LATEST NEWS FROM
A security guard was shot dead
during an armed robbery at a Spar store in Primrose in the late afternoon on
Wednesday,
- 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
- 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
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,
-
AfricanCrisis,
A
-
AfricanCrisis,
A 37 year-old barman was shot and
killed outside the premises of Woodlands Sports Club in
- 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
- BBC news
report,
Cosatu is to picket outside singer
Patti Labelle's
- 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
- Sunday
Herald (
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,
A nine-year-old girl was raped by
one of the robbers who broke into her mother's house in Monument Park on
Monday, Pretoria police said. Captain Tessa Jansen said two men in their 20s
broke into a 35-year-old woman's house at around 1am. They gained access by
breaking a window and once inside they threatened the woman at knife-point.
"One of the robbers forced the woman into her car and made her drive to a
nearby ATM to withdraw money. However, it is not known if she did withdraw any
money," said Jansen. "While the robber and the woman were at the ATM,
the other robber raped the woman's daughter and when the two returned from the
ATM, the robbers loaded electrical appliances into the woman's car." She
was forced to drive the two to a spot in Monument Park where the robbers left
the car with the stolen appliances. Police were investigating charges of rape
and house robbery, said Jansen
-
AfricanCrisis,
For R200 and a couple of rings,
Justin Browne died in a pool of blood in his home in front of his young
children. Browne, a general manager for the event company Strike Productions,
died after assailants slit his throat in his Northwold, Randburg, house on
Saturday night. According to Geordie, Justin's wife, the family were in their
bedroom when their dogs started barking. Geordie and Justin went to investigate
but were confronted by two armed men. "One had a gun and another a knife.
The one carrying a knife confronted me while the other went for Justin. They
pushed us back into the bedroom," Geordie recalled. The couple tried to
shield their children from the attackers, who demanded guns, jewellery and
money. The attackers also took Geordie's wedding and engagement rings off her
fingers. She said the assailants tied them up and again demanded guns from
them. As they did this, Justin told her that he loved her and then kissed her.
"You are a police officer - where is your gun? Our tip told us you have a
gun. Where is the (Toyota Corolla) RSi," Geordie recalled the men saying.
Two more armed men arrived and they started loading a plasma-screen TV and
computers into their car, an Audi A4. They then took R200 from her purse and
removed her husband's wedding ring. Geordie managed to free herself and ran to
another room to press a panic button. It was only later that she realised she
had been shot in an arm during her escape attempt. While she was in the room,
her two children, Daniella, 7, and Robin, 4, came running to her shouting
"Mommy, mommy, daddy is dead". She didn't believe her children and
called a friend, a nurse, who rushed to her home and attempted to resuscitate
her husband, whose throat had been slit.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Well-known
Jacaranda Radio journalist, newspaper
freelancer and long-time Pietersburg resident Peter Cassidy, 68, was murdered
in his Savannah Mall, Flora Park house on Tuesday morning. His body was found
on the floor of his bedroom in his house in McDonald Street in Flora Park. A
rope was twisted around his neck and his hands and feet were tied when police
found him. He was lying on his stomach.
![[2 Pics] SA: Journalist Tortured to
Death Farm Murder Style](news_files/image004.jpg)
This
graphic illustrates this particularly gruesome killing-method also frequently
carried out against many of the 2,200 South African farmers already murdered
since the start of the Xhosa-hegemony of South Africa. The journalist was found
by police after they had discovered his old red Fiat bakkie abandoned in the
Mankweng area about 30km from Pietersburg about 03:00 on Tuesday and had gone
to his house to report the find, said provincial police superintendent Ronel
Otto. Police said they weren't 'immediately clear whether anything had been
taken from the house." The Northern Review, one of the two
local newspapers Cassidy worked for on a free-lance basis, had recently
received threats for writing about an earlier murder, their editor said on
their website.
- report sent by JLT, Pretoria,
An Australian tour group holidaying in KwaZulu-Natal (i.e.
Natal) will leave with bitter memories of their visit after R20,000 in foreign
currency belonging to four members of the group was stolen.They were staying at
the Protea Hotel Umfolozi River, near the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve in
northern KwaZulu-Natal (i.e. Natal), when the cash, meant to have been secured
in the hotel safe, was mislaid by staff and later stolen last Thursday. Sid
Fassler, one of more than 30 holidaymakers on the organised trip, said he and
three other tourists had entrusted foreign currency valued at R20,000 to hotel
staff, who had assured them their money would be placed in the safe. The money
had been placed in bags which were sealed and removed to be placed in the safe.
However, when the visitors returned the following day to fetch the cash, the
management said there had been a "problem with the money". "They
said they had been very busy at the front desk and the bags containing the
money had not been placed in the safe, and were instead left on a counter top
in a back room," said Fassler. "On Monday our guests sealed their
personal belongings in our seal bags. The MOD (manager on duty) was supposed to
lock it up in the cupboard and then lock the cupboard key in our safe," he
wrote. "Things got busy and the MOD left the bags on a back office table.
A while later when the receptionist walked into the back office, she had
realised the seals had been broken." Darlington said the bags had been resealed, with nobody realising that
the money had been pilfered. "We gave the bags back to the guests and
explained that the seals had been broken, but we replaced it. They opened the
bags to find the money had been stolen." Fassler was unimpressed with the
hotel's response. "The hotel staff were absolutely hopeless. Only on our
insistence did they call the police, who took two hours to respond. This is
really an unfortunate reflection on your tourist industry," he said. He
added that the hotel had agreed to reimburse the four affected tourists with
R400 each. He said the theft had devastated them and placed a dampener on their
holiday. "It has affected the way we feel about the country." The
manager of the hotel was unavailable for comment.
- AfricanCrisis,
The Table
Mountain National Park has called on people planning hikes on the mountain to
stay in groups and not carry valuables, after another three mugging incidents.
On Wednesday two British tourists, an elderly couple and a local man were
robbed in three separate incidents. Table Mountain National Park communications
manager Phumeza Mgxashe confirmed the incidents on Wednesday. According to
Mgxashe the victims were an elderly couple on Maclear's Beacon, two female
British touristsm, and a man who was hiking alone at Skeleton Gorge. Mgxashe
said: "They were all held at knifepoint and robbed of their valuable
possessions." She said the park had a team of 52 visitor safety rangers, who
were responsible for the safety of the mountain visitors. However, none of the
rangers had been in the area when the muggings took place. "They have to
patrol a big, open access mountain, and can't be everywhere at the same time.
"We have safety volunteers to help the rangers, but they only help out on
weekends," she said. Mgxashe said the incidents were
"regrettable" but urged hikers not to wear valuable items and to
always hike in groups.
- AfricanCrisis,
A 41-year-old
man, one of six people wounded when five robbers opened fire in a supermarket
in Hercules, Pretoria, has died, police said on Thursday. "The man was
confirmed dead an hour ago," Inspector Paul Ramaloko said. The man had
been in a critical condition in hospital, and had lapsed into coma. On
Wednesday, five armed men in their 20s entered a Lucky Seven supermarket around
7pm. The men were in the process of robbing the store when they were disturbed
by noises. They then fired random shots inside the store, wounding six people.
Of these, four were male customers, one was the owner's wife and the other was
a male supermarket teller. "Two were critically injured," Ramaloko
said on Wednesday. All six were taken to hospital. The robbers fled empty
handed from the store after the shooting. No arrests had been made, Ramaloko
said.
- AfricanCrisis,
The Natal
farming community has been shocked by the brutal
murders of a retired Swartberg farming couple at the weekend. Raymond Fitch,
78, and his wife, Yvonne, 79, were killed just a week after another farmer at
nearby Cedarville, David Southey, 79, survived a horrific attack. The mother of
one of the men detained for the Fitches' murders works on their farm. The
Fitches were severely beaten and possibly stabbed, and their farmhouse was
ransacked in an apparent search for guns on Friday night. Their telephone, farm
radio and alarm system were disconnected, indicating that the attack had been
planned and that the assailants knew their way around the farm. Police said
some firearms were among the items stolen along with the couple's old
Mercedes-Benz. Southey was dragged bleeding around his home and was eventually
left tied up with ropes and barbed wire by three assailants who threatened to
pour boiling water over him. He was robbed of seven firearms, jewellery, cash
and his Isuzu bakkie. Police arrested one man for that attack at Cedarville
last Thursday and the second in Pinetown the next day. The latter was wounded
during a shootout with police after he and two companions driving in Southey's
stolen bakkie rammed into a police van when confronted. Two of the men escaped.
The bodies of the Fitches were found on their farm, Two Springs, on Saturday by
their son, Jeff, who lives 5km away on a second family-owned farm. A friend,
Peter Cloete, said the brutality of the assault on the elderly couple was
"shocking and dreadful". The Fitch family had lived in Swartberg for
more than 30 years. The President of the Natal Agricultural Union, Robin Barnsley,
said the violence and brutality accompanying the most recent attacks on farmers
was troubling. He said he and the presidents of other agricultural unions were
concerned at the apparent degeneration in moral standards in rural areas and
were exploring an initiative to address this issue.
- AfricanCrisis,
get_video_1.wmv (1.74 MB)
… and they want to host the World
Cup - what a laugh, and the world stands and watches, quickly heading the way
of Zimbabwe!
-
info’ sent by MH-GE, Sussex,
An elderly man was murdered in a
supposedly secure block of flats at Bedfordview on the East Rand, a paramedic
said on Thursday. Netcare 911's Mark Stokoe said paramedics were called to a
block in Bedfordview on Wednesday at about 7pm. On arrival they found a man in
his sixties lying on the kitchen floor. He hands and feet were tied, and a
towel had been shoved into his month and tightly fastened with a tie. He had
been beaten and the flat was ransacked. Stokoe said it seems the man had been dead
for some time because his family had been unable to make contact with him for a
number of days. His two sons arrived at his 9th floor flat on Wednesday, and
found that he had been killed. The incident took place at a block of flats
where visitors are required to sign in for security reasons.
-
AfricanCrisis,
The Western
Cape has the highest rates of murder, indecent assault
and common assault in the country. According to crime statistics for the period
April 2006 to March 2007, released on Tuesday by the national department of
safety and security, the murder rate in the province is 61 people per 100 000,
indecent assault is 59 and the common assault rate 739. One has 12 times more
chance of being indecently assaulted in the Western Cape than in Limpopo {Far
Northern Transvaal]. Nyanga had the highest number of reported murder cases in
the country, with Khayelitsha, Harare and
Gugulethu taking the fifth, sixth and seventh spots.
Of the 19,202 murders committed nationally, 303 were
reported at Nyanga, up from last year's 284. Drug-related crime in the province
has increased by 205.8% to a rate of 865
crimes for every 100,000 people. Nearly two-thirds of the contact crimes that
involve bodily harm occurred in the Western
Cape, Gauteng [PWV}
and Natal. The national statistics reveal
alarming increases in 12 categories of crime. Up from last year's national
statistics are murder, by 2.4%, aggravated robbery (4.6%), bank robberies
(118%), business robberies (52.5%), residential robberies (25%),
cash-in-transit heists (22%), truck-hijackings (8%), car-hijackings (6%),
commercial crimes (13%), drug-related crimes (8%) and illegal possession of
firearms (6%).
- AfricanCrisis,
A 44-year-old man was killed and
robbed in his driveway at Strandfontein in the Western Cape Province, police
said on Saturday. Constable Siphokazi Mawisa said four armed men attacked the
man and robbed him of an undisclosed amount of money when he stopped his car in
his driveway on Corvette Road. The incident took place around 12.20pm on
Saturday. "The victim had been coming from the bank when these unknown
suspects hit his car's window at gun point demanding the money," she said.
Mawisa said the men then fired several shots wounding him in his chest. They
then robbed him of an undisclosed amount of money. "He died on the
scene," she said. The robbers fled the scene in a vehicle and are still at
large.
-
AfricanCrisis,
A man was killed when a grocery
shop at Kuils River in the Cape Peninsula was robbed on Monday afternoon,
police said. Inspector Bernadine Steyn said four men entered the shop in Van
Riebeeck Road, and held staff and customers at gun point. Said Steyn:
"Several shots were fired, wounding a bystander, a man believed to be in
his 30’s from Elsies River, fatally in the head." The victim's licensed
firearm was also stolen by the robbers. "No one else sustained serious
injuries during the incident." The men ran away and were still at large
with an undisclosed amount of cash.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Its vast deposits of gold and
platinum helped turn it into Africa's most developed nation, but South Africa's
latest metal export risks doing exactly the opposite. Cities are being brought
"to their knees" by unprecedented pilfering of copper and aluminium
cables, which has caused extensive blackouts and power cuts as organised gangs
plunder miles of the country's electricity and telephone lines to sell abroad
as scrap. Officials believe that up to 100 miles of cables may be going missing
every year, destined for markets such as China and India where booming
economies have created insatiable demand for copper and aluminium. The thieves
generally work by night, armed with trucks, winches, industrial cutting
machines and tractors to flatten the pylons and poles that carry their booty.
The result has been entire suburbs plunged into darkness, thousands of train
passengers stranded, and frequent chaos on the roads as traffic lights fail.
Backed by a network of unscrupulous dealers who smelt their spoils down, many
gangs are also stealing water meters, taps and even ladders, said Cape Town
councillor Pieter van Dalen, a member of a 15-strong "cable theft task
team" set up to fight the problem. Such is the economic damage being
caused by the new "gold rush" that last week the mayor of Cape Town,
Helen Zille, held a crisis meeting with scrap metal merchants. "Nobody
will invest in a city if you can't rely on something as basic as an electricity
supply," she said. "The entire infrastructure, from sewerage
substations to electricity generating points, are being vandalised for the sake
of a few bucks." In fact the stakes are much higher than a few bucks. The
Western Cape Investment and Trade Promotion Agency estimates that the province
exported 77 million rand (£5.5 million) worth of copper to China last
year - no mean feat for an area that has no copper mines. South Africa spends
R500 million on replacing stolen cables every year, while the cost to firms
whose power has been cut or phone lines stolen is perhaps 10 times that. The
massive increase in cable thefts in the past year is in large part due to the
fact that the price of copper has tripled over the same period. Lorinda Nel,
the National Project Manager for Non-Ferrous Metals Theft at South Africa's
Business Against Crime group, said "It would seem as if the high copper
price is driving this - not only for the organised crime syndicates, who tend
to export, but also in terms of subsistence thieves who steal a metre or two a
day just so they can feed themselves and their families." Miss Nel said
the gangs were highly sophisticated. "They have trucks with pulleys on
them so they can roll the material while they are cutting and they are experts
at blocking the electricity so they can work on the cable without getting
electrocuted." For inexperienced thieves, though, the risks are high. In
January last year two men were electrocuted after apparently trying to steal
cable from an electricity substation. One of the difficulties of combating
cable theft is that it is very difficult to identify its origins once it has
been stripped of its plastic surround. As a result, scrap metal merchants
caught with stolen cable are often charged with being in possession of "suspected"
stolen material, a lesser offence than theft for which the penalty is a maximum
of one year imprisonment.
-
Sunday Telegraph,
An 85-year-old man was murdered in
Durban on Wednesday night, Natal police said on Thursday. Spokesperson Constable
Lungi Jama said "Charles John was murdered in his car opposite the
Amanzimtoti taxi rank at about 8.45pm on Wednesday." He was stabbed on the
neck. It appeared that his killers had been trying to steal items from the car.
Police found the car radio was missing. No arrests had been made and the case
was still under investigation.
The body of a Camps Bay woman has
been discovered in a yard in Maitland - four days after she was last seen
dropping her daughter off at a prestigious girls' school in Cape Town. Interior
decorator Rene Vermeulen's body was found under a black bag in Church Street,
Maitland on Tuesday morning. She had several open wounds to the head.
Vermeulen's 13-year old daughter, Bianca Oosthuizen, last saw her mother when
she dropped her off at St Cyprian's in Oranjezicht on Friday. That night,
Bianca spent an arranged sleep-over at the home of a school friend. Her mother
was to pick her up the following day. But when they tried to call her later,
her phone was switched off. Bianca stayed on with her friend's family, as they
became more anxious by the disappearance. On Monday morning Bianca's father,
Peter Oosthuizen, who is Vermeulen's ex-husband, was alerted at home in
Johannesburg, and he flew down to Cape Town. On Monday night Vermeulen's car,
an A180 A-Class Mercedes, was found in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. Then
late on Tuesday afternoon, police issued the news. "At approximately
10.45am the body of a 40-year-old woman was found by police in the yard of a
house in Church Street, Maitland. "The body was found under a black bag
with several open wounds to the head," said police spokesperson Bernadine
Steyn. It has since been confirmed that the woman is Vermeulen. A friend of
hers, Juanita Pacheco, said on Wednesday morning: "She was an amazing
person. No matter what trouble you were in, she would help you. And she was a
fabulous mother." Vermeulen had been health conscious and had formerly
been a personal trainer - and had also been exceptionally cautious. Pacheco
said Vermeulen had recently bought a church hall in Brooklyn with her mother
and had planned to develop it. It is understood that money may have been drawn
from ATMs in Brooklyn on Saturday morning.
-
AfricanCrisis,
On our way to join Zimbabwe …
Bryanston
In
about Feb 2007 a family was help up at gun point by armed attackers. They were
tied up and the house ransacked. The family car was used to transport the goods
from the house. This family has decided to relocate to which ever country will
take them because this is the third attack on them in the past two years. We
will loose an extremely clever and successful businessman who was responsible
for some very successful projects. We will also loose their children who are
highly skilled and trained and would have been a valuable asset to the country.
Bryanston
In
about April 2007 a prominent surgeon and his family were attacked and help up
at gun point. Their house was ransacked. Their property was packed into one of
the family vehicles and removed.
Bryanston
In
beginning of June 2007 another prominent surgeon and his family were attacked
at gun point. Their vehicles and possessions were stolen.
Bryanston
9th
June 2007 a couple on their way to a dinner party in Bryanston were caught in
taxi cross-fire near The Wilds. Both died of bullet wounds.
-
report sent by “Steve 34”, Transvaal,
Two police
officers were shot and killed while responding to a burglary in Cape Town on
Monday, police said. Captain Randall Stoffels said Inspector Martin van der
Heyde, 42, and Student Constable Johnny Botha, 30, arrived at a house in
Conquest Street, Crawford at 10.45am, and noticed a window had been broken. Van
Der Heyde entered the house, and found a burglar inside the kitchen. A struggle
occurred, and the burglar overpowered Van Der Heyde, taking his service pistol.
He shot Van Der Heyde several times, and then began shooting at Botha, who at
the time was in the backyard. Botha was hit in the head. The man then fled the
scene with both service pistols, taking the police vehicle which was found
abandoned later near Hanover Park. "A case of murder has been opened for
investigation and we have launched a search for the perpetrator," said
Stoffels. He said that seven Western Cape police officers had been killed in
the line of duty since last year.
- AfricanCrisis,
Residents
of the northern Zululand trading and tourism town of Mtubatuba are in shock
over the murder of local community leader and businessman, the retired South African
Airways pilot Ken Anders - gunned down at point-blank range by 'robbers'
outside his small business in the Central Business District on Sunday. Anders
was shot dead at close range by a gang of armed attackers - even though this
former SAA pilot also was very crime-aware, having escaped two other attacks in
the last three years, and surviving a hijacking and a shooting last year when
he was tailed on his way home to St Lucia. Anders, 65, became the latest murder
statistic in a town where residents say they are living in fear of increasingly
violent well-organised armed criminal gangs who seem intent specifically on
killing them during their attacks. The local town council this year has put the
out-of-control crime epidemic in their once so sleepy trading town high on
their list of issues which have to be urgently addressed, and formally noting
that: "The high levels of crime taking place in Mtubatuba in businesses,
shops, along the roads, at the beach and farms, which detract from development
opportunities, the growth of tourism, alienate organised business and commerce
and negatively impact on local economic development, municipal financial
stability and sustainability and the overall attractiveness of Mtubatuba as a
location...". The town council also warned that the local South African
police had to “address the totally inadequate handling of women and girl
victims who have been raped and/or battered and abused, and address the
police's inadequate policing facilities”.
- AfricanCrisis,
One bank
cash-point a day is being blown up by armed robbers in South Africa - with 60
such attacks during the first two months of this year alone and 400 in the
previous two years, spreading much fear throughout the community.
- AfricanCrisis,
A
Bloubergstrand resident has come under fire in his home early on Friday when he
confronted armed intruders who had managed to break through electric fencing to
gain access to a security complex. The burglars broke into the house in Sandown
Estate in a smash-and-grab style raid at about 3am. A neighbour said the
robbers did not seem concerned about noise when they
broke through a patio door window and ransacked the house.Mark Susdorf, a
spokesperson for Star Rapid Response who reached the scene within minutes, said
the homeowner and his wife, their two children and another family member were
sleeping upstairs. One robber fired at least two shots at the homeowner when he
went to investigate. His wife called the armed response company and police from
her bedroom when the shots rang out. The intruders grabbed a laptop computer
and electronic testing equipment and fled on foot, firing another two shots at
the resident as he peeped through a window. Susdorf said he was concerned that
the men had apparently "come prepared to shoot"
- AfricanCrisis,
David Canning editor of
Durban-based newspaper The [Natal]
Mercury was shot in an arm and a leg in an attempted hijacking outside his
Kloof home, The Star newspaper
reported on Wednesday. The incident happened late on Tuesday night. Canning was
treated by paramedics at the scene and was reported to be in a stable
condition. He telephoned his newspaper's newsroom from inside an ambulance. It
was unclear whether he had been struck twice by the same bullet or whether two
shots were fired in the attack.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Just hours after saying "I do", Mark
Sandmann, 27, died in his bride's arms. He was gunned down by intruders in the honeymoon
suite of the luxury Kievits Kroon Country Estate north-east of Pretoria.
The tragedy happened at about 1am on Friday as newlyweds Mark, an assistant manager at
PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Nina, 28, an announcer at Montecasino, were dozing
off. Hours earlier they had celebrated their love for each other during an
intimate family wedding. The wedding presents were still stacked unopened in
their bedroom when Mark was shot and died shortly afterwards on his way to
hospital. Friend Nicole de Walbon Holmes said it was the wedding presents which
led to his death. "Nina told me she believed the intruders knew there were
wedding presents and that was why they tried to gain entry to the room.”
- AfricanCrisis,
A family who live in ‘Toti (and own
a jewellery shop there), were attacked in their home on Tuesday night, and the
husband was shot and died. The wife heard a noise upstairs and when she
went to look the murderers were coming down the stairs! She ran out the
house to get the neighbours to call the police. Her husband was shot in
the chest and in the face - he was only 55. When the police got there they said
they can't stand it anymore - they are going to murders every day!
-
message sent by Sandy, Cape Town, April 19, 2007
The 27-year-old son of a
Vanderbijlpark optometrist died after being shot in head during a robbery at
his Sasolburg home in the Orange Free State early on Tuesday morning. Police
identified him as Pieter de Lange. He had encountered three armed men in the
house around 4am while they were threatening his father, Johannes de Lange. The
trio, who had a firearm and a knife between them, fled with two mobile phones
and jewellery from the house, said Free State police spokesperson Motantsi
Makhele.
-
AfricanCrisis,
I have taken a decision today that
it is time to tell you all what has happened to my daughter and her friend so
that you can warn your friends, as the police are not making any attempt to
warn the public. On 8 February Jenny-Lynn and her friend went to Pine Lodge in
Summerstrand (about 2 miles from our home). As they turned into the off-road
from Marine Drive, a car suddenly came to a halt in front of them. To make it
short, 3 Nigerian men forced them down to the "Patty" a common place
where our sons and husbands fish, and mugged and robbed them, taking their
belongings, getting their pin numbers of their bank cards. One went to draw the
money from the cards while the other two kept them hostage with knifes, telling
them constantly that "you know we're going to kill you, hey!".
Eventually they managed to get away and I can only thank God that they are
alright. The bad thing is, the same ritual happened to numerous other people,
but the police or no-one has warned the public. So much for public safety! This
happened on 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 and 6 February before Jenny-Lynn and her friend on
the 8th. It continued to a total of 20 robberies until this month. Maybe some
could have been prevented if I sent this e-mail out sooner! Please warn your
friends and family about this in order for them not to go to this area alone at
night, and to be prepared for this type of robbery by allowing enough space
between cars in front of them. Please take this serious.
-
message sent by CvdR,
South Africa's Springbok rugby
squad faces the threat of having their passports confiscated unless more Black
players are picked for this year's World Cup, media reported on Tuesday. The
influential chairperson of the country's parliamentary sports committee, Butana
Komphela, warned that this "worst-case scenario" would be necessary
if there were not at least six Black players in the World Cup squad. "In
principle, we can't allow a team that does not reflect the South African
picture, to represent our country," Komphela was quoted as saying in the
Beeld newspaper. "My fear is that rugby won't see the World Cup. We will
try to convince the Minister of Home Affairs to confiscate their passports if
the team is not representative." The relationship between the sport and
the South African government has been strained for years due to the lack of
Black players in the national teams. Komphela said a good start would be to
have six Black or Coloured players in the team. "Six out of thirteen [sic]
is not representative but it's a good start," said Komphela. The president
of the South African Rugby Union, Oregan Hoskins, said Komphela's comments
should not be seen as idle threats. "We must take what he says
seriously."
-
AfricanCrisis,
One in four
children between 11 and 15 are raped, according to Statistics South Africa
figures. According to police figures 43% of the 54,926 rapes in 2005/2006 were
of children. Experts say the true number is even higher. Samantha Waterhouse of
Resources Aimed at the Prevention of
Child Abuse and Neglect said a survey had found only one in six victims
went to the police. The abuse of boys and girls, especially by people of the
same sex, was extremely poorly reported, she said. "Most rapes (of)
children are not reported. The Medical Research Council says only one in nine
rapes is reported, which means that if 22,500 child rapes are reported, there
are at least 202,500 such rapes a year. It is likely, however, that the rate of
under-reporting is even higher than this." In Khayelitsha, one third of
the abused children referred to the Simelela Centre are girls younger than 14.
Society was becoming increasingly tolerant of people who sexually abused
children, she said. Only 5% of reported cases of sexual assaults on children
and 9% of rapes of adults lead to criminal convictions.
- AfricanCrisis,
Two men have appeared in the
Rustenburg magistrate's court for allegedly burning down the home of a
prophetess in Ramochana near Rustenburg. Ben Bees and David Moleleki were
remanded in custody on Monday and had their case postponed until May 11 for
further investigations. Dikeledi Njusa's house was burnt down last Friday after
irate community members disputed her prophesy that a massive tornado would hit
Rustenburg and its surrounding areas unless every one paid a R2 coin to
"the water snake". She claimed the water snake had come to her in a
vision. On Thursday night the local radio station held a talk show about her
prophesy. Church ministers and traditional healers were invited to the talk
show and all dismissed her prophesy as false. Police said about 800 people
gathered at her home demanding their R2 back and her house was torched. Bees
and Moleleki were charged with public violence, assault, arson, malicious damage
to property and theft. They were not asked to plead. Njusa was under police
protection at the Rustenburg police station as community members were baying
for her blood.
- AfricanCrisis,
Drugs, gangs, and bullets. That's
what the gang war in Chatsworth is all about. Another drive-by shooting in the
Durban South suburb has claimed the life of a tow-truck owner and has left an
innocent bystander seriously injured. Chatsworth police and residents say the
gangs have completely taken over the streets and "a full-scale war has
begun". They say drugs and revenge killings are at the centre of the turf
war. The latest shooting at the weekend comes just days after a firearm dealer
and his friends were shot in a similar incident. Police said on Friday the
deceased - whose identity has been withheld - allegedly had an altercation with
a nightclub owner last week and the incident is believed to be related to the
murder. The nightclub staffer is believed to be a member of one of the
drug-dealing gangs in Chatsworth.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Every year
more than 1,500 children disappear in South Africa without a trace. More than 200 of these children come from Pretoria.
- AfricanCrisis,
It is always an easy headline, but there
is no getting away from South Africa's crime. Some newspapers lead with it most
days and it is brutal stuff: car drivers shot dead, women raped and children
molested. At times it seems like criminals kill for petty goods like mobile
phones and wallets. To a lesser degree another subject is also getting media
coverage – the 2010 Soccer World Cup and whether the
violence will force FIFA, the world soccer body, to take the tournament
elsewhere. In the past two weeks the topic of criminal activities, or more
accurately how to control them, has been pushed under the nose of Mbeki. Some
of his opponents have been scoring political points by saying that if he does
not control the problem the World Cup will be given to another country like
Brazil.
-
The Press,
On the 18th November 2006, the
South African public was shocked by the images on the front-page of their
newspapers or the evening television news of Norman Reeves, being led
handcuffed from his home and Combat Force
Security headquarters and placed in the back of a waiting police van. The
media and television crews, who had been called in advance to the premises to
record this media-fest, were told that “Storming Norman” was being arrested for
possession of “a large quantity” of unlicensed weapons. Although this has
transpired to be without a shred of truth, prominent clients of Combat Force reflexively terminated
longstanding security contracts. Reeves - a zealous crime-fighter - was
portrayed to the public as a criminal. The objectives of those who engineered
the raid had been successfully achieved. The so-called “raid” was conducted by
PSIRA - The Private Security Regulatory
Authority - supported by members of Durban Metro. All of the weapons
removed from Reeves’ premises were fully and lawfully licensed, all had been
securely housed upon the premises. A stale warrant on a “fraud” charge, upon
which the State declined to prosecute Reeves, was used for “backup” by Metro
Police. The defunct warrant was subsequently confirmed invalid and set aside
with speed. Although licenses for the weapons removed from Reeves were tendered
to PSIRA and the police, the latter refused to accept them.
-
AfricanCrisis,
This
victim was car-jacked in Johannesburg, the murder capital of the world. Robbers
beat him and then tied him down and dragged him behind his own BMW until the
police pulled them over and arrested the suspects. The victim lived to tell his
story, and is recovering slowly at our local hospital. While police crime statistics
show that there were 21,683 murders in South Africa in the year 2000, the
Medical Research Council puts the figure at 32,482. The MRC’s estimate is close
to the figure from the Department of Home Affairs, which is 30,068. This is a
third more murders than reported by the SAPS, a discrepancy of more than 10,000
murders. So, while the Democratic Alliance leaflet “Fight Crime” puts the
average daily murder rate in South Africa at 55 murders every day, the Medical
Research Council’s statistics reveal that 89 murders are committed, on average,
every day in South Africa.
-
report sent by C.Benadie (ex-Transvaal, now London),
Last
year there were over 18,500 murders in South Africa as well as 55,000 rapes and
120,000 violent robberies.
- Sunday Telegraph,
This past Friday saw one of the
most shameful events in recent South African history. First National Bank
(FNB), the institution who bankrolls the reprehensible Homecoming Revolution website, showed some laudable courage and
initiative, and launched an R25 Million media campaign aimed at pressurising
our criminal regime into acting against crime. The FNB initiative was designed
to be a highly visible cry for help. FNB printed almost four million full
colour newspaper inserts detailing the shocking anarchy and rampant lawlessness
in this country, and paid a fortune for having them distributed in the major
weekend Rapport, Sunday Times and Sunday
Independent newspapers. The inserts included an exhortation to the ANC regime to make
crime its first priority, and also featured a pre-printed letter
addressed to Mbeki. Readers could sign the letter, add their own comments and
crime experiences and then mail it off in a postage prepaid envelope. On
Tuesday (30 January) Derek Cooper, the chairman of “Business Leadership” (a
lobby group representing the biggest South African corporate conglomerates) got
wind of the FNB anti-crime campaign. Cooper, (who is also the chairman of
Standard Bank, a major competitor to FNB) mustered all his influence by
contacting other corporate honcho’s belonging to “Business Leadership” and
together they applied huge pressure on FNB to withdraw their planned anti-crime
ad campaign. Paul Harris, a senior FNB executive and the brains behind the anti-crime
initiative, bravely resisted the massive pressure brought to bear against his
brainchild. Derek Cooper and the merry men of “Business Leadership” (SABL)
howled, pleaded, threatened and cajoled Harris, but amazingly it fell on deaf
ears. On Thursday 1 February, Cooper sent a confidential letter to all the
members of SABL, in which he questioned the “wisdom” of FNB’s brave anti-crime
campaign, and exhorted them to pull out all the stops in ensuring that the FNB
campaign be silenced. Michael Spicer, an executive of SABL then contacted
senior ministers in the ANC regime, to enlist their help in silencing FNB. Then
on Friday morning a senior delegation of ANC officials, including Communist
Party member & Minister of Safety & Security, Charles Kaka Koola and
various other ANC ministers marched into the FNB head office in downtown
Johannesburg. They demanded a meeting then and there with Anthony Vorster (FNB
chief of Corporate Communications) and insisted he immediately withdraw the
“unpatriotic” and “anti-South African” campaign. Minister Kaka Koola threatened
FNB, saying that “relations between the ANC government and the bank will be
seriously damaged” as a result of FNB’s anti-crime campaign. Allusions were
made to the fact that FNB were the bankers of the S.A.Parliament, Trevor
Manuel’s Department of Finance, the S.A.Revenue Service, Telkom, Transnet, the
S.A.Post Office and various provinces. The inference was, despite assurances
that FNB was not being threatened, quite clear for anyone with an IQ higher than
room temperature. It didn’t take long for FNB to realise that it would be
massively damaging to the bank’s business interests to continue with the
anti-crime campaign, and it was immediately halted. Once FNB management cracked
under the pressure they were instructed in crystal-clear terms that under no
circumstances were the already printed material to reach the public domain.
That very same afternoon, trucks were sent out to collect the glossy 4 page
inserts from the presses of various newspapers, with the Rapport newspaper alone handing back 1.5 million copies. These were
taken away for immediate destruction, with a further 2.8 million collected from
other newspaper press offices. FNB’s Anthony Vorster was quoted as saying “under great political pressure, FNB was put
in an untenable position where we were FORCED to withdraw from this campaign.
The government is not happy about this. Two minutes ago, we had a meeting with
the minister of Safety and Security, as well as other ministers. We were
ordered to ensure that the campaign did not reach the public domain”.
- report sent by “Andy”,
Ettienne van Wyk, the top South
African cyclist, has been found bludgeoned to death in his home in Nelspruit. High-profile
Whites are being murdered almost daily now. This is not just crime, they're
killing people for effect. I think that they are murdering high profile Whites
to send a message! Never before have so many high-profile Whites been killed.
What is also bizarre is none of them are right-wingers or Conservatives -
they're pretty a-political or, if anything, "White Liberal types".
Could it be that there is a reason these people are being taken out? Are they
being killed because they are
liberals? I don't think these are just criminals. I think there are politicians
behind the murder of all these high-profile Whites. I think we are watching a
new type of "Racial Terrorism" aimed at us.
-
AfricanCrisis,
21,000 people were murdered in South
Africa last year, and the rest of the world turns a blind eye! An 8-month-old
baby girl was raped to death by 5 men in Cape Town as they thought it would
"cure their AIDS". A 24-year-old pregnant woman was repeatedly raped
in her home in Birch Acres, Kempton Park on January 8th. A five-month pregnant
woman, her husband and their five-year-old daughter were relaxing at home when
four unknown men entered the house. The husband (32) was tied up and held at
gunpoint while the suspects raped his wife in the dining room. The suspects
then ransacked the house and took electrical appliances, household goods and
clothing valued at about R20,000.
-
message sent by JAN (ex-Cape Town, now USA),
David
Rattray, 48, a friend of Prince Charles and a world authority on the Zulu War,
was shot dead after a six-strong gang burst into his home at Rorke’s Drift in
Natal. His grieving widow, Nicky, said that this murder highlighted the
lawlessness engulfing South Africa, where 20,000 people are murdered every
year. “This famous son of South Africa now joins the unacceptable list of
citizens who have lost their lives to senseless banditry,” she said. The murder
is likely to renew international attention on the country’s high levels of
violent crime. Michael Tatalias, chief executive of the South African Tourism
Services Association, said the tourism industry had been jeopardised by such
crimes. A spokesman for the Democratic Alliance said that criminals were
“perceived to be running rampant” in the country. According to a Natal police
spokesman the robbers entered the lodge office asking for Mr. Rattray by name.
Mr. Rattray’s body was found in a bathroom with gunshot wounds to his chest,
shoulder and hand. An unnamed friend of the Rattrays told a local newspaper
that Mr. Rattray pushed his wife to the ground shortly before the first shot.
- Sunday Telegraph,
The Traffic Department of the town
of Brits aren’t just lounging under trees to catch traffic offenders anymore …
they’re having full-blown meetings under trees as well! They were kicked out of
their offices three weeks ago, due to non-payment of rent. Mr. James Moche,
spokesman for the North-West Department of Traffic yesterday confirmed that the
Brits Traffic Department was kicked out of their offices owing to the
non-payment of rent. Mr. Moche also denied any knowledge of the fact that the
Brits Traffic Department had had no telephone service, water or electricity due
to these utilities being cut off, also due to non-payment. He is quoted as
saying that the department getting kicked out of their offices is “no great
shakes” since the traffic officers are supposed to spend most of their time out
on the streets. Meanwhile, they are looking for alternative accommodation but
this is not too urgent. Allegations have been made that the rent fell into
arrears because of an official who failed to make payments timeously. Moche
described the situation as “complex” and said that alternative offices may have
been found 20 km (12.5 miles) out of town, but that traffic officers aren’t
happy to travel so far, and for the foreseeable future will happily be meeting
under trees. Now
project this situation into the future by eight, ten maybe fifteen years. It is
precisely this type of regression which turns Africa into the anarchic
shit-hole that it is – first, central government stops paying rent, utilities
and then in the advanced stages of decay, salaries. Meanwhile, “primates” who
have been kitted out with uniforms, hide behind their badges to extract instant
fines and bribes from those motorists they prey on. They feel entitled to
collect bribes and fines, as it is payment in lieu of their regular salaries.
In return, central government ignores them completely, only too glad to be free
of this liability. The logistical link between a government department and its
subordinates then ceases to exist, and the loose cannons in the field
increasingly do as they please. They next form gangs, arm themselves, elect
warlords and a struggle for power ensues, with the endless civil conflicts
escalating to the levels of complete chaos, as seen in Liberia, the Congo and
elsewhere in Africa.
- “South Africa sucks” blog-spot,
An East London High Court judge yesterday sentenced
a gang rapist to life imprisonment, describing the "arrogant" attack
at knife-point as "one of the worst offences". The 25-year-old victim
- on holiday from England - was walking along the beach between Bonza Bay and
Gonubie on March 23 when she was attacked by Monde Jack, 22, and a 15-year-old
youth. A third man watched. Handing down sentence, Judge Themba Sangoni told
Jack "Rape is one of the worst offences, especially when it is committed
by a large number of people ... particularly if a knife is used to subdue a
victim. There is a stigma to it and it undermines women. From the evidence
brought forward there was an element of premeditation because you followed the
complainant for a while”, and, he added, as they carried out their attack in
broad daylight it was clear that they had acted “with arrogance". The
prosecutor, Advocate Glenn Turner, asked for the life sentence saying it was
"serious gang rape". He said the psychological damage caused to the
victim would take a long time to heal, "unlike an open wound that will
heal quickly". In addition, the attack put South Africa in a poor light
internationally, he said. "The woman lives in England, walks on a South
African beach and gets gang-raped. What message does that send to the world,
especially since we are hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup."
- report
sent by Nick Maine, Queensland, Australia, December 31, 2006
South African cricketers
found themselves involved in controversy yesterday, after The Sunday Times reported that vice-captain Jacques Kallis refused
to sing the [ANC version of] the national anthem. Cricket South Africa (SA)
will discuss with Kallis what the player describes as “good and valid personal
reasons” why he does not sing the [ANC] national anthem when it is played
before international matches.
- Daily Telegraph,
Here in sunny South Africa, you can
say "How long before South Africa disintegrates". The
treacherous Whites have given our thriving communities on a plate to the
"Blacks" who don't have a clue how to run a country, let alone build
a building on their own. They previously needed White leadership - even
the TV has four or five channels and at times there are only Blacks on each
channel....leaving the Whites out completely!!! The radio seems to thrive
on talk shows and the subjects are always related to "Black
problems". Previously we could go out at night and walk home
afterwards in a group. Now nobody goes out if they can help it - and we
have to use our own cars for transport. The buses are also minimal
now. Trains are not safe for Whites at all.
-
report sent by Nick Maine, Queensland, Australia,
A 34-year-old attorney died in
Natalspruit Hospital after being shot by three armed hijackers at Thokoza, in
full view of his wife and baby daughter. Eddie Barnard died a few minutes after
being admitted to hospital on Saturday night with bullet wounds in his chest,
stomach and back. Barnard, his wife, Rena, and their nine-month-old daughter,
Carli, were overpowered by three armed hijackers in front of their house in
Vanderbijlpark about 20:45 on Saturday night. They were forced into the rear
section of their 4x4 Toyota and covered with blankets. The hijackers headed for
Thokoza on the East Rand. Rena told friends afterwards that the men had
stopped, thrown her husband out of the vehicle and fired two shots. They then
threw the baby out and fired another shot. A shocked Henk Scheepers,
chairperson of the Vanderbijlpark Chamber of Commerce, who was a friend and
colleague of Eddie said "Rena thought the men had first killed Eddie and
then their daughter." A traumatised Rena told Scheepers at the hospital
that she had sat under the blankets the whole time, and heard three shots. She
thought the men had killed her husband and daughter. The robbers then threw her
out of the vehicle and drove off at high speed. At the hospital there was
"chaos" because of a shortage of staff and the doctor on duty asked
Scheepers and a friend to help him in theatre to wash the blood from Barnard's
body. Scheepers said it was terrible to have to hold his friend's body while
the blood was being washed off. Scheepers said: "The crime in our land is
repugnant and unacceptable." There have been no arrests yet.
-
AfricanCrisis,
- report sent by Nick Maine (Queensland,
Australia),
The ‘anti-apartheid’ novelist André
Brink has shocked many of his politically correct countrymen by warning that
football's World Cup, coming to South Africa in 2010, threatens a
"potential massacre which could make the Munich Olympics of a few decades
ago look like a picnic outing". Brink, who has twice been nominated for
the Booker Prize and short-listed several times for the Nobel Prize for
Literature, is no everyday scaremonger. In one of a number of articles he has
written about the crises facing South Africa, he said "I went out of my way
to assure people inside and outside the country who had doubts about the ‘new’
South Africa that we were moving in the direction of democracy, truth and
justice, and that the darker by-products of the change were temporary and
superficial accidents. I can no longer do that." While South Africa has
bathed in the accolade of the ‘Rainbow Nation’ since the end of apartheid in
1994, a torrent of commentators and swathes of the general public now say that
the rainbow's end has been reached and the nation is sliding back into the
storm. Like many South Africans, Brink is appalled by violent crime levels that
are seemingly out of control - he finally felt impelled to speak out when his
own daughter, son-in-law and their children were caught in a restaurant hold-up
of the sort that has become a near-everyday occurrence. Five men armed with
pistols stormed the Cape Town restaurant where his daughter's family were
dining; ordered everyone to lie face down on the floor and strip themselves of
rings, jewellery, watches, mobile ‘phones and wallets. The men then emptied the
safe and cash register and beat up and kicked the customers before herding them
into a small back room, locking it and making their escape. Apart from a single
paragraph in a small community newspaper, the incident was not reported.
"It is too insignificant," said Brink, "too banal, too
commonplace in the ‘new’ South Africa." South Africa now ranks alongside
Colombia, Chechnya and the occupied Palestinian Territories as among the most
violent places on earth. In a new report, the South African Institute of Race
Relations said that one million Whites have left the country in the past
decade. This is partly because of the escalating violence, but also because
they see no future in a country once proclaimed as ‘non-racist’ but which has
implemented a damaging raft of ‘reverse-racist’ policies. Most of those
quitting are highly skilled people such as doctors, nurses and engineers and
young people. More Whites began packing their bags for Europe, North America
and Australasia when justice minister Charles Nqakula, responding to a question
about the scores of daily murders and hundreds of daily rapes, told parliament
that those who complained about crime were "unpatriotic moaners". He
went on "They can continue to whinge until they're blue in the face or
they can simply leave this country." The justice minister's implication
was that only Whites "whinged" about the rampant violence. But most
of those raped, mugged and killed are Black. One woman, who had been gang-raped
and mugged by fellow Blacks, and who lives in a paralysis of fear in her
township, wrote to a newspaper asking "Where, honourable minister, do you
suggest I go?"
-
report by Fred Bridgeland, Johannesburg,
Nearly one million White South Africans - almost a fifth of the population - have left the country in the past ten years. This figure was released last week in a report from the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR). Frans Cronjé, who compiled the report, said it was especially crime and affirmative action which had driven a fifth of South Africa's White population out of the country. He did an analysis of Statistics South Africa's Household Surveys between 1995 and 2005, emigration figures and other reliable estimates on population numbers. Cronjé said the results left himself and his colleagues dumbfounded. "When we drew the graphs we saw that almost a whole generation of White South Africans are not here anymore." The SAIRR's population pyramid of White South Africans show a definite loss of young people and children under the age of ten. The figures for 2005 put the number of White South Africans in the country at 4.3 million, 841,000 fewer than the 5.2 million of 1995. Cronjé predicts that the White population would continue to shrink, and, he said, the situation would have a far-reaching impact on the economy. "The White population is getting older, which means the White taxpayers are only going to contribute to the economy for the next twenty years. There would have to be a huge influx of skilled workers to fill this gap. This, unfortunately, is not the case." The education of most Black children is not on par to fill these gaps. Last year, for example, only 3,000 Blacks passed matric with higher grade mathematics, said Cronjé. Most of the White emigrants are economically productive people, said Marco Macfarlane, co-author of the report. However, in the last decade the Black economically productive population grew by 81%. Some of these people have slot into the high-income group, where Black people make up a third of the top earners. Whites, however, still account for half of this group, where Indians and Coloureds make up 7% and 6% of the high-income group respectively. The rest of the Black entrants to the labour market are busy in the informal sector, which do not necessarily contribute to the tax income. "Black people are entering the economy at a stiff pace, but of the economically active middle class (the country's biggest tax contributors), Blacks only account for 1%." Macfarlane said crime and affirmative action are the top reasons for the exodus of