at the moment," she said. In another
incident, a man stabbed a woman at Warwick Junction, in central Durban, on
Wednesday. Radebe said the woman sustained a single stab wound to the face and
was treated by paramedics. The man was arrested. Also on Wednesday, several
people, mainly teenagers, were bundled into police vans and confined to a
shelter for four hours after trashing areas around the Durban beachfront. Metro
police Superintendent Joyce Khuzwayo said officers removed many drunken
teenagers in the early hours. "Most of the people that were removed were
taken to a temporary shelter from where they could be transported to their
homes if they did not have money to get back home," she said. An irate
visitor to the Elangeni Hotel, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the
manner in which the teenagers behaved was "appalling".
- AfricanCrisis,
Three people were injured in two
farm attacks at Dargle, near Howick, on Wednesday. Clive Shippey and his
partner, Shirley Bishop, were assaulted and seriously wounded. They have been
admitted to hospital. Police Inspector Joey Jeevan said Shippey and Bishop were
approached by two armed men when they arrived at their Northington Farm home in
their white Isuzu bakkie at 10pm. The men demanded jewellery and firearms. The
couple were then assaulted with hammers and spanners, and stabbed with knives.
The men fled in the couple's bakkie (registration ND 253129), taking jewellery
and R2,500 in cash. Earlier that day, Linzi-Anne Smith, 62, was assaulted on
her Freeland Farm. Jeevan said three men with pistols entered through the unlocked
front door and held her up. Moments later Smith's husband, Robert Melmoth
Smith, 65, and her two friends - Sandra McKenzie, 60, and Marina McKenzie, 62 -
entered the house and were also held up. "The men searched all the victims
and ransacked the house. The suspects then assaulted Smith, hitting her head
several times with a firearm, and afterwards tied up all the victims' hands and
feet with cable ties, and forced them to lie on the bed in a bedroom. "The
suspects then fled from the scene in McKenzie's vehicle, taking with them a
shotgun, mobile phone, jewellery and cash," said Jeevan.
- AfricanCrisis, December 13, 2008
The
so-called training of "right-wing child soldiers" is basic defence
training, which has been approved by the police. "If there is something
wrong with that, then every adventure camp and weapon's training course is also
suspicious," said an upset 'commander' Franz Jooste, executive head of the
Commando Corps on Tuesday. One of the organisation's members appeared in the Pretoria
Magistrate's Court on a charge of kidnapping after a 15-year-old boy was
apparently abducted from his parents' home in Pretoria last Thursday and taken
to a training camp. It was alleged that children were being trained for a war
against Black people. They were apparently shown how to make bombs and use
firearms. Jooste said these allegations were rubbish. According to him, the
past weekend's camp at Mookgopong (Naboomspruit) was entry-level where basic
discipline such as drilling was taught to the boys. There was no firearm
training at all and the only kind of explosives used at the camp were crackers
used with fishing line to rig booby traps. The Commando Corps was registered as
an Article 21 company and according to Jooste, the idea was that it in a way
would replace the now defunct army commandos. The structure and training of the
corps was approved by the army and the police. "We teach the children -
all high school kids - how to react in certain situations where their or their
family's safety is being threatened. "We are not that irresponsible that
we'd straight away put weapons in children's hands. Only after the fourth
weekend camp, we give them certain defence-orientated weapons training.
"Nobody is taught to attack certain groups and at the beginning of each
camp, we make it very clear that we will not tolerate any talk of illegal
actions," said Jooste. "We teach the kids and adults to defend
themselves better and not be vulnerable to criminals. Nobody is forced to do
anything." According to him, the children's parents give permission for
them to attend the camps. The particular 15-year-old boy slipped away from his
home under false pretences, said Jooste. He also lied about his age. In future,
parents will have to sign letters of permission for the camps in the presence
of witnesses rather than faxing them. There were 29 other children at the
weekend's camp and 10 instructors supervised. Jooste denied categorically that
any of them were abducted. The boy's parents called the organisers and asked
them to bring back their son. A drill instructor, "sergeant" Wentzel
Laubscher dropped off the boy on Sunday evening, but he wasn't chased away as
was earlier reported, said Jooste. Laubscher was arrested for abduction after
the boy's parents laid a charge with police. National police spokesperson,
captain Dennis Adriao, confirmed that Laubscher had appeared in court for
alleged abduction. "The case has been postponed to December 17 for a bail
application. Police are aware of the camps. Until now, there has been no reason
to link anything illegal to the camps. But police are investigating all
allegations."
-
Beeld, December 10, 2008
South Africa is rated 111th out of
124 countries for service delivery and "this is a cause for concern",
a tourism gathering was told. Addressing the launch of Tourism KwaZulu-Natal's
(TKZN) annual service excellence awards last week, South Africa Tourism's
director in human resource development, Nozuko Ngozi, said South Africa had
done a skills audit and was developing a service excellence strategy. The
country faced a massive challenge when it won the 2010 Soccer World Cup bid and
woke up to the fact that when it came to service and customer excellence, it
was not ready. "But we will get there," Ngozi predicted. "It
does not help when the first experience a visitor gets is a bad one. We can
really create an impact and we all have got to work harder. People have to
understand that tourism is gold," she said. Ndabo Khoza, the chief
executive of TKZN, said some people would be coming to South Africa in 2010
just to prove themselves right that South Africa could not deliver a good World
Cup. He told of an overseas businessman he had met recently, who had
"stared me straight in the eye and said Africa is not ready it is up to us
to prove them wrong". Every year, TKZN received countless complaints
during the festive season from visitors who had paid for holidays, only to find
there was no accommodation waiting for them.
- report sent by GDS, December 3,
2008
70-year-old Mrs Hannetjie Benade
was found murdered in her smallholding by a neighbour. The neighbour, Hans
Hendricks, noticed smoke coming from her homestead on Saturday and, noticing
that her garage gate was standing open, went to investigate. He knew she was
very security-conscious, Hendricks told the journalist. He alerted the Midvaal
fire department and after rushing home for tools to break into her home open
with, believing she was trapped. However emergency workers from Netcare 911 and
Midvaal fire department discovered that she had been murdered. Her face was
burnt. Police Constable Teboho Lephoto says she was either stabbed or shot in
the chest. Traces show that she was attacked in her garage and dragged to her
bedroom. "Her body was found on her bed in the bedroom."There's no
motive: "We could not determine whether anything was missing,' he said.
Her son Johan, 48, of Kliprivier, was at an auction when a friend called him
with news of his mother's murder. "My mother believed and trusted that she
was safe at the smallholding and I went to check up on her many nights to make
certain she was alright,' the son said. Their parents were divorced and his
father Gerrie died of a heart-attack earlier this year. Mrs Benade also leaves
son Gerhard of Louwsburg in Natal, and a daughter Marina du Plessis of
Meyerton.
- AfricanCrisis,
Two Port Elizabeth sisters who were
robbed and raped in their high-security home early on Sunday are still battling
to come to terms with the horrifying ordeal, their mother said yesterday.
Nothing could ever have prepared the mother of the two women - aged 25 and 21 -
for the pain she would endure over not being able to shield her daughters from
being raped at their St Augustine townhouse in Mangold Park. "I feel sick
to my stomach, "she said. "They didn't only rape my kids; they raped
my soul. "I wish I could just lock the girls up in a room with me and
protect them from everything and everyone. "The attack came on the eve of
the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender
Violence which began yesterday. "It shows that these men have no
respect for the campaign," said the mother. Her daughters were held at
knife-point and raped at 1am on Sunday in the television room of their home,
where they had fallen asleep. Police spokesman Captain Sandra Janse van
Rensburg said the two assailants had gained access to the complex - which is
surrounded by a 22-strand electric fence - by forcing a gate bar open and
squeezing through the gap. They first searched the house for valuables before
raping the women. Their mother said: "They entered through the sliding
door in my room, which didn't have a security gate."They told my daughters it was their fault
that they didn't have jobs,
because the girls are White. "The two women have decided to leave
town for a while to try to come to terms with what happened. "They're
petrified," said their mother. "Their body language has changed
completely. One is a closed book, like she's lost her soul." Her daughters had refused to return
to the townhouse and had even asked her to remove the couches in the television
room.
- report sent by GDS (Port
Elizabeth),
Johan Nell, the White teenager who
ran amok after a series of attacks on and killings of, family members by
Blacks, has been sentenced to 169 years in jail. The sentence includes
four life terms. The 19-year-old earlier this week pleaded guilty in the
Mmabatho High Court in Mafikeng to shooting and killing four Black people,
including a baby, and wounding several others in a January 14 shooting
spree in the Skierlik informal settlement near Swartruggens in the North West
[Western Transvaal]. Two of the White boys found guilty and sentenced to 12
years in jail for killing a Black vagrant while they were still at school -
Reinach Tiedt and Gert van Schalkwyk - have summarily been moved from Pretoria
Central Prison to the notorious maximum security facility C-Max. Normally
C-Max houses highly dangerous criminals and those who pose a flight risk. Van
Schalkwyk and Tiedt are neither, according to their legal representative. Other
White prisoners have alleged that the Black-ruled prison department simply
wants more Whites inside C-Max, since the vast majority there are Blacks,
and that the two White youngsters were seen as unlikely to offer any resistance
or gain much sympathy if they complained.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
The Presidency and the Jewish Board
of Deputies have expressed dismay at the appearance of President Kgalema Motlanthe's
name on an advertisement decrying alleged "apartheid-style" brutality
meted out by the Israeli government. The advertisement, presented in the form
of a petition, was first published in advance of the state of Israel's 60th
birthday in May. It was also signed by dozens of prominent South Africans in
protest against Israel's alleged "colonial oppression" of
Palestinians and the incarceration, banishment, massacre and torture of
political dissidents. But the advertisement appeared in the South African press
again this week - this time including Motlanthe's name, in his capacity as
"the President of the RSA", raising immediate concerns about South
Africa's relations with Israel.
- AfricanCrisis,
Echoing other former Rugby-playing
Afrikaners, legendary Frik du Preez expressed his disgust at what he called the
“constant moaning” about the Springbok emblem by Black rugby officials and
politicians. He said that rugby bosses should rather take away the Springbok
completely. The Springbok became a well-known and beloved symbol of South
African sport excellence in the days when the country was ruled by Whites, and
Whites represented a White South Africa. Ever since the country was handed over
to Black rule, this had rankled with radical Black politicians and officials
who were put in charge of still predominantly White sports organizations
- Southern Cross Africa News,
Two policemen were shot dead and
two others injured on Monday during a cash-in-transit heist in Natal, police
said. Police admitted that four officers, who were travelling in their own
vehicle, were escorting a CPS vehicle carrying pension pay-out funds when they
were 'cornered' by 16 armed Black men on the road between
Kranskop and Stanger around 8am. "The armed men, who were in two cars,
stopped the police and CPS vehicle with a hail of bullets", the
astonishingly frank police statement said. The policemen who were not
shot dead ran away, and the robbers simply took two pistols and three R5 rifles
from the police vehicle. They also took 6 pistols and an undisclosed
amount of money from the CPS vehicle, and then drove off in the two vehicles. A
recent report claimed that the 'new' South
African police are scared of Black robbers, who under Black rule have easy
access to weapons and ammunition from the 'transformed' army and police. The increasing number of 'easy' robberies and lack of effective resistance by mainly Black
policemen has confirmed this assessment, according to journalists covering the
rampant terror and crime.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
A farmer was stabbed to death and a
robber was shot dead during a robbery at a farm in Coligny on Friday, North-West
police said. Three men broke a window at 4am, went straight into the man's
bedroom, and stabbed him several times. He died at the scene, said spokesperson
Superintendent Lesego Metsi. His wife, who had been sleeping in a separate
bedroom, woke up on hearing the noise. With a gun in her hand, she started
firing randomly, hitting one of the robbers. She then ran back to her room,
said Metsi. The woman had hoped that this would scare them. However, they came
after her demanding money and the gun. She managed to run through the back
door, after which the robbers took her cellphone, an undisclosed amount of
money and a shotgun before running away. The wounded robber collapsed and died
150m from the house. Next to his body, were the stolen items, including the
money. His two accomplices got away. Metsi said police were investigating the
case.
- AfricanCrisis,
"It's time you Whites packed
your bags and f**ked off." With these words a black police inspector from
Tembisa on the East Rand allegedly scolded the victims of an armed robbery and
hijacking attempt in Kempton Park on Monday night. This officer, whose name is
known to Beeld, apparently refused to
arrest a Black suspect on the scene. He also refused to open a case after Nic
Lubbe, 51, from Kempton Park West, his daughter, Antoenet Cronje, and her two
sons, Morne, 11, and Kyle, 3, were assailed by robbers on Monday night. He
ostensibly also refused to allow white members of the Norkem Park police to
search the suspects' car and called them "White dogs". Lubbe said he
was on his way to drop off his daughter and grandchildren at their house in
Terrenure at about 23:00 when he saw a grey Corsa bakkie next to the road in
Orange River Street. Suddenly the Corsa bakkie's headlights went on to blind
Lubbe. Then it was driven into Lubbe's bakkie from behind. Three armed men
jumped off the back and grabbed Cronje's handbag. Lubbe sped away and later
returned to the scene with his wife, Mara, 49, and members of the Norkem Park
police office. A Black inspector from the Tembisa roadblock task team was
already there with one of the suspects (the driver of the Corsa). The other
three got away. "The inspector said we were White dogs and he told a White
policewoman that he would see to it that she was shot dead in a robbery.
"Then he cocked his R5 (rifle) in my face and said it was time that we
Whites packed our bags and f**ked off out of the country." An eyewitness
apparently heard the inspector's offensive remarks: "I saw how these people
were robbed, but he protected the criminal."
- Beeld,
One of the world's top experts on
genocide, Dr. Gregory Stanton of "Genocide Watch", who issued his first warning in 2002 that the Boers
[Afrikaners] of South Africa were facing a "secret
genocide", says all the signs are there for an all-out genocide
against what is generally seen as the White Tribe of Africa. As the
slaughter of Boers [Afrikaners] in South Africa escalates under Black
rule, commentators sympathetic to the plight of the Boers [Afrikaners]
have warned that what was filmed in East Africa by an Italian film crew
of the organised genocide of the muslim-Arab minority in Zanzibar is, in fact,
beginning to happen in South Africa. The film "Africa
Addio", with its graphic images of Black atrocities aimed against
both Whites and Blacks, remains one of the most haunting visual documentaries
of what happened when White rule was replaced by Black. Back in South Africa,
some 1,000 Boer [Afrikaner] smallholders at Kameeldrift, north-east of
Pretoria, held an emergency meeting at their local Dutch Reformed Church. They
claim they are being targeted by genocidal Black attackers, who have robbed,
raped and killed many White residents in what appears to be an orgy of violence
these past few months. During the meeting at the overcrowded church,
emotions ran so high that residents demanded that the local police station
commander, Superintendent Edwin Lelaka, be removed from his post. This past
year, the local church had to set up a family trauma clinic to deal with the
terror of the surviving victims of all these attacks.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
Blokkies lay dead on the lawn, his
glassy eyes staring blankly into space. The fox terrier had fallen victim to a
disturbing phenomenon in! crime-plagued South Africa - the poisoning of dogs by
criminals intent on gaining access to people's property. "Imagine what
bastards would do this," said Tom van Rooyen, Blokkies' owner, as a police
detective dusted for fingerprints in the garage of this farm 140km (87.5 miles)
south-west of Johannesburg. Glaring income disparities
Blokkies was poisoned by thieves who stole a pick-up lorry from van Rooyen.
Another family dog, a 20kg mongrel, survived but spent almost a week recovering
at a veterinary clinic. South Africa has some of the world's highest rates of
violent crime. In the affluent suburbs of the main cities, residents live
behind high walls, often topped with electric fences or razor wire. Homes are
protected by big dogs such as rottweilers or small ones like Jack Russell
terriers which make a lot of noise.
This heavy protection feeds a vicious cycle as the desperate resort to
increasingly brutal methods to commit their crimes. "The obstacle is the
dog and so they neutralise it," said Boyane Tshehla, the head of the crime
and justice programme at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies.
Poisoning dogs makes many people see red in South Africa, where the White
middle class is hugely fond of pets and animal welfare groups get lots of
financial support. According to the police and animal welfare organisations,
the poison of choice used by South African burglars is a pesticide called
aldicarb. "It is also known as 'two-step' because when an animal ingests
it, it takes two steps and then goes down," said Christine Kuch,
spokesperson for South Africa's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals. "The motive for poisoning in most cases is to commit a
crime," she added. The poison is usually mixed with maize or meat and
thrown over fences or pushed through gates. There is no hard data on poisonings
as they often go unreported. "It happens on a daily basis in South Africa,
that I can assure you," said police Superintendent Johan Scott, who has
trained detectives in how to investigate such cases."It (dog poisoning)
was very high a couple of years ago but seems to have stabilised but at very
high levels." Police have made some progress in cracking down on those
responsible. A few months ago, a gang of Mozambicans was arrested in Benoni
after a spate of dog poisonings and robberies. Police say burglary syndicates
tend to target certain areas and then move on. Blokkies' death is shot through
with a poignancy that exposes the tragedy of South Africa's wider crime
problem. The fox terrier was the last surviving dog of van Rooyen's brother
Michael, who was murdered a few years ago in an attack on his farm, just a
short walk down the road.
- AfricanCrisis,
Three Blacks tried to mug me today.
Across the road from the Main Post Office Durban. Durban is the Mugging Capital
of the world. I collected my post from the Post Office. I noticed three Black
scumbags paying a lot of attention to me then start following me. I crossed the
road immediately. They were about 18 years old. They split up, two sped up on
the other side of the road to get in front of me and the other one crossed the
road behind me. I knew they were coming. The two crossed the road in front of
me and came walking towards me. The other one was behind me. I have two Swart Pepper Sprays in my pockets.
Direct stream.
Swart can spray
approximately 5 metres (5.5 yards) depending on the wind. These were
professional muggers. Obviously do this every day. The two coming towards me
were smiling at me. When they were 2 metres (2.2 yards) away I pulled the two Swart sprays out of my pockets and let
them have it. I got the one in the face and continued spraying until they
turned around and ran away. I shouted very loudly "Fu*k off you Black
bastards". Without stopping the sprays I turned around and sprayed the one
behind me. I then chased him spraying him all the time. Not one Policeman in
sight. Never a Policeman in sight. All the Black Security just watch and do
nothing. All the other Blacks in town just looked on and did nothing. I have
been mugged 6 times and 11 attempted muggings. I have been robbed at gun point
and lost approximately R2, 5 million to Black thieves. At that exact same spot
were they attacked me today there was lots of blood on the pavement two weks
ago. Obviously these Black scum operate in that area all the time. There are
lots of muggers around the Post Office, City Hall to the Bus Depot and the Workshop Shopping Centre. All Whites are
in extreme danger in Durban. South Africa is a country of thieves. South Africa
is a criminals' paradise.
We have the highest crime rate in
the world. We all have a duty and an obligation to warn the public and tourists
of the dangers and White genocide in South Africa. Never go into Durban.
- report sent by Snowy Smith
(Durban),
A 16-year-old White girl thought to
have been raped by Blacks during the umpteenth attack on White families in the
Kameeldrift area north-east of Pretoria is believed to be suffering from shock
and refuses to say anything. According to police, the attack happened yesterday
morning at about 04:00 hrs on a smallholding in Boekenhoutskloof, Kameeldrift.
"Four armed men entered the house, tied up the family of five with
shoelaces in the main bedroom and fled in the family vehicle, taking mobile
phones, computers and laptops," a spokesman said. He said the robbers had
apparently raped a 16-year-old girl in another room while the family lay tied
up in the main bedroom.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
Another White policemen serving in
the Black-led "new" South African police force has been shot and
killed next to a Black colleague. Inspector Andries van Tonder, 42, father of
two children, was shot six times, including in the head. Police spokesperson Superintendent
Lungelo Dlamini, said van Tonder and 'another policeman' arrested a suspect on
the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifth Street in Bezuidenhout Valley,
Johannesburg. They had found an AK-47 assault rifle on him. En route to
the police station a green Audi started pursuing the police vehicle. The
occupants of the Audi opened fire on the police, van Tonder was hit and lost
control of the vehicle and crashed into a tree on the pavement. An eyewitness
who didn't want to be identified for fear of the Black robbers who control
large areas of the country, said the White policeman still opened the car
door, but then he just collapsed. Van Tonder's Black killers freed their mate
in the police vehicle and fled the scene. The 'other' policeman was not injured,
and either ran away or simply watched the killers without doing anything,
according to residents.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
He had always been the heart and
soul of a party, but now Clint Kerr, 44, from Johannesburg is blind and deaf
and his family is desperate to get him to communicate again. "He wants to
know why we won't talk to him. He really doesn't seem to realise that he has
become deaf and blind," his son Darren said on Thursday. After robbers
tortured Clint at his house in Glenvista in March and hit him on the head with
a hammer, he contracted meningitis and lost his sight and hearing. "He
asks us all the time to speak up or to turn on the lights," said his
ex-wife, Sandy. His fiancée, Andrea Hatton-Jones, is now taking care of him,
but is said to be severely traumatised and has stopped answering her phone.
- Beeld,
Yet another elderly White man has
been murdered. The body of 69-year-old Barry Killeen from George was found
in the house he was renovating in Wilderness, Cape Province. Police said it
appeared he had been beaten to death but could not confirm the method used
to kill him. As is so often the case in these killings, it is alleged that the
Black man working with the victim is the main suspect. The man, known as
"Soweto", had been seen driving Killeen's bakkie earlier. He seemed
not to be able to drive the vehicle. The neighbour approached the worker but
the worker got into a taxi that happened to be there at that time and left,
leaving the bakkie he was driving unattended. A case of murder has been opened.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
Four
women were raped in the Vulani church in Ophaphasi near Kwamsane on Wednesday,
Natal police said. Captain Jabulani Mdletshe said the incident happened early
on Wednesday morning inside the church. The women were part of the Nazareth
Baptist church and were attending a night-over service usually attended by
female members. Some of the women were asleep and others preparing to sleep
when a group of men entered and demanded mobile phones and money. Seven mobile
phones were taken. Four of the women were then raped. Four cases of rape and
seven cases of armed robbery were being investigated, Mdletshe said.
- SAPA
report,
The
release on parole of 72-year-old Clive Derby-Lewis, who has been incarcerated
for 15 years for the killing of Communist terrorist leader Chris
Hani, is being opposed by Hani's widow and the SA Communist Party. Clive
Derby-Lewis is supposed to walk out of prison a free man on October 15,
following the recommendation of the all-Black parole board, with, according to
his attorney Marius Coertze, everything done according to the rules and
regulations governing the granting of parole to prisoners of his age serving a
life sentence. Coertze said the board's recommendation (to release
Derby-Lewis), under the chairmanship of Victor Sepeng, was then forwarded to
the regional commissioner of correctional services. Derby-Lewis was told by the
parole board on September 22 that "the commissioner requested that the
Hani family be informed of the coming parole. "The parole board did not
have the contact details of the Hani family. Mr Derby-Lewis - yes imagine that
- supplied them with the information," said Coertze. Derby-Lewis then
appeared again before the parole board last week and was told that the week's
notice given to the Hani family was insufficient. The e-mail sent to Chris
Hani's widow, Limpho, to inform her of the parole hearing, has sparked an angry
reaction from the SA Communist Party, the Young Communist League and the ANC
Youth League. The SACP claimed that the e-mail (to Hani's widow)
constituted a "serious act of provocation, not only to the Hani family,
but to the SACP, the alliance and the overwhelming majority of the people of
South Africa. Derby-Lewis, 72, and the Polish-born Walus, 55, were sentenced to
death for the shooting of Hani on April 10, 1993. Their sentences were commuted
to life imprisonment in 1995. While communist supporters have vowed to keep
Derby-Lewis and Walus in prison as long as possible, these two prisoners
are seen by many conservative Whites as heroes, who took action against a
terrorist leader who gave the orders for many atrocities against civilians, White
and Black, in the so-called Old South Africa.
-
Southern Cross Africa News,
An elderly farmer was killed and
another kidnapped and injured in a farm attack in Garies, Kimberley police said
on Saturday. Spokesperson Cherelle Ehlers said the attack happened on Friday
evening when two armed men confronted 69 year-old farmer Nick Engelbrecht as he
was arriving at his farm. The men threatened Engelbrecht with two firearms
stolen from his farm, forced him into his vehicle and made him ride to a nearby
farm. Engelbrecht then ran towards the house of another farmer, 67 year-old
Stefanus Kotze and his wife. The men then shot and wounded Engelbrecht in his
upper left arm and shot Kotze in the face. Kotze died on the scene.
- AfricanCrisis,
Two police
inspector brothers involved in an Umbilo pub shooting, in which three people
were killed, have been suspended without pay. The shooting at the Merseyside
pub on September 10 where Shawn Strydom, 33, Nick Jansen van Rensburg, 57, and
Rory Menzes, 40, were killed took place after an argument and a jibe about
penis sizes and racist insults. Two men were injured.Five men were arrested
afterwards. After internal investigations were completed, the two SAPS
inspectors, Samuel Steven of the Mayville station, 39, and Leon Steven, 33, of
the Point police station were served their notices of suspension this week.
SAPS spokesperson Superintendent Muzi Mngomezulu said the decision was taken to
suspend the two officers after the conduct of both officers were investigated.
- AfricanCrisis,
In South Africa there is a rumour,
a general belief that has sort of reached a consensus amongst Whites that
following the death of Mandela, the Blacks will launch a country wide attack on
all Whites, killing them en masse and purging them once and for all from the
country. This attack has been dubbed "Uhuru – Night of the long
knives". The origin of this rumour has several sources. Siener van Rensburg
mentioned it, The Daughter of Sion group as well as the Suidlanders. Further
mention was made by the Black ANC consultant, Mzukizi Gaba, who told a police
officer who arrested him for driving on the wrong side of the N1 in the Cape:
"The day Mandela dies, we will kill you Whites like flies!" Certain
signs are quoted, such as stickers on the back of Black Mini-bus taxis that
reads "Not, Uhuru Yet", and the sale of 38,000 Machetes to Blacks by
a hardware shop in Pretoria (in one month). I have for a long time not believed
that the Blacks would actually be so stupid as to attempt such an attack,
mainly, because it would give Whites a reason for a massive backlash that will
lead to a racial civil war that Blacks, despite their superior numbers cannot
win. Details I won't disclose here. I believed that the Uhuru rumour was
created by the Marxist ANC and the Communist Party to keep Whites in a state of
anticipation while they picked them off one by one in their homes and on the
farms. 3000 White farmers have been killed by blacks under the banner of
"ordinary crime" since the ANC took control of South Africa in 1994.
There is however one incident in our history that made me never discard this
rumour completely and so I have been keeping an open mind. In January 1949
thousands of Blacks descended on the Indian community of Cato Manor in Durban.
In an orgy that lasted four days, Blacks burned down Indian residences and
businesses, raped and murdered the Indian community. One of the ironies of that
attack was that it left more Blacks dead and injured than Indians. I suppose
one can argue this statistically, but nevertheless, one would have expected
more that 87 Blacks and 50 Indians killed after four days. So what made me
rethink the possibility of a Rwandan style genocidal attack against Whites by
Blacks in South Africa? First of all it is important that we always keep an
open mind and think about all the possibilities. Never get bogged down on one
train of thought or discard opposing ideas out of hand. Recycle it in your mind
and think about it carefully. Open your eyes to what is happening in the
country and keep a close eye on what the Black masses are doing. Recently we
had horrific xenophobic attacks by South African Blacks against foreign Blacks
from Somalia, Congo, Mozambique, etc. The question was then raised: "What
is a foreigner?" How long before they start redefining
"foreigners" to include Chinese, Indians and Whites? Many said it was
the Blacks training for "Uhuru". Whenever COSATU organizes mass
marches, Whites mumble that they are training for "Uhuru", but hardly
give it a second thought and carry on with their jobs or whatever they are
doing. Whites are waiting for the day Mandela dies...or shall I say the NIGHT
afterwards…"The NIGHT of the long knives". But what if this attack
comes during the DAY? Think about it. Recently COSATU marches have been growing
in size, spread countrywide and their causes have become more and more trivial
(food prices, fuel prices, etc). They arrange these marches with hundreds of
thousands of demonstrators for seemingly insignificant causes. What the hell is
going on? If the attack comes during the night, people will be at home with
their families behind security walls and close to their weapons. It will be
relatively easy for Whites to gather their families and flee or re-group and
fight back. If the attack comes during the day, where will you, your wife and
children be? Probably in three different locations at the time. You at your
work, wife at her work or home, and kids at school. It will be a lot more
difficult to gather your family and flee. Further, most employers do not allow
weapons on their premises. The men will be grouped together in buildings
without weapons, like sheep in a pen, ready to be slaughtered. Building exits
can be closed off and entire buildings set alight. It will make the Twin Towers
of 9/11 look like a minor incident.
- report sent by Snowy Smith
(Durban),
The South African Navy wants to
spend billions more of taxpayers' money on patrol ships - because the hugely
expensive corvettes they bought to monitor the country's seas are not ready or
up for the job. This has emerged from a staff paper commissioned on behalf of
Chief of the Navy, Vice-Admiral Johannes Mudimu from the SA National Defence
Force's (SANDF) Legal Services Division, which states that the navy
"urgently and critically" requires the 85m-long multi-purpose hull
patrol boats to replace its aging vessels. The paper also states that the
navy's lack of ability to patrol South African waters has led to the plundering
of the country's marine resources. The document, which the SANDF on Wednesday
insisted had no official status, also reveals that the navy expects to face
strong resistance to its mooted purchase of the "indispensible"
ships, because of the backlash that followed government's previous R30-billion
arms deal. However, it suggests that government could partially fund the
purchase of the hulls - the estimated total cost of which runs into billions of
rands - with money saved from the "decommissioning of old ships". The
corvettes cost about R6-billion. Each hull is expected to cost a minimum
R300-million. Defence spokesperson Sam Mkhwanazi on Wednesday claimed the
document, which was sent to Mudimu from SANDF Chief of Legal Services Major
General SB Mmono in June this year, was a 2003 "academic study"
conducted by a legal services staff member "in his personal
capacity". But the document, which is in possession of Independent
Newspapers, includes numerous references to events, papers and conferences
which occurred well after 2003. It also confirms that the document was
commissioned on behalf of the chief of the navy. Mkhwanazi claimed, however,
that the reference to "commissioning" might be as a "result of a
misunderstanding of that word". Mkhwanazi declined to respond to questions
about the document, including its statement that the corvettes and submarines
purchased as part of arms deal would only come into service in 2012, six years
after the 2006 date given by government for when the corvettes would be
"operationally ready". At the time that the corvettes were purchased,
government claimed that they would be used, among other functions, to conduct
"regular patrols for the protection of our marine resources against poaching
and pollution in our Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ)". The staff paper now
states that the limited budgets experienced by the navy, as a result of the
huge arms deal costs, had left it unable to patrol this 1.3 million sq/km.
According to the SANDF's legal services department, given the area's size and
"massive potential in terms of fish, mineral and fossil wealth, the
failure to patrol (one cannot control without patrol) is a departure from
international trends verging on dereliction of duty". This lack of control
had led to "the unrestricted plundering of valuable resources like the
Patagonian tooth fish", the document stated.
- AfricanCrisis,
White South Africans would like to see the 2010
Soccer World Cup flop, says Essop Pahad, Minister in the Presidency. Pahad is a
member of the country's 2010 Local Organising Committee. "Although they
may be in the minority, there are still many White people in South Africa who
do not support ‘Bafana Bafana’. "They also do not really care that the
Soccer World Cup will take place in South Africa. "All you have to do is
to read their sentiments about it on websites," Pahad said.
- report sent by JGK (Pretoria),
Fatally wounded Amanzimtoti hijack
victim, Jennifer-Rae Hall, crawled under a bus shelter to hide from the gunman
who shot her and died minutes later in a friend's arms. The only uninjured
occupant of the hijacked car, Amy Landsell, and a passer-by carefully pulled
the bleeding Hall out from under the bus shelter, and Landsell desperately
tried to stem the blood from Hall's side, while cradling her in her arms.
"Someone, who may have been a nurse, tried to give Jennifer CPR,"
said Megham Renwick, spokesperson for the victims on Monday. But their attempts
proved futile, and Landsell, who was uninjured in the tragedy, held her friend
until she slipped away. The horror hijack which cost 22-year-old Hall her life,
happened on Saturday afternoon as Hall, Landsell and another friend, Kate
Flemming, were on their way to watch the sardines in Scottburgh. They had
stopped in Amanzimtoti to swop drivers. Flemming was shot in the pelvis and is
in St Augustine's Hospital in a stable condition. Landsell was uninjured. Toti
detectives arrested two suspects on Sunday, but no charges have been laid yet.
It is understood they were arrested in Umlazi. Residents in Winston Park and
Amanzimtoti are still in shock at the hijacking, with Quinton Rutherford, the
founder of Amanzimtoti's Community Crime Prevention Organisation, saying it was
"absolutely disgusting that such an innocent girl should be shot at by an
armed man". The three friends had been on their way to a Scottburgh
caravan park and were travelling in Flemming's VW Polo when they stopped to change
drivers because Flemming had a problem with her wrist. They pulled into a
parking area near a nightclub which they knew and Hall climbed into the driving
seat, with Flemming next to her and Landsell in the back. Suddenly, as Hall put
the car into first gear to pull away, she noticed a man approaching her and
screamed. He fired a shot and Hall was hit in the side. The gunman, aged about
20, with a very round face, then screamed at the others to get out of the car,
which they did. Flemming was shot in the pelvis in the commotion, but it is
still unclear if her wound was from the same bullet that hit Hall or from a
second bullet. Flemming and Landsell ran to a nearby bottle store to get help,
even though Flemming did not know she had been shot. Landsell returned to the
crime scene and saw that the bleeding Hall, who had been thrown out of the
vehicle, had crawled under a nearby bus shelter. "She did not know if the
attackers were still around," explained Renwick. It was only when the
hijacked car was being driven away that the survivors realised that a second
suspect, who was sitting in the stolen car, was involved.
- report sent by Snowy Smith (Durban),
Hundreds
of angry commuters commandeered buses on Monday morning, smashing them into
others to form a barricade across a main road before setting them alight. The
rampage occurred at the Big Tree transfer station on the busy Moloto Road in
Cullinan, north of Pretoria. More than 20 Putco
buses were torched. Thick black smoke could be seen for 20km (12 miles) as
emergency workers battled for hours to douse the fire. Dozens of bus drivers
who had been forced out of their buses were seen milling around as the police
moved in to quell the violence. A bus driver who did not want to be named said
commuters were angry because they had no tickets. He said the trouble started
at about 5:30am and the first bus was set alight about an hour later. "The
ticket-sellers were supposed to be here on Sunday to sell weekly tickets to
commuters, but they did not arrive. When the ticket-sellers did not arrive the
commuters got angry and started burning the buses," he said. The driver
said he explained to the passengers that they would still be able to transport
them to the city although they did not have tickets, but the passengers were
concerned about how they were going to get home in the afternoon. "They
wouldn't listen to us. They forced everyone off the buses. Some drove them into
the road and set the buses alight," he said. Putco spokesperson Matlakala Motloung told The Star on Monday morning that 21 buses were torched because of a
communication breakdown between the company and commuters. "Putco sells
weekly and monthly tickets to commuters and two weeks ago, we suspended 17
ticket-sellers after we discovered that money had been misappropriated. We got
in replacement sellers, but at the weekend they were intimidated and could not
sell tickets."
-
AfricanCrisis,
Bridget Oppenheimer is doing "absolutely
okay" after being held at knifepoint and robbed at her La Lucia estate,
Milkwood Lodge, early on Thursday morning. Three men, one armed with a knife,
threatened Oppenheimer, the widow of De
Beers diamond mining magnate Harry Oppenheimer, and fled with a flat screen
television and a small amount of money. Oppenheimer, who was in her bedroom at
the time, was unhurt during the incident. Her vast sub-tropical garden which
boasts duck ponds, a stream and indigenous milkwood trees, has a night watchman
and a guard on duty. Police spokesperson Superintendent Jay Naicker said the
men got past the security and gained access to the house through a bathroom
window. James Teeger, managing director of E
Oppenheimer and Son, which legally represents Oppenheimer, said she was doing
well and was not feeling uncomfortable about staying home alone after the
incident. He said she was a "very resilient woman" and was
unfortunately one of the many victims of crime in South Africa. Naicker said no
arrests had been made yet.
-
AfricanCrisis,
People
begging at traffic lights have become as synonymous with South Africa as
biltong and braaivleis. The car guard you absent-mindedly tip might once have
been a teacher or a businessman. The beggar at the traffic light never intended
standing in the sun, holding a placard reading: "Two children, no money,
Help please. God bless". Poverty among all races has become a major social
issue - and there are few places where it can be seen increasing so rapidly as
among Whites in Pretoria. White squatter camps were barely heard of in the
past. Poor Whites tend to hide their suffering for two main reasons. Firstly,
they fear eviction or ejection from their squalid settlements and, secondly,
they fear that social workers will take away their children. "The welfare
people are like wolves to us. They say the place isn't fit to raise a
child," one mother said. "But, just because we are poor does not mean
we don't love our children," one said. Dirk Hermann of Solidarity said there were about 38
White shelters in Pretoria and thousands others living in communes or behind
someone's yard. "These are the down and out people, defeated by life. No
glimmer of humanity or self-esteem. It's soul-destroying to spend one's days in
the sun or freezing winter, trying to earn a pittance as a car watch or
begging," he said. Kobus Horn, who often takes donations to camps for the
poor, said women and children suffered the most. "There is a lot of abuse
in these camps. The people suffer emotionally and physically. Mothers go hungry
and cold just to give their children an extra bite of bread. They don't see the
welfare as help, they fear them," he said. "Bad things can happen
behind the zinc or canvas shacks. There are many good people, but their morale is
low," Horn explained. He felt these people had to be helped to survive on
their own. He suggested working communities where they could learn skills, such
as planting vegetables, to feel worthy again and so break the cycle of poverty.
Reverend Barbara Louw of Inter Trauma
Nexus said poverty in Pretoria was a problem in almost every suburb, as
some people still lived in nice areas, but have no food to eat. Traditional
White Afrikaner churches have also noticed a greater need among members of
their congregation for aid, in the past, the congregation mainly helped others.
The Freedom Front Plus plans a
poverty conference on August 29 at which experts will address the poverty
issue.
-
AfricanCrisis,
The thousands of holidaymakers expected
to flock to Durban’s beaches could be exposed to disease because of sewage
pollution along the coastline. Four of Durban’s main tourist beaches - North
Beach, South Beach, Ansteys on the Bluff, and Addington - have lost their Blue
Flag status in the past 12 months because of high levels of faecal pollution in
the water. International Blue Flag spokesperson Alison Kelly told The Times that the water along Durban’s
entire coastline contains high levels of bacteria from sewerage. ’This is
worrying because of the health implications and the effect it will have on
Durban in 2010, when South Africa hosts the World Cup,’ she said.
- report sent by JGK (Pretoria),
More fed-up Black South Africans want to
emigrate to escape the crime and economic pressure on jobs in South Africa. The
number seriously considering emigration has shot up by 20% since 2000, a
researcher revealed on Thursday. "We are now seeing a tipping point for an
exodus, but this time across the board in terms of race," said Future Fact
researcher Debbie Milne at a conference in Johannesburg. "It is motivated
more by the sense of cynicism than real violent political turmoil." More
than one in three South Africans now say they are seriously considering
leaving, as opposed to 18% in 2000, according to the survey conducted in the
second half of last year among 2,500 adults. The surprise was that the increase
was now reflected across all races. In 2000, 22% of Whites, 18% of Blacks, 12%
of Coloureds and 26% of Indians said they were considering emigration. But in
2007, sentiments had changed with 41% of Whites, 38% of Blacks, 42% of
Coloureds and 30% of Indians thinking of leaving the country. "It does
show the sense of dissatisfaction," said Milne. "South Africa as a
society has a number of unhappy people who feel helpless and hopeless about
their future. Many social ills contribute to an exodus mentality among our
citizens." High crime rates and job security were deciding factors for one
Coloured Eastern Cape couple in the process of emigrating to Australia. The
couple, who now live in Port Elizabeth, said they had had enough of horror
crimes and feared their two toddler girls would be exposed to the country's
brutalities. Both professionals, they said that although their roots were in
South Africa, it was not worth dying over patriotism. One, a 32-year-old
teacher, said: "Our nanny was robbed and mugged just a few houses away.
They took her cellphone and punched her a few times. The thugs were arrested,
but released the following day and nothing has come of the case." Being
hijacked was one of her worst fears. "Every time I drive around with my
daughters, I double check to ensure that everything is locked. I think of all
these hijackings and rapes ... I'm not being paranoid, but this is
reality," she said.
- Daily Dispatch (East London),
A Richmond Hill (Port Elizabeth)
mother and her two children were held for the weekend in the Humewood police
cells after they apparently assaulted an alleged mobile phone thief. They appeared briefly in
the local magistrate's court on Monday on charges of assault with the intention
of causing grievous bodily harm. Cheryl Burger, 48, her son Shaun, 23, and her
daughter Tania, 20, were each released on bail of R500. Their lawyer, Mark
Rossouw, said the Burger’s had gone for a walk at King's Beach on Saturday
afternoon. "When they got back to their car, Miss Burger realised her
mobile phone had been stolen," said Rossouw. They immediately informed
police officers who were passing by in a police vehicle, and then helped them
search for the suspect in the Summerstrand area. During the search the Burger’s
heard a woman "scream terribly". They ran towards the woman, who
pointed at an unknown man. The Burger’s charged at the man and took a knife
from him. They also suspected that he had stolen the mobile phone. More police
were sent to the scene. The Burger’s were taken into custody as they allegedly
beat the man unconscious. He was taken to hospital by ambulance. According to
Rossouw, the Burger’s, who were still barefoot, were held over the weekend in
the cells. "They wanted to lay a charge of theft at the police station,
but they were not allowed to do it," said Rossouw. Police spokesperson
Captain Sandra Janse van Rensburg said police were not allowed to accept such a
charge unless the mobile phone was already blacklisted and an ITC number had
been submitted. The case was postponed to September 26 for further
investigation.
- www.news24.com report,
By any
standards, the crime statistics are shocking. But for an up-and-coming nation
poised to host one of the world’s great sports events, they are a national
embarrassment. On a typical day in South Africa there are 50 murders, 51
attempted killings, 99 rapes, 324 robberies, 575 assaults, 651 burglaries and
39 car-jackings. The figures will be about the same tomorrow and the day after
- and there are just 692 days left before the troubled nation hosts football’s
World Cup finals. South Africa’s shameful crime record is triggering alarm
bells at football’s governing body, FIFA. Should South African security chiefs
fail to convince him they have the situation under control, FIFA president Sepp
Blatter could ask another country to host the tournament with just one year’s
notice.
- The
An Afrikaans co-worker of mine told
me a most strange story about 2 weeks ago. She was telling me about another
Afrikaner who was also planning to leave South Africa. (She and her husband are
in the process of emigration). Her Afrikaans friend has a Black friend whom he
trusts a lot. This Black friend went to an ANC Youth League rally about 2 weeks
ago. Afterwards he told his Afrikaans friend (who is planning to leave the
country), that at the ANC Youth League rally they spoke about the killing of
Whites in South Africa when Nelson Mandela dies. He therefore thought it was
best that his Afrikaans friend was leaving the country.
- message sent by Jan Lamprecht,
The current levels of criminality
and violent crime is still a serious threat to farmers and their families. The
murder of Mr Tienie Nel (33) near Leslie serves to prove that criminals do not
consider the age or gender of their victims when using violence. The fact that
Mr Nel’s wife and minor children were able to escape the violence was nothing
less than an act of providence. The President of TAU SA, Mr Paul van der Walt
conveyed his condolences to the late Mr Nel’s family and friends. He renewed
his call on farmers not to underestimate the seriousness of the current crime
threat. Life is increasingly becoming cheap and criminals have no empathy with
their victims. The fact that available information indicates that Mr Nel
stopped next to persons ostensibly in need, emphasizes the tendency that it is
increasingly becoming difficult to distinguish between criminals and law
abiding citizens.
- report sent from the Transvaal
Agricultural Union,
I had some disturbing news over the
weekend. My friend Bernadene Jenkins lost her father; he was murdered on
Sunday night at Carrington Heights in Durban. He was stabbed to death in
his home. She ‘phoned him on Saturday as it was his 88th birthday.
Bernadene's mother is in Nazareth House as she has Alzheimers. Her father
Robbie Roberts went to celebrate his birthday with his 2 sons and their
families. He went to see his wife earlier on that day, his one son picked
him up from Nazareth House, and took him to his other son's house for lunch and
a bit of a birthday celebration. He was dropped off at Nazareth House at 5pm
because he left his car there. He spent a bit more time with his wife and left
there around 6pm. It looks like he was attacked shortly after arriving
home that evening. He did manage to push the panic button, but by the time the
alarm company and the police arrived 15 minutes later it was too late to save
him.
- report sent by ALE, Canada, July
2, 2008
George and Berni Rossouw were brutally attacked in their
home on Monday morning 9th June 2008 at 4am. They are both in Unitas Hospital
in Pretoria, George in ICU and Berni in High Care. The attackers cut off
George’s ear, stabbed him numerous times cut off 2 of his fingers and stabbed
one of his eyes out, his ear has been sewn back on, his eye he has lost as well
as his 2 fingers. Berni has been stabbed in the back and face and hit with a
hammer and crowbar, broken all her ribs and punctured both lungs. They have
both had numerous operations to save their lives.
- report sent by Snowy Smith (Durban),
20% of South Africans are planning
to emigrate, or are seriously considering it, according to the results of a
survey released yesterday by global market research company Synovate. Spokesperson Jake Orpen said
600 respondents were interviewed in all nine [sic] provinces of South Africa,
using face-to-face interviews. The results were weighted to ensure
representation across province, age, gender and race. "South Africans are
not in the best frame of mind lately, due to the obvious political uncertainty,
economic instability and electricity problems," Orpen said. The option to
emigrate was most popular among young and middle-aged South Africans (18 to 44
years). This was of concern because this age group represented South Africa's
current and future skills set. Rand Merchant Bank Senior Economist, Ettienne le
Roux, said: "The obvious negative for any country experiencing high levels
of emigration is the loss of skills and the future income these skills would
have generated. If emigration is not matched by immigration of people of at
least the same skill, the country will no doubt be worse off." Some 27% of respondents believed that they
would be able to emigrate successfully, would have the required funds and that
they were well qualified. According to a recent FNB survey, emigration has been
cited as the biggest single reason for selling upper-end properties. The
USA emerged as the most popular choice of destination, followed by the UK,
Australia and New Zealand. The main
push factor for emigrating from South Africa was violence, crime and
corruption, 55% of respondents said. Other push factors were South Africa's
volatile economy and the cost of living (19%), governmental problems (13%) and
infrastructure concerns (6%).
- report
sent by Jan Lamprecht, May 22, 2008
At
least 12 people have been killed and 50 injured in Johannesburg after mobs
using guns, knives and iron bars attacked immigrants from neighbouring African
countries. The violence began last week and was directed at houses and
businesses owned by foreigners in the city’s Alexandra township. The assaults
have spread to other parts of the city, where properties have been looted and
set on fire. Hundreds of immigrants are sheltering from the violence in police
stations and churches where the Red Cross is distributing food and blankets.
More than three million Zimbabweans have fled violence at home to settle in
South Africa alongside many Mozambicans and Malawians. They are often accused
of accentuating unemployment, a housing shortage and high crime rates.
-
The Daily Telegraph,
A 76-year-old woman was raped in
her house in Queenswood, Pretoria, on Saturday night after she and her husband were
set upon by three intruders, police said on Sunday. Inspector Klaas van der
Kooi said the three escaped with the elderly couple's car, personal belongings
and firearms. The couple were in their lounge watching television when the
robbers entered their house through the kitchen door which was unlocked at that
stage. "The suspects assaulted the couple badly," said Van der Kooi.
"They then started collecting valuable property in the house. They also
took three firearms out of the couple's safe. One suspect raped the 76-year-old
lady afterwards in the bedroom." After the rape the three took the
couple's white Audi 500 and fled. Police responded to the scene and were
"shocked to find the couple in such a terrible state."
- AfricanCrisis,
Already the country has no agricultural land
left in the legal sense since all agricultural land now falls under the
jurisdiction of municipal boundaries countrywide. In 1994 when SA still
exported agricultural products on a massive scale, it had 85,000 farmers using
less than 7% of the total land surface. At the moment, less than 10,000
commercial farmers remain, raising crops on less than 0.75% of the total land
surface. The country is now facing serious food shortages for the first time in
its entire recorded agricultural history since the mid-1600's.
- report from Rapport translated by
AfricanCrisis,
I hear that Port Elizabeth was
completely without power for 4 days the other day. A friend tells me that all
of Kempton Park (which is really a city), is currently without power. A friend
who lived there, told me that in the western part of it where he lives, they
have been without power for up to a week at a time during the last 2 years.
This new situation in this country is scaring people like hell. People are
selling houses and fleeing like crazy. It was reported today, by First National
Bank I think, who keep the best house sales statistics, that so many people are
fleeing the country that the market is just overloaded with houses for sale.
Houses also stay on the market these days for up to 3 months before being
bought. Furthermore, the last I saw, 80% of houses are sold for less than the
asking price - which for South Africa is most unusual. They say that among
average houses, 13% of the houses on market are being sold because the people
are leaving the country. Among the wealthy the situation is even worse.
18% of upper end houses on the market are being sold because the owners are
leaving the country.
- report sent by Jan Lamprecht,
The rampant terror and crime in
Black-ruled South Africa is continuing. Police confirmed that a 36-year-old
woman was stabbed to death by two blacks in Stanford near Hermanus in the
Western Cape on Tuesday. A 31-year-old man was gunned down by a Black gunman
over a wallet containing R110 in Durban's Umlazi suburb. Near Delmas, a woman’s
father was shot dead by Black killers during a hijacking - only hours after
she, the woman, had died in a car accident. A gang of Black gunmen broke into a
house inside a so-called security estate north-east of Pretoria robber, raped a
White woman in front of her six-year-old son and got away with mobile phones, two plasma-screen televisions
and R5000 in cash. The gang broke in shortly after midnight inside Pebble Rock
Estate in Leeufontein, north-east of Pretoria. First they attacked husband and
wife in their bedroom. After the man had given them cash, the robbers woke the
couple's children in their rooms and took them to the main bedroom. They took
the girl to her father in the bathroom and made the boy lie down next to his
mother. Then one of the robbers raped the mother in front of the boy. Another
couple were attacked by five robbers in their home on the ‘secure’ estate in
December last year. They managed to keep their bedroom door closed for long
enough until their neighbour came to their rescue with his shotgun. The ruling
regime has put legislation in place which makes it so much harder for civilians
to own firearms and be able to defend themselves against the reigning Black
terror. Three Black men have been arrested for the murder of a White
Pietermaritzburg hotel manager, one of the men an employee, police said.
Thistle Hotel manager Mark Turner's body was found by cleaners in his hotel
room on Wednesday morning. The 38-year-old's hands and feet had been bound and
he had plaster taped over his mouth. Initial investigations had revealed that
Turner had retired to his room shortly after midnight on Tuesday after cashing
up the day's takings. The keys to the hotel safe were missing as was an
undisclosed sum of money. It appears that Turner had been suffocated as he had
no visible injuries.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
Stanford
Dutch Reformed Church was packed to capacity on Friday with people who had come
to bid farewell to businesswoman, Christine Kotze, 36, who was murdered in the
coastal village near Hermanus this week. Relatives comforted her husband,
Hennie, and their 13-year-old daughter, Maretha, who wept throughout the
service, held in the church just across the road from the family's business,
Hennie's Pub and Grill, where Kotze was killed. Police spokesperson Billy Jones
said Kotze was stabbed several times and her throat was slit. Four men were
arrested but one was later released. During the funeral two of the suspects -
Sibusiso Ndamane, 20, and Thamsanqa Matinise, 23, - appeared in Hermanus
magistrate's court. A third man, aged 40, will appear in court on Monday. They
face charges of murder and robbery. Villagers were still reeling in shock at
the murder that has rocked the quiet community. Many people who moved to
Stanford to escape crime and hustle and bustle of the rest of the country said
they could not believe something like this could happen in one of the few quiet
villages left in the country.
- AfricanCrisis,
Here are various statistics,
summarised from various newspapers today which show where this country is heading.
Firstly, with respect to bankruptcy. In January 2007, 25,139 people were served
with papers for Civil Debt. In January 2008, the number was 86,461 - more than
triple from a year ago! Those figures come from Stats SA. An auctioneer was quoted as saying that the number of
sale-in-executions had gone up by 50% in 2007 and he expects it to climb by 75%
in 2008. Car sales dropped by 9.9% in 2007 and are expected to drop by 8% in
2008. Volkswagen in South Africa has even shut its plant down because it can't
sell the cars it already has. So they've stopped their production of new cars
until those already produced can be sold. People are leaving this country in
vast numbers and we are losing our most skilled people. Half of 1,700 medical
professionals who were polled said that they intend leaving this country in
less than 5 years! One removals company which says that it handles 10% of the
family removals of those leaving the country, says that business has tripled in
the last 3 months! (This is no doubt due in part to the electric power chaos).
Other information is that visas processed have doubled. Others say that
enquiries to leave the country has increased between 3 fold to 5 fold. In
short, people are suffering and we are losing the top skills in the country at
quite a pace.
-
AfricanCrisis,
The daily terror attacks by
well-armed Black gangs on homes, shops and civilians continue unabated.
In one of the latest hits, Blacks armed with AK47’s and pistols ‘cleaned
out’ Radiokop Spar supermarket on the West Rand, walking out with a
quarter of a million Rand in cash. As usual, there was no resistance and no
effective reaction from the police or the myriad of private security companies
engaged by the desperate public. And as usual, there were indications
pointing to collaboration between the gunmen and insiders among the
‘transformed’ staff, since the attackers homed in straight away on the manager,
called him by name, knew exactly where the safe was, and avoided the shop’s
cameras. During the hit, the Black robbers also punched and kicked
some staff and customers, and robbed them of their money. While terrified
cashiers were hiding behind the tills and lying behind counters, the eight
gunmen left after only three minutes with a bag full of notes, climbed
into a white Ford Bantam bakkie with its registration plates removed, and drove
off. Management and staff counted themselves lucky that no one was
injured or killed, - a rare occurrence in Black-ruled South Africa nowadays.
The wife of a White lodge owner,
Hennielene Botha, 46, has been abducted by Black robbers on Saturday night
after they broke into Iketla Lodge about 5 miles from Ohrigstad in the Eastern
Transvaal. When her husband got home he found everything in disarray, drawers
emptied, signs of a struggle - and his wife gone. By coincidence, a party of
tourists stranded next to the road near Graskop were able to confirm that Botha
was still alive - though locked in the boot of her car. The 13 tourists -
from Britain, Canada and the US - were standing around their vehicle on Easter
Sunday, when the same Black gang stopped next to them, held them up and robbed
them of money, cameras and mobilephones.
While the Black gunmen, armed with shotguns and a rifle, were busy, the
tourists heard a woman's cries for help coming from the boot of the car the
robbers were driving - which turned out to be the one they had stolen from
Botha’s lodge. As usual, the gang got away and police said they were still
‘looking’.
A White Pretoria teenager, Taryn Vermaak,
18, has been attacked and robbed for the umpteenth time, this time in
Menlyn Park, a popular shopping mall in Pretoria East. In what is seen as
a typical example of how frequent Black-on-White attacks and robberies have
become, it has been reported that the girl and her family had been attacked,
tortured and robbed by Blacks in their home only three months ago. Last year,
her mobile phone was pick-pocketed from the Menlyn shopping centre, and a few
years ago, she was stabbed on her arm and robbed by Blacks while walking from
school. Vermaak and her boyfriend Sheldon Kearney, 18, were about to leave
Menlyn shopping centre last week when they were approached by six ‘unknown
men’. They were kicked and punched and Kearney was pushed towards the
escalator on the third floor where they attempted to throw him off. "I was
screaming for help and everyone was just looking. I screamed for security but
there was no-one. I just stood there feeling helpless as they all ganged up on
him. It was terrible," said Vermaak who sustained bruises to her leg, arms
and stomach. Finally, security officials pulled the gang off.
-
Southern Cross Africa News,
An elderly White couple have been
found murdered in their home in Somerset West after an apparently botched
robbery by Blacks. Anita and Stephanus Joubert, 75 and 77 respectively, were
found by police on Sunday morning. The elderly woman was found dead, but her
husband was reportedly still alive when police arrived. He died later at
Vergelegen Medi-Clinic. Reports suggested that the pair had been brutally
bludgeoned to death with a blunt object.
-
Southern Cross Africa News,
A woman, a wife and mother of two young daughters, was
attacked last week by an unknown man during daylight. Mrs. Jana Boonzaaier was
walking with her one and a half year old daughter to go fetch her grade-one
daughter from a local primary school in Sasolburg. The man walked passed her,
then he suddenly turned around and stabbed Mrs. Boonzaaier in her back with a knife
in front of her youngest daughter. The attacker’s intention was to hurt Mrs.
Boonzaaier, as he did not even give her the option to hand over her mobile
phone before he attacked her. After the brutal attack the man took Mrs.
Boonzaaier’s mobile phone and fled the scene as if nothing had happened. Mrs.
Boonzaaier is currently in hospital at the Medi-Clinic in Vereeniging, where
she is treated for severe injuries to her spinal cord and lung caused by the
knife attack. Mrs. Boonzaaier was paralysed due to the spinal cord injury, but
she is doing well and according to her doctor, she might even be able to gain
the use of her legs back in time. No arrests have been made so far.
- report sent
by OSN, South Africa,
A middle-aged woman has been raped
and murdered in her home in Ottoshop, near Rustenburg, police said on Friday.
Superintendent Lesego Metsi said the woman's body was found on Thursday
afternoon. "It appears the attackers came through an unlocked back door.
They raped and tortured the woman before murdering her." Metsi said the
woman had burn marks on her stomach and arms which appeared to have been made
by steam-iron burns. The cause of death will be revealed by an autopsy. No one
was arrested.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Hundreds of angry Hillcrest
residents bayed for the blood of five rape suspects outside the Hillcrest
Police Station yesterday. Initially, the crowd staged a protest outside the
Pinetown Magistrate's Court where the suspects were due to appear for the rape
of a young Kloof woman. Seven men accosted Jessica Foord and her father at a
nearby dam on Sunday and repeatedly raped her in a field. The Foords had been
walking their dogs when they were attacked. Five suspects were arrested on
Wednesday after intense investigations.The suspects were due for their first
court appearance yesterday, but police found out about the planned protest and
brought the suspects to court on Thursday. Lindani Maphumulo, Thabani Ntinga,
Siyabonga Ntinga, Mbotho Msomi and Nthuthuko Chili were denied bail and were
remanded into custody at Durban's Westville Prison until their next court
appearance on March 20. This "deception" further angered protestors,
many of whom had taken time off work and school to attend the protest. It is
believed that protestors were also riled by the rape of a six-year-old girl in
the area. Fed up with the high crime rate in the area, residents then moved to
Hillcrest Police Station, where they demanded to see the suspects.Residents moved
to the area just outside the station's holding cells and shouted threats at the
five suspects inside. Foord's relatives were among the protestors.
- report
sent by SSH (Durban),
Five men robbed a family at
Hennopsriver in the Erasmia area, burning the mother and father with an iron,
Johannesburg police said on Thursday. "Five men, four of them armed
entered the house through an open window on Wednesday night into a room where
four children were working on a computer. They took them to the living room
where the father was and tied then up," said Constable Patricia Simelane.
The mother who was sleeping at the time was also tied up. Simelane said the men
demanded money saying that they had been told there was money in the house - and
"they burnt the mother and father with an iron three of four times on the
upper body" to force them to reveal where the money was kept. "The
men ransacked the house and took R200, two TV's, a DVD player, an M-Net decoder
and stole the family's Toyota bakkie," she said. Police have opened a
docket on the house robbery and the assault with grievous bodily harm.
-
AfricanCrisis,
I rise
to mourn Julian Lap, well known architect and resident of my constituency who was
brutally murdered in an armed robbery at his home in Parktown North on Sunday
night. The life of his wife, prominent businesswoman Marilyn Visser, who was
critically wounded in the head in the incident, hangs by a thread. Their 16
year old son lies injured in hospital. Mr. Lap was an active member of the Ward
90 Committee of Councillor Ian Ollis - always involved, always willing to
assist. He is the tenth prominent murder victim in this hardest hit area of the
ward since Councillor Ollis was elected two years ago. Others include:
o Sandy Staats of Craighall Park, who was tied
up and boiled in hot water;
o Mike Thompson, father of two of Craighall who was stabbed, shot and thrown
into his swimming pool in front of his young son;
o Terry Smith, also of Craighall, highjacked and shot dead the very next day;
o Theresa Goldworthy of Craighall Park, shot and killed while sitting in her
car;
o Barbara Harrison of Beaufort Avenue, who was brutally attacked and died;
o Ian Giles of Giles Restaurant in Craighall Park - brutally murdered;
There are more I could and should list if I had
the time. Last November Councillor Ollis and I visited the Provincial
Commissioner Perumal Naidoo about this spate of murders and we were promised
more patrols, more roadblocks, more staff at Parkview Police Station but little
appears to have been done. MEC for Safety and Security in Gauteng Fivoz
Cachalia is claiming some success but the bottom line is that the police in
Johannesburg are not coping with the rapidly rising rate of brutal murders and
robberies at private homes - they lack the leadership, the capacity and the
resources to cope, and for this the government must take the blame.
-
statement made by Sheila Camerer MP in the South African Parliament,
Basic
infrastructure and services across the country are crumbling. Water, sewerage
and local roads are all casualties of neglect and lack of forethought, and
there is a critical shortage of skilled professionals who could turn the
situation around. A survey conducted by the South African Institution of Civil
Engineers shows that municipalities in South Africa had on average fewer than three qualified civil engineers
per 100,000 households. The ideal, they say, would be 20 municipal engineers
per 100,000 households. “Municipalities are not doing condition assessments and
officials cannot say for sure what state the infrastructure is in," TT
Innovations engineer Justin Spreckley said on Sunday. The repair of water and
sewerage piping alone will likely cost billions but the biggest worry is the
nation's overloaded roads. The department of water affairs and forestry's
report for the 2006/2007 financial year cites the lack of technical expertise
at municipal level as "a significant area of concern". Local authorities
in Natal have already experienced serious
sewerage spills and, according to a government study of municipal treatment
works, these spills are the result of badly maintained and poorly-run treatment
works, especially in small municipalities.
- AfricanCrisis,
Affirmative Action (AA) , Black
Economic Empowerment (BEE) and now recently Black Apartheid (BA) is alive and
well. !! If you are White you are screwed. The monopoly of ANC in government and
the state departments is total, and nevermind what skills you may have or what
good you can offer the country, you are still screwed. If your skin is not
Black, you wil not be employed. Big private business are huge whoosy's and
basically spineless, as they sheepishly follow government instructions to
employ unskilled uneducated people with the correct skin colour. We all know
that our education system is the worst in the world and that our matric
certificate is not worth the paper it is written on. Our labour laws make it
all but impossible to get rid of under performing employees. Now dont get me
wrong, I am not anti black. There are great Black people in SA, well educated,
sensible people. However our one party state does not allow them to speak freely.
Even the poorest of the poor can see that the ANC is not delivering on their
promises and in their own mass action way they protest and destroy the little
bit they have. They the ANC, have even shut-up Bishop Tutu, a man
that acted as the moral voice of the people. Black Appatheid (BA) has now
blatantly raised it's head with ANC approval. Recently the Black Journalist
Forum invited Zuma to a meeting and openly excluded white journalists on the
basis of skin colour. It poses the question, what about the Black
journalists that did not attend? (or did not want to attend) and what was the
agenda of the meeting, what was the message that was given to the BJF?. How
much do they have to influence the Black vote in preperation for
next year’s elections? BEE has massively enriched the Black elite
with millions. Often you hear people say that the Nats stole 20% but at
least they delivered 80%. Now it is the other way round. Amazing how
history repeats itself, instead of a small group of Whites that manipulated the
country, we now have a small group of Blacks doing exactly the same. The
Auditor General report states that 12% of national, 4% of provincial and 0% of
municipal authorities were given a clean financial report. Well done, keep on
stealing! There is not a single government department (other than SARS) that is
not corrupt and inefficient. They inherited all the corrupt practises from the
NATS and perfected it. What will happen if the ANC wins the next election? The
current Mbeki clans will be cleansed out of government and the new clans will
start enriching themselves. What will happen if they loose or maybe land
up in a coalision government - the masses of ANC supporters (read
Xhosa) that sit in nice jobs will be booted and will go on the mass action
route. Shame the poor soccer guys - they even have to resort to calling
journalists "k@ffirs" on public TV, just to make a statement.
The message - South Africa is no
different to the rest of Africa. Don’t waste energy, get the hell out. If
you can’t now, then focus on making enough money so that you can in the future.
- “Born White in Africa”,
Benoni,
An Afrikaans woman I know is busy
preparing to go to Australia. She and her husband sat in the English exam which
foreign countries force South Africans to take before allowing them in. (I have
no problem with this). She said her husband counted the rows and number of
people present at the exam. It was an English exam (to prove that people are
fluent in English) for people who are going to Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. She said that the vast majority of people taking the test in the hall
were WHITE. There were a handful of Asians and only one Black guy. Her husband
estimated there were 400 people in the hall. Other friends of hers had mentioned
that about a year ago, there were only 250 people attending this test. Now it
is 400. So it would appear, from this anecdotal evidence that it is
disproportionately WHITES who are leaving this country in droves. Of course the
English exam is a clever concept by these other countries since it may help to
reduce the number of non-Whites going. I will tell you, this Afrikaans lady and
her husband were studying English thoroughly before doing the exam. So perhaps
it will also have benefits as it will make Afrikaners who leave the country
become more Anglicised and it will make it easier for them to fit into the
wider world and to progress there. It can only be for their benefit.
-
report appearing in AfricanCrisis,
Yet another child will now grow up
without a Mother. She was murdered, during this week, in her home, in
front of her 14 month old baby son. Once again the gardener is a suspect. They
will probably not make too much of an effort to find him. The one who
murderd the mother in Sunningdale a few months ago has still not been found.
Most of our useless, lazy, corrupt police officers have better things to
do. Like sleep on duty, or go shopping in their police cars.
-
report sent by A.C. Durban,
What exactly is going on in South
Africa? We know the state power company, ESKOM, has called for a 10% reduction
in industrial and commercial usage indefinitely. It says the rationing of
electricity may not be far off, and that the crisis will last at least six months.
Coal stockpiles to run South Africa's generating facilities are low. And in the
mining industry, a 10% reduction in power means a 20% reduction in output owing
to all the systems (ventilation, pumping) that must be in operation for a mine
to operate. Platinum group metals, of which South Africa is a major producer,
should continue to benefit. But what in the world will happen to South Africa
as an economy and a country? "South Africa has been flung full tilt into a
Premature Long Emergency," Jim Kunstler's correspondent writes. "In
the up market suburbs, not least to say generally all over the urban landscape,
there is not a 1km (5/8 mile) strip of tarred road that is not full of potholes
(huge gapping holes, across which vehicles cannot drive), the roadside curbs
are disintegrating, the road maintenance programmes over the last 10 years have
failed to maintain the roads in a serviceable and passable state. “The nation
is gripped in a crisis of rolling power outages caused by the incompetence of
highly paid government ministers and their charges. The news of the weekend is
that the nation is in dire straits with the supply of clean, drinkable water to
households and business alike. We are faced with unusual weather patterns,
floods at the moment, high rain fall for the summer, the expectation of an
early, long cold winter. "The rolling power outages are resulting in about
a 25% national power outage per month. The ramifications of this can be related
directly to an income loss of the same amount, retail supplies are being
interrupted and from a security point of view it is dangerous to shop in malls.
The Electricity Supply Commission - ESKOM are indicating a forced reduction on
power usage by 10%, further, the mines have been told not to work on Fridays. "There
are revenue and cost implications here that extend beyond the obvious monthly
figures. What of the power saving measures that may in turn lead to greater
problems, the mines are unable to pump excess ground water from the shafts, the
maintenance programmes are due to suffer. And what of the safety indications,
miners are protesting the possibility of being caught under ground or in lift
shafts as the random power cuts hit the service grids. "It is not only
that ESKOM have not maintained or expanded their operations in the last 15
years, but the next big whammy is that there is no coal to keep the power
stations running...at most times, there is a couple of months supply of coal
on-site for electricity operations, today there is hardly a few days supply. Incidentally
the reason given for this catastrophe is that the trucks delivering the coal
have been unable to get to the power stations as the road infrastructure has
deteriorated- potholes again. In the Afrikaans language: 'slaggate' - a direct
translation to 'slaughter holes'. As this is written, we wait for the next
couple of days to see the effect of the 'coal emergency'. "At some point the effect of the power
emergency on water and sanitation supply should be considered and this would be
part of the roll out of unexpected events resultant of the collapse of the
power supply, but the water board have usurped the power supply with homegrown
problems of their own... "So here we have it, 43% of the dams have safety
problems and are in danger of collapsing. Further to this, the ground water in
“Gauteng”, the province of Johannesburg, has radioactive contamination from
mining operations. "Now, as a
matter of interest, Johannesburg is one of the few cities in the world that is
built on a hill and water has to be pumped up into the city! "And what of
the people's reaction? Complacency does not even come close, the nation is
either brain-dead or ignorant, or just plain 'frog in a pot' of water with the
temperature rising. "The first reaction to the power emergency took the
form of a rush for candles, refilling of gas bottles and the purchasing of
generators (if you could get them). Then the complacency set it, business
learnt to sit through power outages, retail shops were forced to close their
doors for a few hours a day. There was and is a shortage of food supplies, food
went bad in the fridges and had to been thrown away. It was kind of charming in
a strange kind of way, to eat dinner by candle light and forgo the 'soapies' on
TV. Traffic lights were out over a large number of suburbs and delays in
getting to business meetings became the norm. "The schools are unable to
teach a full day's lesson. The internet service providers and the mobile phone
companies' frequently have service delays or are just plain 'off line'. The
battery runs out on your laptop and that's the days productive work is over
until the power is back on...Patients in ICU or undergoing operations, as the
power grid went down, were at risk of and did, die.
- Dan
Denning, Editor of “The Daily Reckoning” Australia,
South Africans today are deeply
demoralised people. The lights are going out in homes, mines, factories and
shopping malls as the national power authority, Eskom - suffering from mismanagement, lack of foresight, a failure
to maintain power stations and a flight of skilled engineers to other countries
- implements rolling power cuts that plunge towns and cities into daily chaos.
Major industrial projects are on hold. The only healthy enterprise now worth
being involved in is the sale of small diesel generators to powerless
households but even this business has run out of supplies and spare parts from
China. The currency, the Rand, has entered freefall. Crime, much of it
gratuitously violent, is rampant, and the national police chief faces trial for
corruption and defeating the ends of justice as a result of his alleged deals
with a local mafia kingpin and dealer in hard drugs. Newly elected African
National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma, the state president-in-waiting,
narrowly escaped being jailed for raping an HIV-positive woman last year, and
faces trial later this year for soliciting and accepting bribes in connection
with South Africa's shady multi-billion-pound arms deal with British, German
and French weapons manufacturers. One local newspaper columnist suggests that
Zuma has done for South Africa's international image what Borat has done for
Kazakhstan. ANC leaders in 2008 still speak in the spiritually dead jargon they
learned in exile in pre-1989 Moscow, East Berlin and Sofia while promiscuously
embracing capitalist icons - Mercedes 4x4s, Hugo Boss suits, Bruno Magli shoes
and Louis Vuitton bags which they swing, packed with money passed to them under
countless tables - as they wing their way to their houses in the south of
France. It all adds up to a hydra-headed crisis of huge proportions - a perfect
storm as the “Rainbow Nation” slides off the end of the rainbow and descends in
the direction of the massed ranks of failed African states. Eskom has warned foreign investors with
millions to sink into big industrial and mining projects: we don't want you
here until at least 2013, when new power stations will be built. In the first
month of this year, the Rand fell 12% against the world's major currencies and
foreign investors sold off more than £600 million worth of
South African stocks, the biggest sell-off for more than seven years.
"There will be further outflows this month, because there won't be any news
that will convince investors the local growth picture is going to change for
the better," said Rudi van der Merwe, a fund manager at South Africa's
Standard Bank. Commenting on the massive power cuts, Trevor Gaunt, professor of
electrical engineering at the University of Cape Town, who warned the
government eight years ago of the impending crisis, said: "The damage is
huge, and now South Africa looks just like the rest of Africa. Maybe it will
take 20 years to recover." The power cuts have hit the country's platinum,
gold, manganese and high-quality export coal mines particularly hard, with no
production on some days and only 40% to 60% on others. "The shutdown of
the mining industry is an extraordinary, unprecedented event," said Anton
Eberhard, a leadin g energy expert and professor of business studies at UCT.
"That's a powerful message, massively damaging to South Africa's
reputation for new investment. Our country was built on the mines. "To
examine how the country, widely hailed as Africa's last best chance, arrived at
this parlous state, the particular troubles engulfing the Scorpions (the
popular name of the National Prosecuting Authority) offers a useful starting
point. The elite unit, modelled on America's FBI and operating in close
co-operation with Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO), is one of the big
successes of post-apartheid South Africa. An independent institution, separate
from the slipshod South African Police Service, the Scorpions enjoy massive
public support. The unit's edict is to focus on people "who commit and
profit from organised crime", and it has been hugely successful in
carrying out its mandate. It has pursued and pinned down thousands of
high-profile and complex networks of national and international corporate and
public fraudsters. Drug kingpins, smugglers and racketeers have felt the
Scorpions' sting. A major gang that smuggle platinum, South Africa's biggest
foreign exchange earner, to a corrupt English smelting plant has been bust as
the result of a huge joint operation between the SFO and the Scorpions. But the
Scorpions, whose top men were trained by Scotland Yard, have been too
successful for their own good. The ANC government never anticipated the crack
crimebusters would take their constitutional independence seriously and
investigate the top ranks of the former “liberation” movement itself. The
Scorpions have probed into, and successfully prosecuted, ANC MPs who falsified
their parliamentary expenses. They secured a jail sentence for the ANC's chief
whip, who took bribes from the German weapons manufacturer that sold frigates
and submarines to the South African Defence Force. They sent to j ail for 15
years a businessman who paid hundreds of bribes to then state vice-president
Jacob Zuma in connection with the arms deal. Zuma was found by the judge to
have a corrupt relationship with the businessman, and now the Scorpions have
charged Zuma himself with fraud, corruption, tax evasion, racketeering and
defeating the ends of justice. His trial will begin in August. The Scorpions
last month charged Jackie Selebi, the national police chief, a close friend of
state president Thabo Mbeki, with corruption and defeating the ends of justice.
Commissioner Selebi, who infamously called a White police sergeant a
"f***ing chimpanzee" when she failed to recognise him during an
unannounced visit to her Pretoria station, has stepped down pending his trial.
But now both wings of the venomously divided ANC - ANC-Mbeki and ANC-Zuma -
want the Scorpions crushed, ideally by June this year. The message this will
send to the outside world is that South Africa's rulers want only certain
categories of crime investigated, while leaving government ministers and other
politicians free to stuff their already heavily lined pockets. No good reason
for emasculating the Scorpions has been put forward. "That's because there
isn't one," said Peter Bruce, editor of the influential Business Day, South Africa's equivalent
of, and part-owned by, The Financial
Times, in his weekly column. "The Scorpions are being killed off
because they investigate too much corruption that involves ANC leaders. It is
as simple and ugly as that," he added. The demise of the Scorpions can
only exacerbate South Africa's out-of-control crime situation, ranked for its
scale and violence only behind Colombia. Everyone has friends and acquaintances
who have had guns held to their heads by gangsters, who also blow up ATM
machines and hijack security trucks, sawing off their roofs to get at the cash.
Last week 18-year-old Razelle Botha, who passed all her A-levels with marks of
more than 90% and was about to train as a doctor, returned home with her
father, Professor Willem Botha, founder of the geophysics department at the
University of Pretoria, from buying pizzas for the family. Inside the house,
armed gunmen confronted them. They shot Professor Botha in the leg and pumped
bullets into Razelle. One severed her spine. Now she is fighting for her life
and will never walk again, and may never become a doctor. The gunmen stole a
laptop computer and a camera. Feeding the perfect storm are the two centres of
ANC power in the country at the moment. On the one hand, there is the ANC in
parliament, led by President Mbeki, who last Friday gave a state-of-the-nation
address and apologised to the country for the power crisis. Mbeki made only the
briefest of mentions of the national AIDS crisis, with more than six million
people HIV-positive. He did not address the Scorpions crisis. The collapsing
public hospital system, under his eccentric health minister Manto
Tshabalala-Msimang, an alcoholic who recen tly jumped the public queue for a
liver transplant, received no attention. And the name Jacob Zuma did not pass
his lips. Last December Mbeki and Zuma stood against each other for the
leadership of the ANC at the party's five-yearly electoral congress. Mbeki, who
cannot stand again as state president beyond next year's parliamentary and
presidential elections, hoped to remain the power behind the throne of a new
state president of his choosing. Zuma, a Zulu populist with some 20 children by
various wives and mistresses, hoped to prove that last year's rape case, and
the trial he faces this year for corruption and other charges, were part of a
plot by Mbeki to use state institutions to discredit him. Mbeki assumed that
the notion of Zuma assuming the state presidency would be so appalling to
delegates that his own re-election as ANC leader was a shoo-in.
- Sunday
Herald (Glasgow), February 9, 2008
Beeld newspaper
published this close-up picture of the strangulation marks on the throat of
Lydenburg rape victim Mariska Louw, 22 - ambushed in her flat in Lydenburg on
Friday evening, raped and assaulted by a Black man who only took her mobile
phone and keys, and then tied her up and locked her into her barricaded flat. Neighbours,
who had gone to fetch the police after hearing her screams, were unable to
reach her and police did nothing to rescue her.
Ms Louw already is a badly traumatised woman::
she had also found her fiancee Werner van Jaarsveldt murdered in September 2007
in Midrand. He had spotted her car -- hijacked ten days earlier -- had phoned
the police on his cellphone and then given chase. He was gunned down. They had
planned to be wed in November. Her latest ordeal started on Friday-night when
she returned to her flat at around 2am. A man ambushed her inside her own
bathroom. "The security downstairs front door was locked when I arrived at
the building and I locked it again behind me and went up to my flat. When I
opened the bathroom door a (black) man stood there, naked. He attacked
me", she said. He said "Shut up or I will kill you", tore my
clothes into strips and gagged me, and tied my hands and legs. She put up a
fierce fight while he was doing this, and Beeld
describes her body as being covered in numerous scratches, bite-marks and
bruises.She hit him at once point with an ash-tray, she said. However she had
to undergo the ordeal of rape and afterwards he tied her to the drainpipe of
the bathtub."I heard him close the door to my room. I couldn't get my
breath,' she said. Her dad Pieter Louw said what bothers him the most is that
the police failed to turn up after neighbours - who had heard her screaming and
fighting off her assailant - had called them on Friday-night. They had heard
her screaming - but the door was locked. The neighbours finally went to the
police station themselves and went and fetched the police. However the cops
just walked around the building lighting around themselves with torches and
left again. The rapist at that point was still inside her flat.
-
AfricanCrisis,
The violence-ravaged South African
Indian community of Chatsworth outside Durban has declared a “state of
emergency” and has called for the urgent intervention of the South African army
to restore law and order in their town. Angry residents, businessmen and
religious organisations this week asked for the deployment of troops in the area
after 15 extremely violent armed robberies targetted their community within
just three weeks. They held a meeting on Wednesday to map out an action plan
against criminals.Dr Paul Lutchman, chairman of Community Against Crime, said the meeting resolved to declare a
state of emergency and to ask for SANDF reinforcements to flush out criminals.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Diamond, gold and platinum mines
were shut for the weekend owing to an electricity shortage that has crippled
the sector and left thousands of miners without work, officials said. The
country's major mining companies, such as the world's biggest diamond producer
De Beers, were in a crisis meeting on Saturday with public electricity company
Eskom. The electrical provider had obliged the mines to suspend their
operations the night before as it could not guarantee a steady supply. "At
the moment, things are as there were yesterday," De Beers spokesperson Tom
Tweedy told AFP. "There is no production. Our six mines are closed."
De Beers produces nearly 16 million carats per year and employs 5,100 workers
in the country. The situation is similar for gold mines in South Africa - which
produces the most gold in the world. "Our mines are still closed. We are
in ongoing discussions with Eskom," said Steve Lenahan, spokesperson for
AngloGold Ashanti, which employs 35,000 people in seven mines. Harmony Gold
spokesperson Amelia Soares said "we are all in the same boat. All of our
20 gold mines are closed". "We didn't take the night shift underground,"
she said. "There was a meeting with Eskom this morning to try to see how
to take the operations forward on
Monday." No Eskom spokesperson was available on Saturday.
-
AFP report (forwarded by RHGE, Johannesburg),
Graaff Reinet - Residents of this
historical town were shocked by the cruel murder of an Afrikaner police
instructor. Senior superintendent Erika Heunis, 36, was apparently also
gang-raped before she was beaten to death with stones. She was married and has
two teenaged daughters. There were supposedly three attackers, but by late on
Tuesday police still refused to reveal any facts. According to a source at the
police academy where she worked, she was running as usual with police students
along Mountain Avenue, a well-known hiking trail outside the town. Local
residents say other women have also been attacked along that trail. She was
attacked and murdered about 3km from the turn-off to the road. It's not known
why the students did not protect her. Apparently they had returned to the
academy without her. Her attackers apparently laid in wait for her. "When
she failed to return to the academy after a while, two police officers
investigated," said the source, who wanted to remain anonymous. These
officers found her semi-naked body under a bush along the dirt road. Forensic
specialists arrived at the crime scene from Port Elizabeth on Tuesday afternoon
to investigate the murder. Police inspector Wena Theron also was unable to
explain why the police specialists at Graaff Reinet did not investigate the
crime scene. "A full report will be issued on Wednesday morning," was
all she said. Heunis's family was too shocked to comment on the incident.
-
News24.com report,
About 900 people were stranded at
the top of Table Mountain on Monday night after yet another of the country's
many "rolling blackouts" by the country's parastatal
electricity-supplier ESKOM. The last passenger was finally brought down in the
early hours of Tuesday morning. The power supply had cut out at 19:49 Monday -
and the last passengers were finally brought down only by 01:30 the next
morning.
-
AfricanCrisis,
The New South Africa - the crime
capital of the world !
· Former president – jail bird and
terrorist
· President to be – awaiting trial
· Commissioner of the Police and chief of
INTERPOL – awaiting trial
· Previous Whip of the ANC – paroled
· Minister of Defence – convicted
criminal
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!!
-
report sent by P.R., Transvaal, January 19, 2008
White unemployment has nearly
doubled since 1995, according to the Institute
for Security Studies. Today 430,000 Whites, of a total White population of
4.5 million [NB the total White population was approximately 6 million in 1990
- Ed.] , are “too poor to live in traditional White areas” and 90,000 “are in a
survival struggle”, says Lawrence Schlemmer, director of the Helen Suzman Foundation. Of these,
305,000 are Afrikaans-speaking and 215,000 speak English. Since 1998 these figures
have increased year-on-year by 15%. According to a survey by the South African Institute of Race Relations,
White unemployment increased by 74.4%, using the expanded definition, between
1998 and 2002, compared with the national average over the same period of
39.8%. It is important to note that the growth of White unemployment is off a
much lower population base than Black unemployment. A key goal of the National
Party in the heyday of apartheid was to uplift poor Whites by using the state
and semi-state sectors to provide them with jobs and housing, reserving certain
jobs for Whites, favouring their trade unions and shoring up the farming
sector. But for the first time in the mid-1970s, there were more white-collar
than blue-collar Afrikaners, and the policies of the NP shifted accordingly.
Poor Whites were increasingly abandoned by the state. The 1994 election and the
advent of majority rule has accelerated the downward precipitation of Whites
without capital or marketable skills.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Hundreds of policemen are being
murdered in armed violence which are targetting them under the ANC's rule in
South Africa from 1994 than ever died before. The death-toll among South
African police indeed is 64% higher than it was in the eleven years preceeding
South Africa's political transition. This finding was made by the South African Institute of Race Relations.
"Between 1983 and 1993 about 1,152 policemen were murdered. Between 1995
and 2005 a staggering 1,894 policemen were murdered" the Institute said.
The death-rates among South African police during 2006 and 2007 have gone up
even higher. This is an increase of 64 %" said Kerwin Lebone, the
Institute's researcher who compiled the statistics. "If there were any South
Africans that had to date failed to grasp the seriousness of criminal attacks
on South Africa these figures should shock them out of their complacency".
-
AfricanCrisis,
A British father of six has been shot
dead in front of his wife and children as he pleaded with armed robbers not to
harm them in his heavily fortified home in Pretoria. Fred Picton-Turbervill,
46, originally from Bridgend in South Wales, was shot in the head at close
range before two robbers escaped with a laptop, four mobile phones and £80. He was taken to hospital but died soon after admission. His widow,
Ursula, 41, said last night that her husband had been shot in the eye by one
raider despite complying with their demands. She said: "It's just so
pointless. Fred was doing what they said and was no threat to them. “It makes
no sense at all to me. They are not even animals for what they have done to me
and my children. Was it really worth a few mobile phones and some cash?"
Mr Picton-Turbervill, the director of a South African furniture manufacturing
business, was watching television with his wife in their home on Pretoria's
upmarket Waterkloof Ridge area when the robbers struck on Saturday night. The
couple's four children, Samantha, 10, Bryony, nine, Natasha, six, and Gregory,
three, were with them at the time. His eldest son, Jamie, was celebrating his
21st birthday in Britain. Mrs Picton-Turbervill said the robbers, who spoke
poor English, held pistols and shouted "Sleep, Sleep!" and "Money,
Money!" at the family. She said: "Fred asked them not to harm the
children but they didn't respond. Then one of them shot my husband in the eye.
I didn't see it because he was behind me but my two older girls saw it and were
traumatised. He collapsed against me. Samantha closed little Gregory's eyes
because she did not want to him to see his father bleeding to death. The other
two just lay dead still. They took me through the house into our room where I
gave them my jewellery box and my husband's wallet. After the robbers left, I
put the children in the car and drove to my friend's house for help. Gregory
was saying 'the doctors are going to fix my daddy up, he's going to be okay'
but I'm not sure he realises what's happened yet." Hugo Minnaar, a paramedic
rescue worker, said Mr Picton-Turbervill was found lying on the floor. "We
immediately put him on a life-support system and rushed him to hospital where
he died," he said. Waterkloof Ridge is the favoured residence of many
foreign diplomats and senior South African officials. The Picton-Turbervill
house has 8ft walls topped with electric fencing. Neighbours said it was hard
to see how the robbers could have gained access. The Pretoria police said they
men were investigating "promising leads" but had as yet made no
arrests. "We are investigating a case of murder and robbery with
aggravating circumstances," he said.
-
Daily Telegraph,
Internationally-known Natal birder/geologist
Robin Guy, 75, was shot and killed during an attack by two armed Black men at a
Bryanston home last night. Nothing was robbed - but police refer to it as a
'failed robbery'. He and his wife Bella from rural Underberg, Natal, had been
in Bryanston on a festive season visit when two attackers disturbed a dinner on
the verandah of his brother-in-law's home. A shot went off and he died
instantly. Guy was the father of South African Press Association journalist
Duncan Guy, creator of the children's newspaper "The Times I Am Living
In"; and the award-winning environmental film maker Donald Guy. Robin Guy
leaves his wife Bella; daughter Jane; sons Robert, Duncan and Robin; six
grandchildren.
- AfricanCrisis,
Tanzania’s ambassador to South Africa was beaten and his wife stabbed in
a robbery during his farewell dinner in the capital Pretoria. Seven people were
admitted to hospital after the attack, which left ambassador Emmanuel
Mwambulukutu unconscious and his wife with a knife wound to the head.
- Sunday Telegraph,
Singer Sonja Herholdt was injured
after being robbed on Christmas Eve. Herholdt, who has entertained South
Africans for decades with her songs, suffered slight cuts to her chin and hands
after a thief smashed the passenger window of her almost brand new VW Golf 5.
She was on her way home to Randburg after visiting Carel F Cronje, her
autobiographer and his partner, Cornell Boshoff, in Pretoria. According to Mike
Wannenburg, Herholdt's partner, she stopped at the Malibongwe exit on the N1
highway at about 22:00 when the attacker hit. Three to four cars were waiting
at the same traffic light when the man suddenly appeared on the passenger side
and smashed the window. He took her handbag, containing her identity document
and driver's licence, which was lying on the front seat. "She is angry
because she should have known better (than to leave her handbag on the
seat)," said Wannenburg. Her purse and mobile phone were not stolen, as
these were hidden elsewhere in the car. According to Wannenburg, Herholdt
suffered slight cuts to her chin and hands due to glass shards caused by the
window being smashed. Wannenburg was shocked because the windows were supposed
to have been covered by a protecting layer to prevent such attacks. "One
pays a lot for these things, which don't work. It was especially included in
the package when she bought the car," he said.
-
Beeld report,
This
year's 21st
- Southern Cross Africa News,
In the Durban High Court, a self-confessed Black killer described how he
shared a meal with seven-year-old Vuyani Nqulunga, - before cutting the Black
child's head off and removing his genitals. The 17-year-old Black
killer, whose name may not be published because he is still a minor, said
a bricklayer who employed him told him in August or September that he needed a boy's
head, - and offered him R20,000 for one. Using children's body part as 'muti',
medicine, is a common practice among Black witch-doctors, and has been
ostensibly given new impetus by the ruling regime's official granting of
recognition and respectability of witch-doctors as 'health practitioners'
- Southern Cross Africa News,
Only four lifts out of 21 are
operational at Johannesburg Hospital, the hospital's chief executive said on
Thursday. Extra staff had been employed to carry patients up and down the
stairs, said Sagie Pillay. "If we have to carry the patients, then that is
what we will do. We have signs posted that the lifts are not working and
apologise for any inconvenience caused. "The matter is receiving our
highest attention," he said. According to the Democratic Alliance's
provincial health spokesperson, Jack Bloom, the Department of Public Works was
to blame for the problem. "They (the Department) cancelled all contracts
with lift companies earlier this year. "Since then there has been constant
problems getting contractors mandated by the Public Works Department to service
and repair lifts," said Bloom. He said he had received reports from
hospital staff saying that they were experiencing difficulty in getting
patients from operating theatres to the intensive care unit. "With so many
lifts out of order, this has turned from an inconvenience to a crisis. Action
should be taken immediately," said Bloom.
- SAPA report forwarded by RHGE,
A 21-year-old man sustained
serious injuries in an attempted hijacking in Weltevreden Park on Sunday,
Johannesburg paramedics said. ER24 spokesperson Werner Vermaak said the attack
took place at a housing complex in Without Street around 02:00.
"Paramedics that arrived on the scene found the 21-year-old lying in the
house at the time. He sustained serious injuries to his face, head and possible
fractures to his hands and wrists," Vermaak said. It was understood that
the man had been visiting a friend in the complex and was about to leave when a
group of men tried to hijack his Toyota Corolla outside the complex. "The
21-year-old put up a vicious fight," he said. It was believed that hijackers
fled the scene. The severely beaten man was found lying next to his car by his
friend who dragged him into the house.
- SAPA report forwarded by RHGE,
Robbers used pruning shears to
lop off four fingers of an elderly Limpopo [Far Northern Transvaal] woman and
her husband's life is hanging by a thread after he was repeatedly struck on the
head with a panga. The horrifying attack and plunder of the couple's home
lasted for about eight hours. When Theuns Janse van Rensburg, 72, lost
consciousness, his attackers undressed him and placed him on the couple's bed.
One of the attackers lay next to him, watching television for several hours.
Tienie Janse van Rensburg, the couple's shocked son, told Beeld : "They hacked my father and left him for dead, and my
stepmother is shattered." Tienie said his father's dentures were found on
the floor of the passage. One of Hettie's fingers was also lying in the house.
His father had heard a noise outside the 7th Street house about 20:00. "My
dad went to see what was happening and that's when the attackers must have
slipped in at the front door." One attacker slashed at Janse van Rensburg
repeatedly with his panga. Hettie tried to fight back, but four of the fingers
on her left hand were severed with a pair of garden shears. Her right arm was
also broken.Bleeding profusely, she ran to the main bedroom's en-suite
bathroom, where she locked herself in and used a towel to stem the flow of
blood from her hand. Her unconscious husband was dragged through to the main
bedroom, stripped naked and placed on the bed. Janse van Rensburg was moved to
Unitas Hospital in Centurion [Verwoerrdburg] by helicopter on Monday morning.
He was still unconscious on Monday evening. Kate Cvitanic, a spokesperson for
the hospital, said he was in a serious, but stable, condition. Another son,
Pierre Janse van Rensburg, said his stepmother looked terrible and was
confused. "My father has a fracture of the skull, where he was hit on the
head with the panga." Dries Joubert, the president of TLU SA North, said the number of attacks on elderly people in
Limpopo in recent times had amounted to a low-intensity war. In another
incident on Monday, a woman was attacked in her farm stall in the Mokopane
district and had serious facial injuries.
- Beeld
report forwarded by RHGE,
A German-born White South African, Franz
Richter, owner of Aloe Ridge Lodge
and Heia Safari Ranch in Swartkops
near Krugersdorp, was gunned down in an armed robbery by Black killers on
Wednesday morning. The elderly Richter was an 'iconic character' of the South
African tourism industry, according to the Southern
African Tourism Services Association, which 'condemned' his murder. Until
his death, Richter was optimistic about the so-called ‘new’ South Africa, and
had been involved in developing tourism to the area for the last 35 years. He
believed in selling Africa as an ideal tourist destination to the world. The
murder of Richter followed soon after the recent murders of the owners of the Wartburger Hof Hotel early in November.
- Southern Cross Africa News,
An 85-year-old Afrikaner
farmer, Barend Jonker of the Geyser area near Usterberg, was attacked while
milking cows yesterday. This is the area's sixth farm attack since 26 October -
and during which two farmers were murdered and two seriously injured and still
fighting for their lives in local hospitals. The local Transvaal Agricultural Union (TLU) president Dries Joubert warns
South African farmers that based on this rapid increase and the high level of
ferocity shown in these latest farm attacks, this holiday season will be
'bloody, violent and extremely cruel' for South Africa's commercial
agricultural farmers once again. Mr Jonker survived the attack but is in
critical condition in Polokwane hospital. The old Afrikaner was milking his
cows at about 6am on his farm Rietvlei near Ysterberg when he was attacked from
behind by someone with an axe. It's not known whether anyone else was involved.
A Netcare paramedic said Jonker's
face and head sustained 'very serious injuries'. A small amount of cash
apparently may have been robbed but this is not yet certain.
- AfricanCrisis,
University of Pretoria
professor Margaret Slabbert was heartbroken and fighting back tears after she
saw her unarmed husband shot in the heart in front of her at their home in
Nicolson Street, Brooklyn, Pretoria, on Wednesday. Gerhard Slabbert, 53, a
consulting engineer, died shortly afterwards. On Saturday night, a 13-year-old
girl had also been shot in the leg in the same street in an attack by armed
men. Professor Margaret Slabbert, 51, of the university's visual arts
department spoke of her sorrow on Thursday as she recounted what had happened
at about 22:00 on Wednesday. The Slabberts had returned after taking their
sons's car to him. She said: "When we turned into the drive of our
property, a man was climbing over the wall. I was driving. My husband got out
of the car and asked the man what he wanted. When my husband asked him a second
time what he was looking for, I saw the man take something out of his pocket.
It was a firearm. Unfortunately, my husband realised it too late. The moment he
saw what was happening, he tried to jump back into the car. The guy shot him in
the heart". With her husband on the seat next to her, Slabbert reversed up
the driveway and sped to a nearby hospital. Slabbert said: "There was no
reason for the man to shoot my husband. He could have just run off. Gerhard was
a wonderful person. Everyone was mad about him. All that I know is that my
children must get out of here (South Africa) as soon as they can," she
said.
- AfricanCrisis,
Only 10% of all the reported
28,828 countrywide livestock thefts ended up in a first-court appearance of the
farm attackers - 2% less than the previous year, and armed attackers against
South African farms have increased by 24.8% this year. Ryno King, Democratic
Alliance spokesman said “we are now paying for Mbeki's unilateral decision to
end the commando systems, which were specialised in chasing down
livestock-poachers and farm attackers.” The Democratic Alliance was supplied
these farm-attack statistics after raising the issue in Parliament this week.
The largest number of livestock thefts occurred in Natal, with 7,256 animals
looted from the fields by organised, armed criminals. This includes wildlife, cattle, sheep and goats
Jan Vorster, the 79-year-old retired farmer of
Nelspruit whose body was so badly mutilated by a panga-attack on Friday that
his survival was doubtful, has died. The life-support machines were turned off.
He was attacked and badly mutilated by two armed attackers with pangas - who
only stole a radio, which was later found discarded. Beeld newspaper reported
his son-in-law Kobus Greyvenstein as saying that “Vorster fought to the end.”
His widow Hannatjie was slightly injured in the attack. He is survived by his
widow, daughter Ivy, 40, five grandchildren and two stepsons Cornelius, 50 and
Jan Viljoen, 54.
Six armed attackers stormed into an Asian family's
Erasmia home on Monday and gunned down all the male family members present
there. Two family members, Ali Janoo, 17 and his brother-in-law Mohammed
Lambad, were killed instantly. Family patriarch Moosa Janoo, 67 and his
24-year-old son Akhter Janoo are in the intensive-care unit of Kalafond
hospital at Atteridgeville in unknown condition. A shocked Mr Rizwan Kahn, a
member of the sector policing forum who arrived shortly after the attack, said
the large group of armed attackers fled in two vehicles, a white Toyota Corolla
and a white minibus. The family's 13-year-old daughter and the matriarch also
were in the house during the murder spree.
- News24 reports,
Fears over security
overshadowed the draw for the 2010 World Cup yesterday after it emerged that a
former Austrian goalkeeper, a close friend of Franz Beckenbauer, had been shot
dead on a golf course near Durban. Although the FIFA president Sepp Blatter dismissed
any direct link to the draw for the tournament – the first big test for South
Africa in the countdown to 2010 – news that Pieter Burgstaller had been
murdered sparked fresh concerns over the country's deadly crime rate. Austrian
and German Football Federation officials confirmed that the 43-year-old events
manager was on holiday in South Africa, but had been invited to attend
yesterday's draw by Beckenbauer, the former German international who is now a
vice-president of FIFA. Burgstaller was found shot dead with a single bullet
wound to the chest on Friday evening on the 12th tee of a golf course at the
exclusive Selborne Hotel, Spa and Golf Estate in Pennington, an hour's drive
from Durban. Police believe the motive was robbery. Blatter said: "We deplore
that a tourist from Austria was shot dead yesterday on a golf course.” In a
separate incident, Oliver Bierhoff, the German team manager, had his briefcase
stolen on Sunday on his way to breakfast at his hotel in Durban. It contained
his passport and two mobile phones as well as paperwork relating to the draw.
- Daily Telegraph,
According to security experts, the
isolation and helplessness of Whites in Black-ruled South Africa have been
illustrated by a White couple having been attacked and shot and lying dead and
half-dead for three days before anybody even knew about it. Beaten up by Black
gunmen and semi-conscious, Martina Stocker lay next to her husband's bloody
corpse from Wednesday till Friday before being discovered when their company
raised the alarm. The Black gang had shot her
husband Jürgen, 66, in his upper body at their Bryanston home on Wednesday
night, and simply tied up and left his body in his own blood where he had
collapsed in the passage. Martina lay in the same passage from the time of the
attack until 9am on Friday, when Inspector Hein van Heerden, from Randburg
police station, found her. Detectives said at first they thought the viciously
attacked Martina was also dead, but, after confirming she was alive, they
called the paramedics.
-
Southern Cross Africa News,
Another White man has been shot and
killed by Blacks in his house in Northern Natal. Late on Friday night, Herman
Strydom of Vryheid, who was in his forties, returned home with his wife after
closing their shop in town. When he opened his security gate he was callously
shot dead. His wife activated the alarm and the attackers fled. A White
University of Cape Town commercial law professor, Mike Larkin, was stabbed to
death by Black robbers as he walked down Rosslyn Road in Rondebosch on Friday.
Residents claim that attacks and muggings by Blacks are an almost everyday
occurrence. An angry Johnny Johnson, who lives in Roslyn Road, said he and his
wife Nina had come home on Friday to find the road cordoned off. "There
was a body lying in the road outside our house, under a sheet soaked in
blood... [ANC] Safety and Security Minister Charles Ngcula called us whingers,
but who wants to come home to find a dead man in front of your door?" He
said muggers would seize bags and then flee into the Liesbeeck River and then
run to the station where they would jump on to a train. Larkin, believed to be
in his late 50s and divorced, joined UCT as head of the department of
commercial law in January last year. He had been associated with the leftist
University of Witwatersrand for 35 years, most recently as deputy dean of the
faculty. His area of specialisation is corporate law. Most English-speaking
formerly White universities were at the forefront of the campaign to topple the
White government and establish Black rule over the whole of South Africa. Since
then, many of them have turned around and criticised the ruling ANC. Larkin was
one of the signatories to a letter written by members of UCT law faculty to
question whether ANC stalwart John Hlophe, who was made judge president of the
Cape, should stay on in his position after having been found out taking a
R10,000 monthly 'retainer' from the Oasis
Group.
-
Southern Cross Africa News,
Murders and rapes are forcing women
to abandon their homes in five villages outside Mthatha in the Eastern Cape
Province, the SABC reported on Friday. The residents of Skhobeni, Xhongora,
Sigubudwini, Bozwana and Tabase villages claim that this violence against women
has been going on since 2003. Nine people have been killed and eleven women
raped since last September, the SABC said. The situation has forced some
families to abandon their homes and seek refuge with neighbours or to live in
the bush. Nobangile Mtirara - a female traditional leader in the area - told
the SABC: "Government must take care of us and get policemen to look after
us. People are not safe as they say they are sleeping outside their
homes."
-
AfricanCrisis,
Helene Kerkhof, 21 - who had just
returned to South Africa after two years in Taiwan - was tied to her dying
father Rian by four armed attackers in Pretoria and terrorised. Her father was
shot in his Moreleta Park cottage on Thursday - the day of her return to South
Africa. "I begged them to take everything and go so that I could take my
father to hospital, but they shook him, laughed and said he was okay." A
dazed Ms Kerkhof said the four armed men had stormed into her unarmed dad's
cottage on Thursday and gunned him down at once. They then terrorised her and
her seriously injured dad for more than an hour for no particular reason.
Helene was asleep when the armed men gunned down Kerkhof inside his home in De
Villebois-Mareuil Street. "I woke up hearing voices and a shot. I knew we
were being robbed and called my father. Four men stormed into my room, picked
me up, hit me and threw me down next to my father. He was seriously wounded.
"They tied us to each other and kicked me several times. One of them tried
to pull up my shirt, but I laid curled up and asked him not to," she
said. "I told them to take
everything and go. My father was shot through the right side and was bleeding
to death. He was in a lot of pain, but kept asking if I was okay." Helene
and her father had to watch for more than an hour how the robbers searched the
house and ate from the fridge before they eventually left with two laptop
computers, a digital camera, DVD-player, iPod and two mobile phones at about
00:30 Kerkhof was taken to Pretoria East Hospital by ambulance, where he
underwent emergency surgery. He died on Friday morning shortly before his wife
and children arrived at the hospital.
"I looked forward to returning to South Africa, but I cannot live
in a place where such pigs are terrorising the community. "Nobody is safe.
It's not enough to rob. They want to kill," said Helene. "I am angry.
Is nobody going to do something about the senseless gruesome acts?" she
wanted to know. Police inspector Paul Ramaloko merely commented that 'nobody
has been arrested in connection with the incident.'
-
AfricanCrisis,
More policemen were murdered in the
eleven years after 1994 than in the eleven years preceding South Africa's
political transition, the South African
Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said on Monday. "The research
found that between 1983 and 1993, about 1,152 policemen were murdered. Between
1995 and 2005, a staggering 1,894 were murdered," the Institute said. This
indicates an increase of 64%," said Kerwin Lebone, the Institute's
researcher who compiled the statistics. Lebone said that if there were any
South Africans that had to date failed to grasp the seriousness of criminal
attacks on South Africa "these figures should shock them out of their
complacency". He said the murder of many policemen before 1994 was
allegedly politically motivated, because ‘liberation’ (i.e. terrorist)
movements regarded the previous government as ‘illegitimate’, and encouraged
attacks on that administration's personnel and institutions. "There seemed
to be no political motivation for the continued attacks on policemen after the
political settlement of 1994," said Lebone. He said the increase in the
number of murdered police and the huge leap in aggravated robberies were of
serious concern. Criminals seemed to be showing more disdain for the security
forces of the present government than they did for the previous one.
-
AfricanCrisis,
The images
of Thabo Mbeki being hoisted by ANC state-appointed officials with the William
Webb Ellis Cup in his hands was a contravention of the very essence of the
game. What part had he played in the Springboks victory? What was he even doing
on the podium? If England had won would the English squad have lifted Gordon
Brown into the air in triumph? Not bloody likely. Nobody seems to consider this
inappropriate . . . well I bloody do . . . political hi-jacking of sporting
occasions an anathema to most peoples' notions of sport. Why it was done with
the tacit approval of the IRB is not beyond me though. They realised South
Africa and South African rugby is going down the toilet and this pathetic
gesture might do some good to assuage forces and opinion back there that this victory
was for everyone in South Africa. Jake White deserves immense credit for his
single-minded bravery in attaining his objective. It was difficult enough to
beat what was in front of his team (actually not really) but the team had to
stay focused. What was even more difficult was to stay on course as he was put
under huge political pressure to include a significantly higher proportion of
Black players than he had been up to and including the Tri-Nations. To howls of
protest, White only picked six non-White players in his squad, the same as in
2003; they might have been the unwritten rules. White kept his head and won in
the end without having to carry players who were not up to the grade. Butana
Komphela, a senior and powerful ANC member suggested that the Springboks should
have their passports revoked by the government. White, after winning the World
Cup, will not get a second term. Komphela has declared that the ANC will never
support Jake White if he bids for a second term . . . the point being that he would
rather see a losing multi-racial side based purely on political quotas, not
merit, represent South Africa than see a predominately White team based on
merit. From the new season onwards the Springboks will by law have to have 10
Black players in a squad of 22 irrespective of whether the 10 are of
international quality or not. How come a political party can dictate this?
Surely it is an act which circumvents the fundamental principles of sport . . .
pick your best team and compete to win. It is amongst other things an act of
overt racism and an act where the ruling Black ANC party would take huge
satisfaction if not glee from diluting and destroying one of the last bastions
and passions of the former White ruling class. The ANC recently passed another
resolution that the Springbok title and emblem be scrapped. I recently read
Martin Meredith's “The State of Africa”, and it is a stunning read. It charts
the history of every state in Africa since accession or independence. It is
also depressing as it charts literally the same dismal cycle of misgovernance,
corruption, greed, death, tyrannical leadership etc. But there is a recurring
theme of racial hatred. Sometimes we lose the real sense of what racism is
about in our politically correct and appropriately sanitised society. Calling
someone a sambo as they walk down O'Connell Street [Sackville Street] might now
be considered a heinous crime here, but everything is a question of scale.
Witness the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda . . . genocide on a grand scale . .
. two million dead inside a year. The Biafran War, 1-2 million dead, Darfur . .
. the list is endless. Black people hating Black people and willing to kill
wantonly . . . you talk of scale then this is point blank. But no matter how
deep seated the indigenous people's hate for each other is; it pales into
insignificance for the dislike of the White man. Already it has manifested
itself in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe's government decides this course of action on
a daily basis, overtly racist. So remind me why, when Ireland played Zimbabwe
in the recent Cricket World Cup, that nobody said a word? As in the '60s and
'70s in the sporting protests/boycotts against South Africa, why weren't there
people flour-bombing the cricket crease from crop-dusters or rushing barbed
wire fences or holding all day sit-ins outside the Zimbabwean hotel? If I
wanted to register my disgust at Ireland playing sport against such a racist
regime how would I do so? I tried to ring the Irish anti-apartheid movement but
no such organisation exists anymore. Now that Kader Asmal is happily ensconced
in power in South Africa, I haven't heard him come back to Ireland and condemn
Mugabe and his oppressive regime. Thabo Mbeki and the ANC give encouragement,
economic help and friendship to Mugabe and his regime . . . I find that
objectionable. Mbeki has serious issues to deal with in his country. An
Interpol report stated that the annual murder rate in South Africa is in fact
twice the reported rate of 23,500 (actual 47,000); 95% of that is Black killing
Black. Hunger, inertia, political unrest and poverty are powerful
catalysts for further change. The White man's prosperity and capital are what
are required and slowly but surely it will be acquired. Quite possibly the
first step is to take the White man's rugby team away from him . . . that will
really hurt! It is my experience of South Africa that the Black man plays
soccer almost exclusively and the White man plays rugby. On one weekend in
Johannesburg years ago I went to watch the Blue Bulls play in Ellis Park on a
Saturday, the following Sunday the Kaiser Chiefs played a game of football. On
Saturday there were no Black faces in the audience, on Sunday my slightly pink
visage and that of my companion were the only White people in attendance. Out
of a population of 48 million, 38 million are Black and 4.3 million are White
[N.B. In
1990 there were 6 million Whites in South Africa - therefore a net 1.7 million
have either emigrated or have died (a disproportionate number having been
murdered) in 17 years - ed.]. The minority play
a minority sport within that country . . . there is no bar at school,
university, club, provincial or international except that you be good enough.
The South African international soccer side has only one White man in its
squad. There is no bar on participation. The composition of the team is
overwhelmingly Black yet there is no need for state mandated quotas. Why? If
the Black political class are serious about multi-racial rugby it should not
start from the top down but from the bottom up. The reason I was opposed to
Thabo Mbeki appearing on the pitch in Paris is that he is the president of a
party which has imposed sanctions on a sporting body, ones which I think are
overtly racist. The spine of the Springbok side realise it and well before
their time they are leaving and going to Europe. It's hard to gauge how weak
South Africa will be in 4 years. It is a worrying trend for rugby and things in
general in that country. Have we lost sight of the real meaning of racism or are
we afraid to say it. South Africa steps up in 2010 to host the soccer World
Cup. If they win, will the White minority rejoice even though they have
practically no representation? In the meantime will our moral guardians be as
swift to act as they were in the 60's and 70's if there are further
discriminatory shifts in sport policy. Should we call for a boycott in 2010 if
things deteriorate more? Racism cuts both ways, don't be afraid to sound
your voice.
- Sunday Tribune (Dublin),
Shoppers fled in panic at the
Kolonnade Shopping Centre north of the city [Pretoria] on Tuesday afternoon,
when robbers went on a shooting spree and robbed two jewellery stores. Netcare
911 spokesperson Nick Dollman said a security guard had been shot in the
buttock and a woman had to be treated in hospital for shock. Three shots were
fired through the display windows of the Truworths clothing store on the top
floor of the centre.
-
report sent by RHGE (Johannesburg),
Power failures hit parts of the
country on Friday morning after "unplanned outages" at Eskom.
"Eskom started implementing load shedding this morning after losing
electricity imports from the Cahora Bassa [hydroelectric project in
Mozambique]," said the company. Eskom said the problem was being
investigated. South Africa relied on about 1,400 megawatts of power from the
station. Power had also been lost when several generation units went on
"unplanned outages". Load shedding would be rotated, with areas being
without power for about two hours at a time. Eskom said they were using all
their emergency energy resources at hand, including gas turbines and buying
back power from large industrial customers. "However, this was not
sufficient to address the shortfall," said the company. Residential
customers are asked to switch off geysers during peak hours from 07:00 to 10:00
and from 18:00 to 21:00. Business are asked to turn off all non-essential
lighting and equipment.
-
SAPA report,
Crime has again come knocking -
literally - at swimming ace Ryk Neethling's door in Lynnwood, Pretoria. Someone
really has it in for the Neethling family: this was the third time he himself
was robbed in the past 12 months - and his family members have also recently
been targetted by attackers. On June 6 2007, his mum San-Marié was punched in
the face and threatened with a knife during a smash-and-grab robbery in
Johannesburg - but the only thing looted in the end was a cheap mobile phone.
This happened when the Neethling family were in town to support their
journalist-daughter Elsje Neethling in her battle with cancer. The family - his
father Ryk Neethling snr, his wife and their daughter the swimmer Jean-Marié -
were attacked at a traffic light in Beyers Naudé Drive. And a year earlier, also in June 2006, the
Olympic champion's house was burgled and many of his cherished medals stolen,
including Commonwealth and World golds. Yesterday, only a spur-of-the-moment
decision to travel to Bloemfontein to watch the Currie Cup semi-final, probably
saved him from coming face-to-face with the burglars at his home in Lynnwood,
Pretoria. Police spokesman Lucas Sithole said the burglars had kicked down a
door to gain access to the house at about 13:00 on Sunday. Beeld was told that Neethling hadn't had any plans to go to
Bloemfontein for the match between the Bulls and the Cheetahs. But on Saturday
morning, he and his housemate, Neil Cloete, had decided on the spur of the
moment to drive there after all. A person close to the family said it was a
"blessing" that they were not there when the burglars struck, because
their lives could have been in danger. Apparently a TV set, a DVD player and a
laptop were taken. Sithole said the police were still waiting for Neethling to
confirm what had been stolen this time. No-one had been arrested yet, he added.
-
AfricanCrisis,
There was bedlam when five armed
robbers struck at a church in Witbank on Friday. An elderly woman was stabbed
and several shots fired at about 30 children
and adults who were at the church at the time. Some of the children were also
beaten with firearms and a stick and shoved around. The 29-year-old youth
leader of the Congregation of Christ church, Marius Louwrens, said he was still
telling pastor Kiewiet van Staden about the robbery when the confused robbers
burst in and ran around in front of the pulpit. The incident occurred about
21:00 at the church in De Waal Street. The robbers first overpowered teens
outside the church and robbed four of their mobile phones. Tiekie Kruger, 14,
who was also outside the church, was hit on the back with a firearm. "They
also tried to hit me in the face with a stick, but I protected myself with my
hands. "One of the robbers asked for a
mobile phone and when I said I didn't have one, he body-searched me all
over. I didn't like it, because he was touching me everywhere," she said.
Selwyn de Lange, 15, was struck on the head with a firearm. Meanwhile, the
robbers had overpowered Maggie Cooks, 70, in the church's kitchen, and
threatened her with one of the church's knives. "The robber stabbed me in
the side and badly scratched my hands and arms as he shoved me around,"
Cooks said. Another robber meanwhile ran into the church hall yelling,
"keep quiet and lie down flat". He pointed his firearm at Louwrens
and then at seven-year-old Annie van Niekerk.
-
report sent by RHGE (Johannesburg),
The
viciousness of the Blacks who seem incapapable of human emotion continues. It
seems that practically every one of them walk around armed waiting for an
opportunity to arise. So many people whose cars break down, or stop for some
reason or another, are attacked within sometimes minutes. A few months ago
a mother, her daughter, and the daughter's baby, broke down one
evening on their way home. Within a few minutes they were approached by
Blacks, who held them up at gunpount and robbed them of their mobile phones and
money etc. They then casually walked away, but true to form had to be more
disgusting and vicious, and turned back. They walked up to the car
again and fired shots at these helpless people. Once again they
just walked away. The baby of about three months old was shot during this
incident. He fought for his little life in hospital for weeks after that. Thank
God he survived. But for all this lot cared, he could have died. A few weeks
ago in upper Glenwood, which is a respectable residential area, a 40 year-old
man and his friend broke down late one Saturday evening. While waiting for a
tow truck, they were approached by some armed Blacks who attempted to hijack
them. The driver told them they were waiting to be towed. What did these
disgusting excuses for human beings do? They put the gun in his mouth and shot
him! They then grabbed the keys from the ignition (for what reason?) and
walked off. He also fought desperately for his life, but lost the battle
on the Monday. This poor soul had come to Durban from up country somewhere
especially too, and had just proposed to his girlfriend. Last week, about
mid-morning, in a well-to-do suburb of Sunningdale, near Umhlanga Rocks, a
young mother was stabbed 19 times, as well as bludgeoned with a spanner, while
holding her two month-old baby. She had tried to protect the child while being
murdered, they found the crying baby sitting next to her body. He had injuries
to his head but was alive. Her poor husband is devastated, and now an
innocent child will never know his mother. The horror goes on and on and our
ANC government ignore it all. Mbeki is so like Mugabe, we fear for this
country. Anyone who goes against him is fired or removed from office. His true
colours are really beginning to show now. He protects and defends idiots (such
as our Health Minister) as well as dishonest, racketeering gangsters (our National
Police Commissioner). This country is on an express train to hell, and there is
nothing we can do about it. Where are all the big mouths who shouted and
condemned Apartheid now? All those voices are very quiet, no
condemnation now, as they live safely in their First World countries far
removed from the nightmare we are having to live in.
-
report sent by ACS (Durban),
A 31-year-old woman was airlifted
to the Johannesburg hospital on Friday after she was shot in the chest while walking
near Sandton, paramedics said. Netcare 911 spokesperson Mark Stokoe said two
men shot the woman near Sandton at around 15:00 before they snatched her bag
and fled. "She was in serious conditions and had to be airlifted," he
said.
-
SAPA report,
South Africa being the third least
safest place out of 48 countries on the African continent, indicates that South
Africa is critically unsafe, the Democratic
Alliance said on Tuesday. The party's spokesperson on Safety and Security
MP Dianne Kohler Barnard said that the Mo
Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which ranked South Africa as third
most dangerous after "war zone" countries, Sudan and Burundi
indicated that what citizens of this country had been crying out for years, was
the truth. "South Africa's safety and security performance is utterly
abysmal. The fact that we are just 30 points above the most dangerous country
in Africa, and right now, probably the world, must act as a loud wake-up call
to the Minister of Safety and Security." She added that countries
including Congo, Angola, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe Rwanda and Liberia
were far safer in terms of safety and security. "Although the government
will continue to throw money at the crime problem, such an approach has had only
limited success," Barnard said. She said it was likely that companies and
individuals would continue
protecting their own security themselves. "This threatens to spawn a
vigilante environment ... if a spate of violent robberies and killings of
foreigners is repeated during the 2010 Soccer World Cup, the negative
consequences for future tourism and foreign investment will be severe."
Bernard said the DA had made suggestions to government to address the shortage
of detectives, and to increase facilities and equipment for the South African
Police, in order to combat crime.
- News24/SAPA report,
A Cramond vegetable farmer was
found shot dead on his farm on Monday morning. Police spokesperson Senior Superintendent
Henry Budhram said that 52-year-old Andy Main, from the farm Gilmore, was shot
several times as he returned to the farm late on Sunday night. Main lived alone
at the farm. Budhram said Main's Mazda bakkie was stolen in the attack and was
later found abandoned in sugar-cane fields on a neighbouring farm six
kilometres away. Although Main's attackers entered his house, it could not yet
be ascertained if anything else was missing, said Budhram. Main is survived by
two daughters, Nicky and Kate. Koos Marais from the security desk at Kwanalu
([KwaZulu-]Natal Agricultural Union), said Main was the 11th KZN [Natal]
commercial food producer murdered this year, according to his records. Fifteen
more have been victims of criminal attacks.
-
AfricanCrisis,
A security guard was shot dead in
Durban on Saturday morning, police said. Spokesman Daniela Veldhuizen said the
ADT security guard was parked in his car on Station Road in Durban's Isipingo
suburb around 4am when the incident took place. Veldhuizen said details were
sketchy but it is believed that the gunman approached the car and shot the
30-year-old guard in the head. She said it was believed that robbery was the
motive for the attack as his service pistol had been taken.
-
AfricanCrisis,
A man was shot dead while a woman
was seriously injured after four prisoners escaped from police custody at the
magistrate's court in Brits, Beeld
reported on Saturday. Captain Aafje Botma said the four who are facing charges
of murder escaped from police custody while at the court in Brits on Friday
afternoon. They attacked a police officer and took his firearm before running
away. They then attempted to hijack a 42-year-old woman. The gang then shot and
killed a motorist who had been waiting for the robot to turn green at the
intersection of Van Velden and McLean streets.
The four were in court in connection with the murder of a Constable
Mabasa in Letlhabile.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Durban's acclaimed gardening guru,
Arthur Vernon Rippon, hailed by friends as "the
salt of the earth", has been murdered at his home in Moore Road.
There is some confusion over whether Rippon was
attacked at his home and then later died or whether his attackers returned to his
home to finish him off. "This is a great, great tragedy for the
horticultural world. It is very, very sad," said Christopher Dalzell,
curator of Durban Botanic Gardens. "He was the doyen of horticulture in Durban
and brought so many people into the gardening world.
He was an inspiration and gave so much”. The country's gardening fraternity has
been left reeling as details of the murder quickly spread, said Sheila Astill,
president of the Durban and Coast Horticultural
Society. "We are absolutely devastated," she said, adding that he was
"Durban's Mr Gardening". She said he
was "a botanist, ecologist, gardener, landscaper, nurseryman, floral
artist, designer, decorator, lecturer, photographer and traveller". Police
said on Wednesday that Rippon, 77, who lived alone, was found dead in his home
with severe head injuries. He had been struck several times with a blunt
object. It was not clear exactly what time he was attacked, but it is known
that Rippon spent Tuesday evening having dinner with friends in New Germany. He
had an arrangement with the friends to telephone them to confirm he had arrived
safely back home, but the usual single ring did not come. Police believe Rippon
was attacked in his house and was hit over the head with a blunt object and
that his car was then stolen. Kay Montgomery, the editor of SA Gardening, said
Rippon had been a contributing writer for many years. She will come to Durban
for his funeral. "He was an expert on palms and
the father of sub-tropical gardening in Durban."
Rippon was president of the Durban and Coast
Horticultural Society, patron of the Association of Garden Judges and was
instrumental in starting the Garden of the Year. After working in Holland
and in the Channel Islands, he headed home to Durban where "he was
snapped up at the age of 28 by the Durban Parks department, later gaining his
national diploma in horticulture. He wrote and edited the book “Gardening Made
Easy” and was honorary life member of some 12 gardening clubs. He also wrote for
the Daily News.
- AfricanCrisis,
Helen Zille, the leader of the
Democratic Alliance and the Mayor of Cape Town, will appear in court today. She
is expected to be charged with breaching the "Gatherings Act" by
joining an "illegal demonstration". Mrs Zille, who became opposition
leader in May, is the most prominent critic of the ruling African National
Congress (ANC). Last year, the ruling party responded to her election as mayor
by trying to remove all her executive powers and reduce her job to a ceremonial
figurehead. Although this ploy failed, the ANC has tried to undermine Mrs Zille
and re-take control of Cape Town ever since. On Sunday, she led a demonstration
against the drugs trade through a poor area of the city. Mrs Zille told The Daily Telegraph that police arrested
one member of her party for no apparent reason. She and her followers went to a
nearby police station to ask why this had happened. "While I was getting
the names and addresses of witnesses, the police came over and arrested people.
They dragged people along the ground and pulled them across the road," she
said. "The people were doing absolutely nothing and the police came and
dragged them across the road." Mrs Zille added: "I haven't seen
anything like that since the 1980s when I took part in protest marches."
She was held in the police station and told that she would be charged with
joining an illegal gathering, before being allowed to leave. Mrs Zille said:
"The last time I was taken in like this was under apartheid." During
apartheid, Mrs Zille, 56, wrote for the Rand
Daily Mail, an independent newspaper fiercely critical of the White [NP]
government. She believes that her arrest was part of the ANC's campaign to
unseat her as mayor. "It's the action of a government which is intolerant
of its critics," said Mrs Zille. "It does show that the government is
becoming more authoritarian and less tolerant of criticism and it regards our
constitutional rights as being privileges, not rights." The ANC argues
that its dominance arises from genuine popular support rather than any attempt
to suppress criticism. While Mrs Zille's party is the largest opposition force,
the alliance won only 12.4% of the vote in the last general election in 2004.
-
Daily Telegraph,
Doctors at Groote Schuur hospital
warn that "patients often die waiting for an operation" - in the wake
of a R30-million budget cut six months ago, a sharp decline in specialists and
a dramatic increase in demand. So great is the increase in patient numbers, and
so severe the budget cuts, the health department is projecting a R201-million
shortfall for the financial year 2007/08, says Bongani Mayosi, University of
Cape Town's Medical Faculty head and Joint Chief Physician at Groote Schuur.
"There has been an increase of 228% in Xhosa-speaking patients (from the
Eastern Cape), and people (from other parts of Africa) looking for good
healthcare. "At any time, refugees would make up about 10% of people in my
wards," Mayosi said on Tuesday in a briefing to parliament's Portfolio
Committee on Health, “They often die waiting for an operation”. He was
accompanied by the head of surgery at UCT, Del Kahn, who said another
consequence of budget cuts was that secondary hospitals like Green Point's New
Somerset would be downscaled to regional hospitals, where surgical procedures
would be scaled back. "The major concern is that there won't be theatre
time at Groote Schuur," said Kahn. This would have an adverse effect on
the teaching of under-graduates and registrars. Mayosi said admissions had
increased because of migration, the HIV and AIDS pandemic, heightened levels of
violent crime and "diseases of lifestyle" like high blood pressure
caused by a poor diet. Mayosi said there had been a drop in the numbers of
specialists from 49 to 30 at Tygerberg, Red Cross and Groote Schuur hospitals.
-
AfricanCrisis,