The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) hosted a meeting of the Global Foreign Exchange Committee (GFXC) in Johannesburg on 27 June 2018. The GFXC was established in May 2017 as part of the launch of the Global FX Code.
Land occupiers in the Old Brakpan township were awoken by rubber bullets hitting the doors of their newly built shacks on Tuesday morning as metro police evicted the occupiers and demolished 300 shacks, GroundUp reports.
According to metro police, only occupants who had lived in the informal settlement for more than a year could stay because their case was still pending in court.
“All the new occupants who had come to the land three weeks ago under EFF registrations had to leave,” said Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department spokesperson Wilfred Kgasago.
READ: The Land: South Africa Speaks – Malema, Lekota in heated argument over ‘staged’ public hearing
Infuriated EFF members and occupiers said they would not leave the piece of land, “no matter what”.
Sleeping in her new shack with her 3-month-old baby, Nosipho Khumalo said she had woken up thinking someone was knocking on the door. She opened the door to find metro police officers who demanded that she leave the shack immediately.
Standing outside holding her baby, she watched as her shack was demolished and all the building material was taken away.
Claims that live bullets used
“l spent every last cent l had building my shack. Now i’m left with nothing,” said Khumalo.
Nguthuki Sibanda, 19, says he was waiting to help his mother build their shack when rubber bullets hit him. Bleeding spots were visible on his legs, body and arms as he screamed in pain.
“l do not understand why l was shot. l was only standing. l did not do anything wrong,” he said. He said the building material he had been waiting to work with was taken away by metro police. He was later taken to Far East Rand Hospital for treatment.
EFF members claimed that metro police had also come on Monday and fired both rubber and live bullets at the land occupiers.
“We only fired rubber bullets in an attempt to get them off that land because they are occupying it unlawfully,” said Kgasago.
“We are only enforcing the law working with the municipality to remove them. We managed to remove 300 shacks in total.”
‘The land is ours’
Mmouluki Matsemela said he was born in Old Brakpan in 1965 after which they were removed. He said the metro police’s actions made him feel like he was being removed from his home for the second time.
“They chased us away from here between 1980-81. They never compensated us. They should let us take our land back,” he says.
Matsemela says he still remembers his Old Brakpan address.
“It was 1485 Raskwala Street.”
Sesi Ndlovu, EFF chairperson for Ward 97 in Brakpan, said it was unconstitutional for the metro police to remove the new land occupiers.
“Our Constitution states that everyone has a right to a place to live. All these people here have no place to live. They have come back to the land of their ancestors and metro police are shooting them. The government is failing us.”
EFF members in charge told everyone not to leave because they had everything under control.
“We have already taken this land back. It is ours,” said Ndlovu.
Things got so tense between EFF commander-in-chief Julius Malema and Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota at Limpopo’s first public hearing into the amendment of section 25 of the Constitution on Wednesday that Lekota, who was seated next to Malema, got up and moved to another seat.
Following claims by Lekota that the process was staged, the two got into a heated exchange that resulted in sections of the crowd in the jam-packed Marble Hall town hall repeatedly chanting “Juju”, as Malema’s followers sometimes refer to him.
After the public hearings ended, Malema told News24 that Lekota believed the entire process was staged because Malema had pointed out people that chairperson Vincent Smith should recognise to make submissions to the Constitutional Review Committee.
“I said to him as a member of Parliament you are allowed to chair, if you think it’s staged, take a mic and choose people yourself because I also do the same thing. When I see people, I say ‘chair, recognise that person’,” Malema said.
“Then he becomes emotional and says ‘don’t talk to me’, then I said ‘no, you are being unreasonable now’. That’s what we were fighting about.”
Malema said Smith was a democratic chairperson who told the committee members that if they saw someone who they felt very strongly must be recognised, then they should bring it to his attention.
‘He’s crying tears’
“There is no one that has staged this process. Everyone has spoken, black and white, male, female, young and old.”
Malema added that Lekota was losing the debate on the land question and had become emotional as a result.
“The people on the ground are saying something different. It’s not our problem if Lekota’s views do not find expression. He must not create his own imagination.”
“He’s crying, he’s crying tears, the people want the section amended, Cope does not have people. Terror (Lekota) is the membership of cope, he is the leader of Cope,” Malema said.
Telling his side of the story, Lekota said that he was unhappy that Malema was telling the chairperson which people to recognise and that those people were given extra time to speak, so he confronted Malema during the sitting.
“He must not be telling the chairperson who to point at and, secondly, how long he can talk. He was specifically urging the chairperson to not stop a man who had already gone over his time because he wanted that man to talk,” Lekota said.
Lekota and Malema just got into a heated argument during the public hearings. It’s unsure what it was about, Lekota left his seat and has now moved. The crowd started were also enticed and started chanting “Juju” this video is the tail end of the scene #SAonLand @TeamNews24 pic.twitter.com/MIFouZrliJ
— Alex Mitchley (@AlexMitchley) June 27, 2018
Overwhelming support for amendment
“Then he started being rude to me, so I decided to move away from him because it’s of no use to me to engage him there.”
Lekota also took issue with the fact that the public hearing continued past 16:00 when that was the time at which it was agreed to end each hearing.
He added that he would be addressing this issue in Parliament and that he would make the point that the committee could not make up the rules as it goes along because committee members did not have that authority.
During the public hearing, an overwhelming majority of people called for the amendment of the Constitution so that land can be expropriated without compensation.
They felt the proposed amendment was the only recourse left for the country when it came to the land issue.
Vasco Mabunda of the Nkuzi Development Association in Limpopo told the committee that land reform had failed because there was a lack of will on the part of the government to expedite the transfer of land from the minority to the majority.
Farmers not willing sellers
He added that land claims and the “willing buyer, willing seller” format of reform had not been successful. Claims dating back 20 years had still not been finalised.
Mabunda said farmers were also stubborn and not willing sellers in negotiations, which had slowed down the pace of land reform.
“They don’t come to the party,” said Mabunda.
While he was for the amendment of section 25 of the Constitution, he said an independent body should be established to deal with land transfers.
Another unnamed participant told the committee that previous land claims had been unsuccessful in returning the land to its rightful owners.
“Until land ownership is amended, there cannot be peace in this country,” he said.
Property is everything
Those who spoke against the amendment were heckled as they gave their opinions.
Johan Mills of the Bela-Bela Taxpayers’ Forum said amending section 25 was not a good idea because it related to property. He said this meant all types of property and not just land.
He added that he was against this because property was the foundation of everything and that, if money was needed, one could borrow against it.
“If we don’t have an asset, we cannot borrow as it will no longer belong to you. It will belong to the government,” said Mills.
JOHANNESBURG – It’s back to the drawing board for Eskom as unions reject the latest wage offer of 5%.
Initially, Numsa, NUM, and Solidarity wanted 15% but came down to 9%.
The power utility has been saying it can’t afford any increases, but was forced to reconsider after strike action.
EXCLUSIVE: No money for Eskom increases, says finance minister
Unions are now asking the power utility to come back with a final offer, which they will present to their members.
“We can’t just come to negotiation where there is no progress, we only got 0.3% today and that’s from one day and this is not worth taking back to workers,” said William Mabapa, from NUM.
“To reach consensus between unions was easy, we are still united as unions it took long to go through items. It took time to go through the different items,” Tommy Wedderspoon, from Solidarity said.
“We are in the negotiations we don’t want to bargain in bad faith they know what we are cable of but that is not what we are advancing,” said Numsa’s Irvin Jim.
The ball is now back in Eskom’s court.
The power utility and trade unions have until Friday to find common ground.
eNCA
JOHANNESBURG – A corporate governance expert says Tom Moyane can’t be the only one shouldering the blame for poor leadership at SARS.
Peter Goss says practicing ethics and good policy’s not the responsibility of just one person.
Vusi Ngqulana takes the stand now. He joined #Sars in 2008-2017
He says he joined #Sars to give back to his country and the difference he was going to make for the people of SA. #eNCA #SarsInquiry pic.twitter.com/dgweg6pc0Q— Heidi Giokos (@Heidigiokos) June 27, 2018
An inquiry is currently under way into the revenue service’s tax administration and governance.
Former senior SARS officials shared their experiences of working for the revenue collector.
[HAPPENING NOW] #SarsInquiry: Former SARS executive Barry Hore is now on the stand. Courtesy #DStv403 pic.twitter.com/8IFrgFfJkl
— eNCA (@eNCA) June 27, 2018
One of the focus points is to determine whether former staff members were forced to leave.
eNCA
Six-year-old Stacey Adams did not need many prayers for her sins to be forgiven, because she did nothing wrong, Moulana Toyer Leak said after her funeral prayers at the Al-Masjiduth Thaalith Mosque in Mitchells Plain on Tuesday.
He said the way the little girl died was terrible. Stacy was found in a shallow grave after she disappeared from home.
“But we were honoured to have made salaah (prayers) for a person who was sinless,” said Leak.
“She did not know what happened to her, she did not know why it was happening.”
He said he hoped that the person who killed her would repent and warned parents to be vigilant with their children, especially during the school holidays, to protect them from predators.
Stacy was found dead in nearby De Larey Street in Eastridge on Sunday, in her first grave – a shallow hole dug next to a Wendy house on the property her mother Stacey-Lee lived on with her boyfriend. Police have not revealed how she died and this could emerge during the first appearance of a suspect in the Mitchells Plain Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.
He is understood to be the mother’s boyfriend and the couple apparently had apparently had a row on Friday night. He is expected to be charged with murder.
The child lived with her grandmother Laeeqah Adams across the road but shuttled between the properties, less than 100m from each other.
There was so much anger over her death that the house police were questioning the suspect in was petrol bombed. On Monday one of the two Wendy houses on the property where she was found dead was tipped over. It was later broken down by angry locals.
Western Cape safety MEC Dan Plato said outside the mourners’ house that the girl may even have been raped.
Volunteers from the Mitchells Plain Crisis Forum (MPCF), the Western Cape safety department’s Walking Bus, which accompanies children to school and back on foot, and other community organisations held hands and formed a protective ring around the front gate to give the family privacy as they said their final goodbyes in Stacey’s grandmother’s lounge, in accordance with Muslim rites.
The sounds of prayer drifted outside as adults and children waited to walk with her body to the mosque in nearby Beacon Valley.
“We are tired of all our children being murdered,” said MPCF police liaison officer Denise Deelman.
The forum was borne out of a regular need for search parties to find missing children, among them Courtney Pieters, Rene Roman and Stacha Arends.
MPCF secretary Faizel Brown said perpetrators such as Stacey’s killer should be removed from society for good.
However, he implored communities not to touch crime scenes in future, no matter how angry they were, to make sure no evidence was destroyed and that the perpetrator had no chance of escaping justice.
After prayers at Stacey’s grandmother’s house, she was carried aloft down the roads of Eastridge and across fields until she reached the mosque.
After the ceremony, the Moulana again urged parents to take care of their children because there were people who preyed on them.
“Wherever they walk, they are not safe,” he said.
He said the government was failing society, and suggested that it might be time to bring back the gallows.
“The punishment (jail) is like going into a holiday inn,” he said.
Meanwhile, when Police Minister Bheki Cele visited the home amid a fraught atmosphere on Monday, he said it was believed that the perpetrator was high on drugs, but this needed to be validated.
READ: Police minister told to ‘f*k*f’ after visiting family of murdered Mitchells Plain child
Social development MEC Albert Fritz was among those who offered condolences on Monday, and then on Tuesday conducted a walkabout with social workers and NGOs in Westridge, also in Mitchells Plain, to drop off pamphlets on how to get into a drug rehabilitation programme if necessary.
He said the department had treatment facilities and worked closely with NGOs to help wean people off drugs, and to keep them off.
He urged anybody in need to contact one of their centres.
An astonishing 82% of Cape Town households already in the grip of stringent water restrictions said they would be willing to save even more water – but only under certain circumstance, a survey has revealed.
The two most commonly cited circumstances were if the government were to “make more effort to solve the drought” problem (48%) and if householders had better water-saving technology in their homes (48%).
The preliminary results of the survey, conducted by the non-profit Global Water Leaders Group, were presented at the Water Institute of South Africa 2018 international conference in Cape Town by the organisation’s secretary general, Samantha Yates.
Yates said the response from Capetonians – that they were prepared to save even more water than they already were – had been surprising.
“My first reaction was: ‘What more can you save on 50 litres a person a day?’ I think it is a really encouraging result,” Yates said.
The third most commonly cited reason for saving more (28%) was if water bills increased with increased consumption.
Climate change of most concern
Yates said the survey indicated that most households believed in paying for water services (86%).
When asked if anything would make them pay more for water, 64% said no and 36% said yes.
“Of the 36% of households that would consider paying more for water, the major driving factors were the assurance of water cleanliness (48%), and if the water provider was ‘better at looking after the environment (42%),” Yates said.
Some of the reasons for raising the issue of water cleanliness, she said, were proposals to reuse Cape Town’s treated waste water and hoaxes disseminated via WhatsApp during the height of the drought.
The survey asked respondents what in their opinion was the main cause of the Cape Town drought, offering them a choice of eight causes. Most chose climate change (36%), followed by the authorities’ late investment in drought-resistant water sources (34%). Other reasons selected were population growth (10%), corruption that undermined investment (4%), limited government resources and capacity (4%), pipe leaks (2%), water misallocation (2%), and low voluntary household action (2%). Six percent listed “other” reasons.
Yates said one of the main messages to come out of the household survey was the extent to which Capetonians were engaged with the water issue – yet they were still thirsty for more information.
Communication and infrastructure
“Households were very proud of their efforts – and so they should be because they pushed back Day Zero to 2019.
“But now is the time to change the community mindset from crisis mode to long-term solutions. The survey showed that a lot of people are willing to save more water, and some even willing to pay more under the right circumstances,” Yates said.
The success of doing this depended on the ability of the authorities to communicate the issue in a creative way, she said.
“It’s a combination of effective communication and infrastructure.”
Some cities had opted to introduce humour to communicate information.
“One campaign about reusing sewage effluent as a water source had the slogan: ‘Your number 2 is my number 1’.”
She said as the results were preliminary she did not yet have the number of respondents that had taken part in the survey.
Yates said the Global Water Leaders Group was willing to share its results with anyone interested, including the City of Cape Town or other authorities.
“Our purpose is altruistic. We want to connect cities on water issues so that they don’t reinvent the wheel.”
JOHANNESBURG – More than four years after the Public Protector’s report into spending on former president Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla home, little progress has been made in ensuring accountability.
The Public Works Department, which was defrauded of more than R200-million in spending on the project, has yet to blacklist a single company allegedly involved in inflating prices.
At least one of the companies that worked on Nkandla is still involved in government projects.
Xoli Mngambi has this eNCA exclusive.
eNCA
CAPE TOWN – Parliament is looking for a new bartender to quench the thirst of our country’s lawmakers.
The job was listed in advertisements released by the legislature last week.
So, do you have what it takes?
It’s a job with a pretty decent paycheck – more than R280,000 a year that includes medical aid, pension fund, and a thirteenth cheque.
READ: Police union outcry over Parliament’s bartender salary
Those who know say it’s not uncommon for major companies and large organisations to have a permanent bartender on their payroll.
Part of the job would obviously be two lend an ear to weary MPs.
Experienced bartenders say aspirant bartenders are taught to listen and empathise.
But Parliament says the successful applicant will be doing more than just remembering MP’s favourite tipple.
In a written statement Parliament says the successful applicant is single-handedly responsible for the bar, which entails being a manager, waitron, bartender, cashier and bookkeeper, host, cleaner, and has to re-stock and replenishing bar inventory and serve hundreds of MPs and guests of Parliament.
It goes on to say the bartender is also responsible for managing Parliament’s wine cellar, which showcases some locally made wines, to mostly guests and tourists visiting Parliament.
So if you have a heavy hand, and are interested in rubbing shoulders with MPs, dust off your CV.
Applications close this Friday.
eNCA
Composite Business Cycle Indicators