Eskom has barred the City of Johannesburg from increasing its energy capacity despite having a licence to purchase power generation from other producers, mayor Herman Mashaba told journalists on Tuesday.
Mashaba was speaking at a DA media briefing which party leader Mmusi Maimane held in Johannesburg.
Mashaba said the City was issued with a licence in 1995 which allowed it to draw up to 600 megawatts of power from Kelvin Power Station and up to 140 megawatts from four gas turbines in the city.
“Currently, the City receives only 200 megawatts of power from the Kelvin Power Station. Through this licence, the City is investigating the means of increasing our power capacity. This would allow us to mitigate the effects of load shedding as caused by Eskom.”
Mashaba added that Eskom had written to him barring City Power from taking advantage of its ability to get additional electricity from the Kelvin Power Station.
“Should Eskom have its way, the City would be prevented from properly mitigating rolling blackouts when they next take occur. It is for this reason that I have instructed the City manager to arrange an urgent meeting with the representatives of Eskom to not only assert the City’s right to procure additional power but to also structure an agreement as to how this should take place,” he added.
With the rolling blackouts, the City of Johannesburg has experienced massive traffic jams. To mitigate this, Mashaba said he was engaging with the private sector to acquire additional pointsmen to assist in easing traffic congestion caused by load shedding.
The City had also incurred several challenges as a result of the power utility’s challenges, he remarked. One of these was what he called the sudden the termination of its Kelvin Power contract.
“The reasons why Eskom and SARS suddenly took these decisions which have cost City Power in excess of R500 million upon the change of government, when these matters had been outstanding for years, is yet to be explained. Following interactions made under the previous administration, City Power completed work on the electrification of houses that was commissioned by the Department of Energy to the value of R288.4m. Strangely, the grant was not been paid. Over the medium term, these decisions have reduced the City Power’s financial ability to fully respond to the growing crisis caused by Eskom.”
There were other disruptions caused by load shedding. Water reservoirs ran low due to an inability to pump water to high-lying areas and JMPD officers were redirected from crime-fighting duties to perform pointsmen duties.
During the press briefing, Maimane said he had instructed all DA-led municipalities to start formulating and executing disaster management plans to mitigate the damage caused to critical infrastructure due to load shedding.
The DA is planning to march to the Union Buildings on Friday to force President Cyril Ramaphosa to take action.
Three rhino poachers are behind bars awaiting their sentencing after a Durban magistrate convicted them at the end of a 10-year trial.
Magistrate Logan Naidoo in the Durban Magistrate’s Court found Muntugokwakhe Khoza, 50, Ayanda Buthelezi, 40, and SANDF officer Mduduzi Xulu, 51, guilty on Monday.
According to Daily Maverick, Naidoo noted that Khoza and three accomplices were arrested just hours after the crime. Police and conservation officers intercepted them at a roadblock in a pick-up truck carrying a .303 rifle, two axes covered in blood and rhino horn.
DNA evidence later linked the severed horn, which included bone and tissue carved from a rhino skull, to the carcass of the poached animal.
News24 reported in 2009 that the men were caught “red-handed” with blood dripping from their clothing and in possession of two freshly hacked off white rhino horns in their bakkie just outside Imfolozi Game Reserve on August 26, 2009.
The following month, they were granted bail of R10 000 each, despite opposition from wildlife investigators.
During their bail application, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (EKZNW) investigator Rod Potter testified that there was an alarming increase in rhino poaching in 2008 and 2009 – both in KwaZulu-Natal and countrywide.
He said in 2008 alone, 80 rhinos were hunted illegally in South Africa and in 2009, the figure had risen to 85.
Potter said the increase in rhino poaching in KwaZulu-Natal was a concern because private game reserves were reluctant to stock rhino because of the threat by poachers, affecting plans to expand rhino populations.
He added that EKZNW usually disposed of “excess” rhinos on auction to the private sector, but owners didn’t want to spend money on animals that are at risk of being poached. On average, a rhino would fetch R202 000 in 2009.
He said the poaching of rhino would impact on local and international tourism.
Khoza also served time for another case of poaching TimesLive reported.
The ANC in the province has not replaced Ntuthuko Mahlaba after he was arrested last week.
Mhlaba appeared in the Madadeni Magistrate’s Court on Monday for murder, attempted murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder, according to ANC provincial spokesperson Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu.
Mahlaba, who was sworn in as mayor earlier this month, was arrested on Friday in connection with the murder of ex-ANC Youth League member, Wandile Ngobeni, and allegedly linked to the attempted murder of another member. Ngobeni was assassinated in May 2016.
Mahlaba is also the chairperson of the ANC’s Emalahleni region.
Simelane-Zulu said the mayor’s case was postponed to April 1 for his bail application.
Formal bail application
“Our comrade appeared in court today and his matter was postponed because the State said it was not ready to proceed with the matter. The State then requested the matter be postponed until April 1, for his formal bail application,” she said.
Simelane-Zulu added that the ruling party in the province was worried about the current state of affairs in the province.
“We are worried about the developments because the person facing charges is our comrade as well as the deceased was also our comrade. As the ANC, we believe that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
“We will allow the law to take its case and it is for the state to prove its case against the accused. Tomorrow there is a press briefing where we will deliberate further on the matter and the way forward at the Newcastle municipality. For now, he remains the mayor of the municipality,” she said.
Mahlaba’s arrest came days after Harry Gwala District Mayor Mluleki Ndobe’ was arrested for the 2017 murder of former ANCYL secretary Sindiso Magaqa.
Charges against Ndobe were provisionally withdrawn in the Umzimkhulu Magistrate’s Court on Monday.
Last week, the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) in KwaZulu-Natal called on the party’s provincial executive committee (PEC) to recall those facing murder charges.
The league said the continued stay of members facing murder charges was “harming the image of the ANC”.
“The ANC Youth League is calling on the PEC of the ANC to recall all members of the ANC who are deployed in various government position but who are facing murder cases,” the league said in a statement.
“The ANC as a leader of society cannot allow itself to be in conflict with the people.”
According to the league, its leaders in the province “have been the most targeted in the senseless killings in our province, accounting for the majority of those killed during the spate of political killings in the province.”
There’s been conflicting accounts about what happened before South African pilot Charl Viljoen crashed a plane into the Matsieng Flying Club facility at Matsieng Aerodrome in Botswana.
Prior to the tragedy on Saturday, Viljoen and his wife had attended a baby shower at the facility.
“The deceased pilot was an uninvited guest at a private function that was held at the Matsieng Flying Club facility at Matsieng Aerodrome. It is rumoured that the pilot was involved in a domestic dispute earlier in the afternoon,” read the statement from the Matsieng Flying club.
News24 sister website, Netwerk24 spoke to Mark Mansfield from the club, who said there were rumours that Viljoen and his wife, Natasha, caused a scene but it is unclear what the issue was.
Natasha’s sister, Naruschka Winter, disputes this, saying she doesn’t think the couple had a fight. She, however, did not want to speculate about what happened.
The Citizen reported that it had received a voice note in which a man named only as Chris alleges to have spoken to one of the survivors and witnesses.
“They had a party at Matsieng, a baby shower, and that’s one of the Kalahari Air Services pilots, and he had a fight with his wife there and he actually hit his wife, and everybody told him to f**k off because you don’t treat a woman like that.”
Viljoen is believed to have then left the club by car and headed to the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport, where Kalahari Air Services is based.
It is unclear how he got access to the 2016 Beechcraft Kingair B200 aircraft A2-MBM.
‘Something amiss’
A friend of Viljoen’s realised something was wrong when the pilot called him from the aircraft asking about his wife’s whereabouts, Netwerk24 reported.
An unnamed pilot told the publication that the friend had realised something was amiss and screamed for everyone to get out of the building.
Viljoen made several low-level fly-pasts from different directions before crashing into the building.
He died when the plane hit the structure, destroying some vehicles in the nearby parking area.
EWN reported that Viljoen started working at Kalahari Air Services in October last year.
Netwerk24 said the couple, who attended Hoerskool Zeerust in the North West together, had lived in Botswana for the past 10 years.
More than 50 000 government-funded university students are set to enjoy great debt relief and focus more on their studies after the department of higher education and training committed close to R1bn to settle their outstanding fees.
The department said on Sunday that Minister Naledi Pandor had allocated R967 million to settle the debts of continuing National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS)-funded students. This money will settle historic debts for 52 514 NSFAS-funded students currently studying.
Pandor said the issue of historic debt owed to universities by these students has been of a concern raised by all stakeholders for some time. This comes following widespread students protests calling for free education and for government to commit more funds to assist students who often found themselves unable to study due to affordability.
‘Significant contribution’
“This is a significant contribution which will alleviate some of the debt owed to universities by students and is confirmation that government is sensitive to the plight of students from poor and working-class families,” she said.
Pandor’s spokesperson, Lunga Ngqengelele, explained that the allocation is “specifically for those who have been funded on the previous funding scheme of NSFAS prior to the significantly improved funding support that began in 2018”. He added that the problem was compounded by the requirement for students to fund part of their costs through family or own funding and were not able to do so, hence the debt.
Meanwhile, Pandor indicated that this is the first phase of the assessment of the historical debt owed to universities. “We have concluded the first phase of the due diligence and found that 52 514 NSFAS-qualifying students who were registered for the 2018 academic year owed universities R967 million,” Pandor said.
Ngqengelele said historic refers to money owed to universities by continuing NSFAS-qualifying students who were registered for the 2018 academic year, were funded by NSFAS on a family income threshold of R122 000 per annum and met the academic-year-owed criteria to enable them to graduate within the minimum time plus two years.
“The funding provided by NSFAS for these students was subject to a funding cap and often included an expected family contribution. As a result, the amount of funding provided by NSFAS was sometimes insufficient to cover the total actual feel and cost of study particularly at universities and programmes with high fees. This resulted in students accruing debt with their institution despite being funded by NSFAS,” he said.
Pandor has made an appeal to “stakeholders in our society, particularly the private sector, to work with government and institutions in finding a solution for support to students from families that cannot afford to pay university study costs”.
She said government was working tirelessly on finding ways to relieve debt-burdened students towards developing a comprehensive student-funding solution to assist the “missing middle” students to fund their university studies.
Although Eskom has decommissioning schedules in some of its documentation, it is not always reflected in the messages received by people on the ground. It is this confusion that is adding to the anxiety of workers like those at Hendrina power station near Middelburg in Mpumalanga.
In its 2018 integrated report, Eskom says it is not going to decommission any of its older stations yet – a process that is very expensive and involves not only demolition of infrastructure but the rehabilitation of the surrounding environment.
A decommissioning schedule is included in the draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP)2018, in line with what it is saying now about the closing of some units at Grootvlei, Komati and Hendrina. The document states that the socioeconomic impact of the decommissioning of the plants “has not been quantified or included in this IRP”.
In its submissions to the air quality control regulator earlier this year, Eskom asked for another exemption from air pollution controls imposed on it by law. Eskom says it cannot afford to become compliant, as this will cost over R180bn. Here, it provided the regulator with a detailed decommissioning schedule which it says will reduce its emissions.
All of this has filtered down in one form or another but it is nearly impossible to find two people outside of Eskom who have received the same message. Some workers have apparently been given notices to the effect that Eskom will start to decommission the older plants such as Hendrina in 2025.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa believes that Eskom plans to decommission “eight to 10” plants, while the National Union of Mineworkers says only certain units are being closed.
Adding to the confusion were former Eskom interim CEO Matshela Koko’s statements two years ago that Eskom hoped that the result of its own research would enable it to “put all our efforts into keeping those stations open”, at least until the plants were 60 years old – something Eskom has no intention of doing at the moment.
Former Capetonian Ziyaad Shah was surprised by a visit from the Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern on Friday as he was recovering from the bullet wounds he sustained during last week’s horrific Christchurch mosque shootings which left 50 people dead.
Lying down in his hospital bed, 47-year-old Shah, who was born in Grassy Park and grew up in Atlantis, was surrounded by his relieved wife Shamilah, and their three daughters Zakkiyyah, Salaamah and Aadilah as Ardern popped in to visit him.
Sayed Noor Mohamed told News24 that Shah, uncle of his wife Aqeeda Maneveld Mohamed, moved to New Zealand for a better life for his children.
The fitter has been living in New Zealand for 12 years, and is a citizen, coming out to South Africa every few years to visit his beloved family.
His last visit was marked with a group photo on a beach, with everybody smiling and happy.
“We were very worried when we woke up last week Friday,” said Mohamed, recalling the mood as news of the mass shooting spread on global news networks.
“We saw a message from his wife and were shocked.”
Trapped in mosque
He said that Shah’s wife told the family that he had been shot at the Al Noor mosque and had been taken to hospital.
“We were really scared at the time because we never knew if he died or if he was still alive.
“He was lying there, right through the whole thing,” said Mohamed.
They subsequently learned that not knowing whether he was going to live or die, his uncle lay quietly saying his prayers, with the shooter a few feet away from him.
He was shot in the buttocks and legs, and was one of the few survivors who were trapped in the mosque.
“It was very terrifying.”
Former Capetonian Ziyaad Shah and his family receive a visit from New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (Supplied)
Mohamed said his workplace, the Cape Town Islamic Educational Centre, was among those that sent condolences and well wishes to everybody affected by the shootings.
He said his uncle is a kind-hearted man who would never say anything bad about anybody.
“He’s a man of peace and even prior to the attack he always loved every race and every religion. He always speaks good and thinks good about everyone.”
The Shah family said that although the shooting shocked them, they had been surrounded by care and support in New Zealand from people from all walks of life.
His son-in-law, Mohsin, who was born in Kuwait, was also terrified by the attack.
“It was overwhelming to them to see so many New Zealanders, Muslim, non-Muslim, coming together to meet them.”
Mohamed says Shah still believes New Zealand is safe.
The truth will come out in the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture, and the truth will hurt the ANC and some individuals, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday.
While Ramaphosa was campaigning in Delft in the Western Cape, the ANC’s election head and former minister Fikile Mbalula was testifying before the commission of inquiry.
Ramaphosa was asked about this when journalists had the rare opportunity for an impromptu presidential press conference.
“Our view on state capture is we appointed the commission. It was the ANC that said there should be such a commission because it was the ANC that realised that corruption and state capture had set in and we felt that we needed to address this,” Ramaphosa claimed.
In fact, the commission had been ordered in the remedial action of the former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela in her report, State of Capture, and the commission was only appointed after former president Jacob Zuma ran out of legal routes to stop it.
The Constitutional Court ruled in the landmark Nkandla case that the Public Protector’s recommendations are binding unless reviewed and set aside by a court.
Accountability
Ramaphosa said the truth would come out in the commission, and acknowledged that this would hurt.
“Telling the truth sometimes hurts. It will hurt the organisation. It will hurt individuals. But if we are serious about serving the interests of the people of South Africa, we must tell the truth,” he said.
“As the ANC we were humble enough to say: wrong things were done in the past. And we humble ourselves. There have been mistakes, there have been missteps. But at the same time we are saying accountability must take its course. Those who were responsible for anything that has gone wrong must be accountable. They must face the full might of the law.”
Also during the press briefing, Ramaphosa said he doesn’t worry about voters punishing the ANC at the ballot box for the rolling blackouts. Similarly, he says voters are still willing to put their crosses next to the ANC, despite all the revelations, as the ANC is admitting its mistakes and taking steps to correct them.
Ramaphosa said the ANC had “laid it all bare” in its elective conference in December 2017 report, “saying we ourselves have done a number of things wrongly and we are putting ourselves in the hands of our people with great humility”.
“And so we are saying having done so, we are saying: let’s move forward. We need to repair whatever has gone wrong. We must be measured on our determination, firstly on our humility to accept and secondly on our determination to get rid of corruption and to move forward. To this end, we are already taking enormous steps to move forward and rid South Africa of corruption.
“And our people are listening to that, they are heeding our message, and they are saying, yes ANC, we hear you, we thank you for the way you are projecting it and we are prepared to vote for you so that you can continue with the work you have started.”
While Ramaphosa was speaking to journalists, he was flanked by Western Cape election campaign coordinator Ebrahim Rasool, who was recalled as Western Cape premier after allegedly bribing journalists to write positive stories about him in the so-called brown envelope scandal; Police Minister Bheki Cele, who was dismissed as national police commissioner after former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela found he was guilty of improper conduct and maladministration when the police entered into a R500m lease for the Sanlam Middestad Building in Pretoria; and Zizi Kodwa, who was recently accused of rape, which he vehemently denies.
Reclaim the City activists staged a protest at the upscale Rondebosch Golf Course on Thursday saying the facility should rather be used for affordable housing.
“As we commemorate Human Rights Day, we remember how our parents and grandparents struggled against discrimination and an oppressive racist regime. They knew that there could be no justice and equality without the return of the land,” spokesperson Zacharia Mashele said in a statement on Thursday.
Mashele said Rondebosch Golf Course is as big as 45 soccer fields and could house thousands of families.
Instead, it has been leased to a private club apparently for R1 000 a year, where membership costs R15 750 a year, he said.
Mashele said national, provincial and local government failed to redistribute land.
“There are empty fields, golf courses, bowling greens and parking lots across well-located areas.”
The demands
He called on the City of Cape Town to commit to ending the lease of Rondebosch Golf Course and all other well-located public land.
“This must be redistributed for affordable housing for poor and working-class people. If the City of Cape Town refuses to meet its obligations, then the province or national government must expropriate the land for affordable housing.”
City of Cape Town Safety and Security Executive Director Richard Bosman said the city did not have officials on site and directed queries to police.
Police did not immediately comment.
On Wednesday, GroundUp reported that the golf club’s lease with the City was contained in a new report on City-owned land by civil society organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi.
According GroundUp, the report states that some of the best land in the city was being used as a “dog play park” for the @frits Pet Hotel and Daycare Centre, described as the largest of its kind in the world.
The report, City Leases: Cape Town’s Failure to Redistribute Land, proposes a “radical new deal” for housing on 24 areas of City-owned land, including golf courses, bowling greens, country clubs, and parking lots. These range across the breadth of the City, from Camps Bay to Strand to Fish Hoek.
Detailed proposals are provided for five of them:
Rondebosch Golf Club
Buitengracht corridor
Harrington Square
Green Point Bowling Green
Fish Hoek Bowling Green.
The Rondebosch golf course is the largest area. Two-thirds of the golf course is above the 100-year floodline, and Ndifuna Ukwazi calculates the land could offer 183,360 square metres of built space for a mainly residential development that includes communal space, offices, shops, schools, and social amenities.
Depending on the mix of social and market related housing, about 2500 residential units could be built there, says the report.
These would include single stands and mid-to-high-density apartment blocks as a mixture of market-related, social and GAP homes, set in green space along the Black River. (GAP housing is subsidised by the state for people earning R3500 to R15 000 per month.)
The authors — Nick Budlender, Julian Sendin, and Jared Rossouw — calculated scenarios for Rondebosch golf course in which residential units are built according to a 40% market-related and 60% social housing split (including 20% for GAP housing); a 50–50 split between market and social housing; and a 60–40 split.
The square meterage of individual units in the calculations ranges from 50m² for a market bachelor flat and 30m² bachelor for social housing, while a two-bedroom flat built for the market would be 70m² and one built for social housing would be 45m², which is the average size of an RDP house.
There could also be 116 free-standing homes on 400m² each, and 454 two-bedroom GAP houses of 55m², all set within public and semi-private green space with a promenade along the Black River providing direct pedestrian access to Mowbray.
The 30 separate blocks could each be owned through sectional title schemes and ideally, would each contain a mix of social and market housing rather than economic differences being divided into separate blocks.
Similar modelling is done for the Harrington Square parking lot, the seven parcels of land which are mostly used as parking lots on lower Buitengracht Street, and for the Green Point Bowling Green, which the report states Deputy Mayor Ian Neilson has publicly committed for social housing.
For Fish Hoek, which has a density of 884 people per km² while nearby Masiphumelele bursts with a density of more than 40 000 people per km² (2011 data), the proposal is for 171 units built as three-storey walk-ups all dedicated to social housing.
Masiphumelele, where, according to one NGO operating in the area, 38 000 people are crammed into an area of one square kilometre, suffers all the socio-economic ills brought about by lack of housing, employment and sanitation. (Steve Kretzmann, GroundUp)
These five portions of land could yield 6473 housing units when calculated on the conservative model in which 60% of the units are built for sale on the market.
The development of just these five out of a possible 24 pieces of city-owned land would also bring an extra R35m a year to the City in rates paid by those in the market units.
Residents in the R3500 to R18 000 per month pay bracket who qualify for social or GAP housing are exempted from rates, but would contribute payments for services.
At present these leases bring in only thousands of rands per year.
This is “an injustice to the majority of residents of this city who are without access to land or decent housing”, state the report’s authors.
“If we are to disrupt the replication of spatial apartheid and build a spatially just, inclusive and environmentally sustainable city then we need a radical new deal for the use of public land.”
The report states that communities are not able to compel the City to review its land use decisions and public participation on leases and disposals is ignored. It calls for new legislation “which obliges government to review and rationalise its underused public land for redistribution” and says “the onus should be on the City of Cape Town to defend why the status quo should continue and land should not be redistributed”.
If the Cape Town municipality makes poor choices about land use, say Budlender, Sendin, and Rossouw, other spheres of government should expropriate the land.
Produced for GroundUp by West Cape News.Additional reporting by News24’s Kaveel Singh.
