Johannesburg – Undeterred by being hauled off to the Equality Court by its rival, the DA – the EFF is unapologetic and is going ahead with its plans to remove Nelson Mandela Bay Mayor Athol Trollip, the party said on Friday. 

Spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said the EFF would table a motion of no confidence against Trollip on April 6 to “punish” the DA for voting in Parliament on Tuesday against the motion to change section 25 of the Constitution to allow for expropriation of land without compensation.

“No amount of deliberate misrepresentation of the CIC Julius Malema’s statements as hate speech will deter us from punishing the DA for their attitude on the land question,” Ndlozi said in a statement. 

The DA announced on Thursday that it would be reporting Malema to the Equality Court for what it deems to be hate speech and incitement of violence.

Read: DA to take Malema to Equality Court for ‘hate speech’

The DA quoted him as saying: “[We] are going to remove a mayor of PE… [we] are going for your white man in PE. We are going to cut the throat.”

In response, Ndlozi said Malema would not apologise as he used “throat-cutting” as a figure of speech for “unapologetically and unsympathetically removing Trollip to mirror their (DA’s) own unsympathetic attitude toward black land loss”.

‘If they lose Trollip, they should also lose other mayors’

“We use that metaphor to indicate that we are ending support for the DA due to its own racism. Because we have chosen to do this with Athol Trollip,” he said. 

He said the DA’s escalation of the fight to the Equality Court would lead to the party’s mayors in Johannesburg and Tshwane being removed. The EFF had earlier said those mayors, who are governing with the voting support of the EFF, were “safe for now”. 

“The point is, if they lose Trollip, they should also lose others, because other mayors are not white,” Ndlozi said.

He was referring to Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba and Tshwane Mayor Solly Msimanga. 

The EFF statement further stated that the party was irked by the DA’s disregard for colonialism and apartheid land dispossession, accusing DA MPs of making comments from the parliamentary benches that were insensitive to the loss of land by black people. 

Also read: Malema: DA is the ‘enemy of the people’ for not supporting land expropriation motion

ANC must put up ‘a Mcebisi Jonas’ as a candidate

The EFF sponsored a motion for constitutional amendment to make possible land expropriation without compensation. The motion was amended by the ANC and was approved by 241 votes in favour and 83 against. 

“Therefore, we make no apology that we will go for Athol Trollip. We will remove him as a mayor to communicate, provoke and impress on all DA white members that sensitivity to land loss by black people is a fundamental requirement for leading anywhere in the country.

“Trollip is a national DA member who ought to know that there are implications to the conduct of the DA in Parliament to political decisions anywhere,” Ndlozi said. 

The party has reiterated that it will also not vote with the ANC if it puts forward what it calls a corrupt candidate. 

“We have given them a clear idea of the measure of a person that should lead Nelson Mandela Bay; such a person has to be a Mcebisi Jonas (former deputy finance minister) or come close to him in terms of integrity, anti-corruption and leadership qualities.” 

The city had been one of the most contended for metros in the build-up to the 2016 local government elections. The DA unseated the ANC by securing 57 seats in the 120-seat council, with the ANC winning just 50 seats.

The DA’s initial coalition included the UDM, but the party pulled out after its leader in the metro, Mongameli Bobani, was ousted as deputy mayor in 2017.

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JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s lion whisperer Kevin Richardson said he was devastated at the death of a 22-year-old woman who was mauled to death by a lioness at a game lodge north of Pretoria.

In a post on Wednesday — shared on his website and social media sites Instagram and Facebook — Richardson said he was “deeply saddened and shocked” by the death of the woman on Tuesday, at their tented camp in the Dinokeng Big 5 Game Reserve.

“Our condolences and heartfelt sympathies go out to her family at this very difficult time,” he wrote.

Richardson said he and an experienced colleague took three lions for a walk in the reserve — as they do on a weekly basis — as part of their exercise and stimulation regiment.

“We assessed the landscape for other Big Five animals and as per procedure sent out a notification that we were walking in the reserve.

“One of the lionesses charged off after an Impala and must have run 2 to 2.5km where she encountered the 22-year-old outside the car,” he said.

Richardson said the woman was not a guest at the camp, but had accompanied her friend to conduct an interview for an assignment with the camp’s manager.

He said before leaving the reserve, the two visitors were taking photographs outside the tented camp where the attack occurred.

“I am devastated and my heart goes out to this young woman’s family.”

The Dinokeng Big 5 Game Reserve was not immediately available for comment.

African News Agency

Cape Town – A retired school principal, who realised that her pension would not be enough to support her, has apparently caused a shutdown at a school in Nyanga, Cape Town as she lobbied for the right to continue working until she improved her financial situation.

ANC ward councillor Khaya Yozi said the former principal of Mvula Primary School in Nyanga, Florence Dlamsha, discovered when she retired that she only had five years’ worth of government pension savings.

This is because five years ago, she handed over the Mvula Independent School, that she started and built up, to the Department of Education.

She was a founding member of the school in the 1980s when Crossroads, the area the school is situated in, was caught up in political violence during apartheid and the shunting around of black people by the government.

According to an interview published in City Vision, she observed that children were the unnoticed victims of violence happening around them, and were struggling to get an education because their parents did not have the documents they needed to get into a public school. When people heard she was a teacher from the Eastern Cape, they flocked to her to ask her to build a school.

Her first school, the Alfred Siphika Primary School in Crossroads was burnt down and the second, the independent school, was built after a fundraising campaign, supported by teachers earning very little, and philanthropists.

READ: Yesterday’s hero, today’s loser

However, according to the department, she is now only entitled to pension from the government from the date of the handover, when she stayed on as principal, until her retirement.

Yozi said she was supposed to retire late last year but, when she realised her financial predicament, she was given a grace period to work until December so that she could put a little extra money away.

An acting principal was appointed from the beginning of 2018.

‘Shocked by what she is doing’

However, after going on retirement at the end of 2017, Dlamsha apparently put her foot down and returned to the school for the new academic year in 2018.

“In January she took the keys to the storeroom,” he said, explaining one of Dlamsha’s protests.

Yozi, who spent a year in the school now known as Mvula Primary School, said that as the owner of the school when it was still private, there was an expectation that Dlamsha should have arranged her own pension for that period.

“This thing that the government must pay you for the next 27 years can’t be done,” he said.

According to Yozi, Dlamsha had drummed up support among parents and past pupils, and the divisions over the issue had led to the school not opening on Wednesday.

“It is sheer opportunism from Dlamsha to hold the learners and the community at ransom,” said Yozi, a ward councillor.

However, it has been agreed that a task team will be formed comprising the chairperson of the school governing body, Dlamsha and Yozi to thrash out a proposal to the education department that she work for another six to 12 months to build up more savings.

They would also establish whether Dlamsha’s handover of the school included a pension provision or a lump sum payout to invest for her later years.

Also read: State employees don’t need to panic

“Officials must try to accommodate her even though there is nothing in the policy for her,” said Yozi.

“But we are all shocked by what she is doing.”

Western Cape Department of Education spokesperson Jessica Shelver confirmed the shutdown.

“The school governing body is insisting that the former principal, who retired last year, remain at the school as a caretaker principal while the department fills the post in a permanent capacity,” said Shelver.

However, in line with policy, the school’s acting principal should be taking over at the helm of the school.

“Unfortunately, the pension of the former principal is based on only five years of government service, since the school became a public school,” she said.

Dlamsha was not immediately available to comment, despite several calls to her.

2018-03-01 07:22

Anthea Jeffery

President Cyril Ramaphosa has recently claimed the ruling party must move ahead with land expropriation without compensation because of a ‘pressing’ and ‘urgent’ hunger for farming land among South Africans.

However, comprehensive opinion polls commissioned by the IRR from 2015 to 2017 have repeatedly shown that the great majority of black South Africans have little interest in land reform.

In the IRR’s 2016 field survey, for instance, only 1% of black respondents (down from 2% the previous year) said that ‘more land reform’ was the ‘best way to improve lives’. By contrast, 73% of black people saw ‘more jobs and better education’ as the ‘best way’ for them to get ahead.

In similar vein, in the IRR’s 2017 field survey, only 1% of black respondents identified ‘speeding up land reform’ as a top priority for the government.

Even among people who were dispossessed of land under apartheid laws – and were most likely to have a strong wish to see their land restored to them – there has been little interest in land as opposed to cash compensation.

When the land restitution process began in 1994, some 79 700 valid land claims were submitted by December 1998. By 2013, as the then minister of rural development and land reform, Gugile Nkwinti, pointed out, roughly 76 000 successful claims had been disposed of. However, only about 5 800 of these successful claimants (roughly 8%) chose to have their land restored to them. The remaining 92% preferred to receive cash compensation instead.

Said Nkwinti: “We thought everybody when they got a chance to get land, they would jump for it. Now only 5 856 have opted for land restoration.” People wanted money because of poverty and unemployment, but they had also become urbanised and ‘de-culturised’ in terms of tilling land. “We no longer have a peasantry; we have wage earners now,” he said.

The 76 000 successful claimants who could have chosen land rather than money could be seen as respondents in a particularly large opinion poll. That most of them – faced with a real-life choice – opted for cash, rather than land, is telling.

Opinion polls also show that ordinary people would far prefer to have rapid growth and many more jobs than the massive land distribution that the ANC is now portraying as the key antidote to poverty.

In the IRR’s 2016 survey, for instance, respondents were asked whether they preferred “a political party which focuses on faster growth and more jobs”, or one which “focuses on land expropriation to redress past wrongs”. Given this choice, 84% of black respondents opted for growth and jobs, whereas only 7% wanted major land redistribution as redress for apartheid injustices.

Similar results have emerged from a comprehensive opinion survey commissioned by eNCA and carried out by MarkData in September 2017 among a representative sample of some 5 000 people, including about 2 700 self-declared ANC voters. (The results of this survey, as analysed by renowned political analyst and author R W Johnson, were first released by eNCA during the December race for the ANC presidency at the Nasrec conference.)

Even among ANC voters, it was clear that most people wanted the ruling party to embark on “more pro-business policies”, rather than to pursue “radical policies/redistribution”.

This was also the case in KwaZulu-Natal, the home base of the then president, Jacob Zuma, with his repeated calls for “radical economic transformation”. There, 57.2% of ANC voters said they wanted the ruling party to “adopt more pro-business policies in the hope that business would invest more and create more jobs”. By contrast, only 19.5% wanted the ANC to “push on with radical policies aimed at the complete redistribution of all wealth and income”.

Support among ANC voters for “more pro-business policies” was frequently still stronger, standing at 75.9% in North West, 66.8% in the Eastern Cape, 57.1% in the Northern Cape, 55.9% in Limpopo, and 49.9% in Gauteng. In all these provinces, support for “more radical policies/redistribution” was low, coming in at 6.6% in North West, 8.7% in Limpopo, 10.6% in the Eastern Cape, 12.8% in the Northern Cape, and 16.2% in Gauteng.

These survey outcomes confirm that the great majority of ordinary ANC voters want more business-friendly policies – not the land “expropriation without compensation” option which the Nasrec conference endorsed and the ANC and EFF now seem determined to push through Parliament.

Claims by Ramaphosa and other senior figures in the ANC that ordinary South Africans are agog for land expropriation without compensation should be taken with a bucketful of salt. Far closer to the truth is Johnson’s telling comment on what the eNCA survey results reveal.

These results (says Johnson) show that “much of the ANC leadership has completely lost contact with what most ANC voters think – and may not even be conscious of the huge divide that separates their assumptions from those of their electorate”.

– Dr Anthea Jeffery is head of Policy Research at the Institute for Race Relations. The IRR is a think tank which promotes political and economic freedom.

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Cape Town – Newly-sworn-in Deputy President David ” DD” Mabuza has dismissed talk about him being linked to criminal dealings as a smear campaign that started as far back as 2009.

Mabuza was announced as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s deputy on Monday night, following a Cabinet reshuffle. He and other newly-appointed ministers were sworn in on Tuesday.

Mabuza, who was the premier of Mpumalanga since 2009, has been accused of running the province as his own personal fiefdom, including getting rid of political opponents in the province.

But, after his swearing in as the new deputy president, he dismissed allegations that he was involved in corruption and other dealings as a smear campaign.

“The campaign started in 2009 the moment I became premier, because people did not expect a village boy becoming premier. They will not accept it,” he said.

“Since 2009, and now [it] is 2018, nine years later, they are still talking about this thing and now I am deputy president. And they will probably talk about these things until I die.”

‘I want to help our media’

Mabuza encouraged anyone who has seen him or any other citizen commit a crime to report it to the authorities.

“No one wants to step forward and say: ‘I’ve seen DD Mabuza commit this and this and this. I am prepared to go and testify in court’,” he said.

“A responsible citizen, really you [are] trying, helping the country to fight crime, fight corruption. No, no one will blame you for that,” he added.

Mabuza, who was a supporter of former president Jacob Zuma, has referred to himself as “The Cat” for his many political lives. Despite allegations levelled against him, he maintains it is nothing but a smear campaign.

“An allegation of corruption, of crime, of anything, we’re a Constitutional democracy, we have got these institutions to report to the relevant people. But if you choose not to report it, but talk about it, that means your intention is not a good intention. So you can read between the lines that probably those people that are talking about those allegations they realise a certain potential in me,” Mabuza said.

“But if you talk, and I realise you are a political opponent, or you are within the ANC, because even within the same party there is a push and push and push,” he added.

Mabuza told reporters that he wanted “to help our media” to avoid more rumours.

“I want to help our media, it is always important to write about something that has got a base. Don’t write about something that is baseless… you can’t write about rumours.”

“We are taking a wrong culture, a culture of rumours… Let’s not abuse it. Because I hate someone, I report, I say false things. No, just to advance my own ambitious. That won’t help our country,” he added.

Mabuza said he would encourage any person to report any form of crime, whether it was corruption, or women and child abuse.