The private security company at the centre of the Cape Town’s Clifton Fourth Beach “lock down” controversy has decided it will no longer patrol there, as a group of Cape Town residents gear up for a #ReclaimClifton protest.

“We will no longer be assisting the police, the metro police, anyone,” advocate Bruce Hendricks told News24 on behalf of PPA Security.

“So, tomorrow they are on their own.”

He said the company was contracted by some residents in the area to provide private security and would still patrol for its clients, which include restaurants in nearby Camps Bay. But they would not patrol on the beach, he said.

Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security JP Smith and the City’s safety and security head Richard Bosman were also meeting various law enforcement authorities on Thursday to get to the bottom of what had happened at the beach.

Western Cape ANC secretary Faiez Jacobs told News24 earlier this week that he was among a group of people on the beach on Sunday when they were asked to leave by representatives of PPA. 

He said he was among a number of people who questioned whether a private company was allowed to do this.

READ: ‘The rich can’t privatise beaches’ – controversy brewing over private security clearing Clifton beach

The company has denied shutting down the beach, but said it was helping the City’s law enforcement unit respond to crimes, which included two girls being raped at the beach. 

“Two 15-year-old girls… had been raped and were waiting on SAPS. This was why law enforcement closed the beach. [Every] other night it has been open to anyone that complies with the by-laws which Law Enforcement enforces,” explained Landman.

“We were requested to accompany Law Enforcement as our Tactical Officers are highly trained and skilled professionals. If anyone claims they were on the beach and chased away, they would have seen that it was absolute mayhem and that Law Enforcement were really doing a great job to stabilise the situation – we did not close the beach.”

The company sent pictures of some of its guards on the beach with City Law Enforcement authorities, and a picture of alcohol in a cooler box on the beach.

On Wednesday, the police said they had no record of the rape complaints. 

‘They had not been given permission’

Smith said that private companies had no right to police public spaces, and that the PPA was not acting on the City’s authority.

“No, they had not been given permission. They don’t answer to us,” he said.

However, he said private security companies did sometimes help in certain “volatile” circumstances if matters got out of control with “hooliganism”. 

He told News24 that, after at least three incidents along the popular coastline – which included a man being attacked with a wooden pole, and an incident involving knives at Eden on the Bay – the City had upped its beach security.

In a statement later, Bosman said “for the record”:

• The City of Cape Town has no contract with PPA;
• The City has at no stage given any authority to PPA to enforce by-laws;
• I met with relevant area staff this morning to confirm this; 
• All City beaches are open to all members of the public. While the City is able to set times of usage at beaches, we do not impose this unless there is a specific threat to public safety;
• We have confirmed with Camps Bay SAPS that no incidents of rape were reported on Sunday, December 23, at Clifton Fourth Beach.

Smith said that beaches worldwide were not immune to crime, so the City deployed resources to keep beaches safe, regardless of whether they were in advantaged or disadvantaged areas.

He said Jacobs would be better placed to ask his party why it did not send more police officers to the beaches, since only national government had the authority to do that.

In response to Jacobs’ concerns about private security companies, he added that the national government used private security companies at many of its facilities. 

Smith said he understood that, on the day in question, the Law Enforcement officers’ shifts had already ended and they had already left Clifton Fourth Beach beach before the private company arrived.

Protest planned

He urged anyone who witnessed a private security company taking over policing on a beach to lay a complaint at their nearest police station so that it could be investigated.

Meanwhile, plans were afoot for a protest on Friday night, advertised as being hosted by Fees Must Fall Western Cape. 

“We are calling on all self-respecting Blacks (Indian, Coloured and Africans) to descend at Clifton 4th Beach on Friday 28 December 2018 at 18h00 for a political protest,” reads the Facebook announcement titled “Reclaim Our Beaches From Racists #ReclaimClifton”.

It continues: “After a long and arduous year under the racist regime of Helen Zille, the only thing our people need for now, as we prepare to expropriate our land stolen in 1652, is to cool off at the 2nd best beach in the world.

“Beaches have long been site[s] of political protest in South Africa. We need not remind people of the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953 that allowed whites exclusive preserve of public areas such as beaches, trains, parks, benches and, holy shit, even toilets, how illogical?”

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Four years ago, Prince “Coach Prince” Modiba took on a journey that changed the lives of close to 100 Soweto youths.

The Andrew Mlangeni Golf Academy became the first of its kind in the area, training approximately 90 children and youths in golf.

It has not been easy but the young golfers, armed with determination, strive against the odds. Watch the video above.

“I come from a golfing family. My dad was a tour golf player and my uncle as well,” says Modiba.

The 31-year-old coach has been playing golf professionally since he was 19.

When the Soweto Country Club approached him to propose the academy, Modiba was eager to pass on the skills of the sport that defined his life.

He visited a number of schools in Soweto recruiting hesitant, sceptical youths. 

“It was a little bit challenging,” says Modiba. “If you come to a school and say, okay – I’m a golf coach, the first thing is the kids are unsure about it.”

Modiba says most of the learners were sceptical as they were accustomed to soccer.

To them, golf paled in comparison as an exciting sport. Nonetheless, they gave the “new” sport a try and soon, their attitudes changed.

“[I prefer] golf,” says 13-year-old Jabulani Ndlovu who plays both golf and soccer.

The young golfer began playing four years ago and has excelled, says his coach. 

“He’s playing with the big boys now,” says Modiba. 

Ndlovu now plays at B-Division and dreams of making it all the way to the top.

“I want to see myself playing with McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day,” he says, listing some of the world’s top golfers.

The Grade 7 learner trains daily at the Academy. When he is not training, he is playing at tournaments such as those hosted by the Central Golf Club Union. 

Ndlovu and his fellow golfers at the Andrew Mlangeni Golf Academy have been thriving, featuring in the top three in their divisions at regional tournaments.

However, while they excel their coach is preoccupied with ensuring their improvement and more importantly, that they will be able to continue playing.

Funding Woes

At the beginning of the academy, Modiba says he and the other coaches shared the load of training the young golfers.

However, they had to cut back when they failed to secure funding.

“We had to let go of some other coaches because we weren’t getting the funding,” Modiba says. 

“There’s a certain ratio to coaching so we just narrowed [down] the kids a little bit so that we can be hands on with them.”

Modiba says the lack of funding has also impacted other areas of the academy’s performance.

For one, they do not have access to other golf courses due to lack of transportation fees. When they play at tournaments, they essentially play at golf courses on which they’ve not had practice.

“They need to know the golf courses they play on so that they are familiar with the environment,” says Modiba.

“They need to train everyday and at different golf courses.”

This is important to allow the golfers room to adapt and make informed plays on the courses.

Modiba says the academy has been running without a budget. Fortunately, a few good Samaritans offered financial assistance making it possible for them to afford food, transport and gear.

“It’s been stressful but I’m going to do it regardless,” says Modiba.

“We’re going to get the next Tiger Woods from Soweto Country Club. Mark my words.”

The DA reckons that the R21bn SAA loan may be too good to be true.

On Sunday, City Press reported that a consortium of local and international investors had made an unsolicited loan offer to SAA of R21bn to save the financially crippled parastatal.

On Monday, the DA said it would be writing to Finance Minister Tito Mboweni to urge him to put pressure on his Cabinet colleagues to carefully consider the proposed private loan.

READ: SAA needs R3.5 billion by March, says interim CFO

The party’s Alf Lees said that he had noted reports suggesting that the loan is conditional on the consortium being given a 51% equity share in the national carrier.

“The reported offer of the R21bn loan looks attractive on the surface. The condition of the consortium taking a 51% equity share is particularly attractive as it would ensure that the ANC government loses all influence over SAA which would be free to conduct business without political interference that has dogged the airline in the past,” Lees added.

READ MORE: Embattled SAA gets unsolicited R21bn offer for 51% stake – report

He said if the loan offer was to be considered, the agreement should not be backed by any government or taxpayer guarantees, and it should be used primarily to extinguish all existing loans to SAA that are backed by guarantees.

“All existing government taxpayer guarantees of R19.1bn must be withdrawn from SAA and no further guarantees must be issued,” said Lees.

“The R21bn offer may be too good to be true and, in the end, the only solution will be to put SAA into business rescue.”

ALSO READ: South Africans can’t keep bailing out a broken airline

The cash-strapped national carrier is reported to have had recent injection of just over R3bn from lenders providing short-term loans, bringing the airline’s loans, repayable by the end of March 2019, to a R13bn.

“Unless robust action is taken to put SAA into business rescue or an equity partner with deep pockets is found, the massive taxpayer bailouts of SAA will continue unabated,” Lees said.

Three drunk pedestrians have been arrested as emergency services and traffic authorities do all they can to mitigate further disaster on South Africa’s roads ahead of Christmas.

“People are impatient on our roads, they take chances,” said Western Cape Traffic Chief Kenny Africa.

“Do not take unnecessary chances,” pleaded Africa. 

In Western Cape alone, besides the three pedestrians arrested in Vredendal, 1 258 drivers were tested for alcohol. 

Of those, 39 were arrested for driving drunk on Friday and Saturday alone. 

A driver in Caledon was allegedly five times over the legal limit.

“We do not want you to become part of the statistics,” he said, adding that eight fatalities had already been recorded over the two days in the province.

Africa and his colleagues in traffic control, emergency services and border control were pushing through the busiest time of the year.

ER24 spokesperson Ineke van Huyssteen reported several accidents that they had attended to, among them a “double crash” on Pietermaritzburg’s Town Hill which left 17 people injured earlier on Sunday. 

In that incident, a taxi and a bus crashed, leaving 10 people with minor injuries.

While paramedics were busy assessing the patients, another bus came around the corner and a second collision followed, and another seven people were injured. 

Further afield in Steadville, Ladysmith, 16 people were injured after a taxi and a bakkie collided and in Eloff in Mpumalanga two people, among them a child, were killed and five others were injured following a head-on collision between a bakkie and a light motor vehicle on the R555. 

Seven people were killed in a taxi rollover between Wepener and Hobhouse Arrive Alive said on Sunday. 

One of the dead was a child.

In the meantime, the various toll companies across the country kept a running feed of conditions, crashes and warnings, which included weather alerts such as a massive thunder storm heading towards Middelburg.

The Department of Home Affairs had brought in an extra 425 staffers to assist at border posts and airports. 

This also applied to round-the-clock services at the bigger border posts such as Beit Bridge, Lebombo and Oshoek. 

Siya Qoza, spokesperson for DHA Minister Siyabonga Cwele said the most common cause of delays for border crossings was not having the proper documentation on hand.

He urged people to have their documents certified and up to date by the time they get to the border posts. 

A South African teenager who was detained in China says she’ll never leave the country to work overseas again after her month-long detention.

Tristan-Lee Niemand, 19, spoke to News24 about her ordeal shortly after landing at OR Tambo International Airport on Saturday.

She opened up about how she found herself detained after working as a teacher in Nanjing, China, for three weeks.

Niemand and six other South Africans working as teachers in Nanjing were detained after it emerged that they didn’t have the proper work permits to teach in the country. They only had student visas and they were promised to be provided with work permits by the school that employed them.

READ MORE: SA teen, 6 others released from prison in China – Dirco

On Tuesday, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation confirmed that Niemand and her group in Nanjing would be deported to South Africa on Friday. It also announced that eight South Africans being held in Zhejiang province would be sent home on Sunday.

Niemand vowed to never leave South Africa to work in another country.

“I arrived in China on October 10 and started my teaching job seven days later. Three weeks on the job in China, while we were in the house we were sharing, Chinese police [arrived] knocking on the door.  

“They ordered us to hand over our passports and phones. We were then taken to a police station and questioned for five hours before we were released,” she said.

The following day, police arrived again and told them to go with them to file some papers.

On November 16, they were then taken to a hospital for check-ups and later taken to a detention house where they were detained.

“At that detention house, we were treated like prisoners. They didn’t care about us.”

She said there were five South African nationals, four Thailand citizens, three Russians and one person from an African country in that detention house, which Niemand could not remember.

READ: Father of young SA teacher jailed in China ‘ecstatic’ about news of her release

“Things were different in China. However, I have learned a lot of things in that country although we were not allowed to speak to our parents. We were told to so things we didn’t understand,” she said.

The East London teenager, who was ecstatic about her return back to her native land, was emotional and could not explain her joy when her plane touched down at 07.30 at OR Tambo International Airport.

“The first thing that I am going to do when I arrive home is to have a braai. I missed South African meat and I am going to have lots and lots of it at home,” she said.

“I don’t know how to explain how I feel right now. It was very emotional when I first laid my eyes on my daughter at the airport. It felt like the first day when I saw her face.

“It has been emotional for me when I heard about her detention. I have been waiting for her since 06:00. We are now waiting for our next flight to East London where we are going to celebrate her arrival,” said Bridger. 

“My daughter will never go and work in another country again,” he said.