Multichoice to reveal the outcome of investigation

Multichoice will hold a media briefing on Wednesday to reveal the outcome of their internal investigation into several payments made to the SABC and ANN7.   The payments were allegedly made to influence government policy on digital migration in favour of Multichoice.  

It emerged through the Gupta Leaks last year that the video entertainment and internet company paid ANN7 millions to allegedly influence South Africa’s long-stalled digital migration switch from analogue to digital TV.

MultiChoice then launched an internal probe into the matter, led by its audit and risk committees. The findings are to be made to the board, which will then take necessary action, the company said in a statement in early November. The DA had lodged a complaint with Icasa on November 27, 2017.

The DA also requested MultiChoice make publicly available the contracts with ANN7 and the SABC, according to the letter sent to Icasa. Icasa chair Rubben Mohlaloga responded to the DA’s request on January 26, 2018 in a letter. Mohlaloga said in the letter that the complaint was referred to its Compliance and Consumer Affairs division “to investigate and communicate with the DA directly.”

Mohlaloga also said that the parties concerned will have to be provided with the complaint as well as other relevant attachments, and be given an opportunity to respond to the allegations within a specified period.  

Johannesburg – Magistrate David Mahango poked holes in the defence of convicted criminal Preshalin Naidoo who was found guilty of culpable homicide in the death of Top Billing presenter Simba Mhere in a car crash. 

Naidoo was found guilty on two counts of culpable homicide as well as negligent and reckless driving. 

In his judgment on Wednesday at the Randburg Magistrate’s Court, Mahango rejected Naidoo’s entire defence. 

READ: Driver found guilty of culpable homicide in accident which killed Top Billing presenter Simba Mhere and his friend

“The court finds that the version of the accused that he suffered mechanical failure is far-fetched. There is no hesitation in concluding that the accused has fabricated his defence.” 

During Mahango’s ruling Naidoo kept his head down, making little eye contact with the magistrate. His mother, who was seated on the front bench, was emotional, often shedding tears and closing her eyes.

Mhere’s sister, Valerie, often wiped her eyes as Mahango described how her brother had died. The presenter’s mother, Angela, sat silently next to his father, Joseph, and kept her eyes closed during judgment. 

The family of three were surrounded by Naidoo’s family and friends, whose numbers dominated the courtroom.

37 incidents of exceeding speed limit

Some family members tried to block photographers from taking photographs of Naidoo before court was in session. 

During his ruling Mahango dismissed Naidoo’s version of events that he was travelling at 61km/h at the time of the collision. 

Naidoo’s car tracker had recorded 37 incidents of exceeding the required speed limit. Minutes before the accident, Naidoo had been travelling at 210km/h.

However, Naidoo’s defence argued that he was travelling at 61km during the time of impact. He also blamed mechanical failure for the accident. 

“If the accused was driving at 61km, he was going to able to apply brakes as IBF Investigations South Africa chief reconstruction expert Stanley Bezuidenhout argued,” he said. 

However, Mahango said Bezuidenhout’s testimony as an expert witness for the defence was not credible. 

State’s case proven ‘beyond doubt’

He questioned his motives for attending court while State witnesses were on the stand, adding that this gave Bezuidenhout an advantage. 

He said that Bezuidenhout’s inspection of Naidoo’s car months after the accident “demonstrated bias on the part of his evidence”.

“There was no evidence that suggests the vehicle was not tempered with before inspection,” Mahango said. 

He found that the state had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. State witnesses were also found to have delivered credible testimony. 

National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Phindi Mjonondwane said that the State was happy that the court was in agreement that Naidoo had acted negligently and without consideration of other road users.

Naidoo’s bail has been approved until March 9 for sentencing.

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2018-01-30 07:55

South Africa is beginning to feel the harsh effects of climate change – and Nomvula Mokonyane is our minister of water and sanitation? God help us.

If Cape Town is going to experience a Day Zero, we would have to have a judicial session on the matter later this year like we’re now seeing regarding the Life Esidimeni scandal.

Mokonyane and Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille will, like Gauteng Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu and her officials, have to deny, lie and eventually cry and confess that they had caused the people of Cape Town and South Africa serious harm.

The water crisis, the Life Esidimeni scandal, the sad state of rural and township schools and the collapse of several state-owned enterprises point to the diseases that, together with corruption, are responsible for the current mess in the country: a total lack of accountability, criminal short-termism and pathetic management.

Virtually every department on national, provincial and local level suffer from these diseases. If we can’t fix that quickly and properly, even the so-called Cyril Spring won’t last long.

For a long time, South Africans have talked about climate change as if it was something that only affects the industrialised countries in the northern hemisphere.

The unusually severe droughts that have affected different parts of southern Africa the last few years and several examples of extreme weather events tell us it is our problem too.

Nelson Mandela Bay and many towns like Beaufort West are in the same position as Cape Town, all facing dry taps if it doesn’t start raining a lot and soon.

Not too long ago Greater Johannesburg was saved from a water crisis by a few days of hard rain.

And we entrust this threat to the politician who, after the dismissal of Pravin Gordhan and the shocks that reverberated through the economy, said: let the rand drop, we’ll pick it up later. (Ironically, it has now been “picked up” by her political enemy, Cyril Ramaphosa, exactly because he opposes Mokonyane and her ilk’s style of politics.)

Her department has been characterised by scandal and mismanagement throughout her term. You would never imagine that if you hear her mouthing off.

South Africa needs a grand national plan on climate change and water and a war room to implement it. We cannot limp from crisis to crisis any longer.

All South Africans should now be forced to use less than 150 litres or so of water per day, whether it rains or not, whether the dams are overflowing or not. No more water-needy sprawling lawns and an end to more golf estates.

The surprise in this whole Cape water drama was the spectacular failure of the DA to plan ahead, to manage and to communicate – a failure that didn’t even once make a dent in the party’s legendary self-righteousness and arrogance.

The crisis saw De Lille, her city council team and the DA leaders freeze like a rabbit in a hunter’s spotlight.

They were fast asleep when 50 000 or so Capetonians continued to use water as if there was an abundance, making a joke of all the rest of us Capetonians’ efforts to use well less than 100 litres a day. The city had the technology to enforce its restrictions, but it only started using it when the problem had turned into a severe crisis.

Reports abound of water engineers and desalination experts given a cold shoulder when they approached the city with offers of help over the last year or more. Instead they simply blamed the ANC.

The drought wasn’t caused by Mokonyane or De Lille. But the delay in building desalination and purification plants for grey water as well as drilling boreholes into the abundant Cape aquifers were criminal.

The last few years the DA told black and “brown” voters: we know you think we’re still mainly a white liberal party, but give us a chance, at least we know how to govern effectively; at least we can deliver proper services.

Well, that old argument won’t work any longer. The DA’s chances to break through the 30 percent mark in next year’s general election now look like a mirage.

DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s dramatic yet hollow announcement that he was taking charge confirmed to many of his critics that he is a political lightweight with little vision.

He could not even control Premier Helen Zille, who has started tweeting about the positives of colonialism again and engaged in silly battles with her critics and the ANC. And yet, many of us here in the Cape still believe that at least she has a track record of delivering and will make sure that if Day Zero does happen, it will be well managed. What can I say, we’re desperate.

Here’s a question, though. Are most of us, black and white, not setting higher standards for the DA than for the ANC? I think we do.

I have told my neighbours in Cape Town on more than one occasion: however useless we think the DA council is, thank the gods we don’t have an ANC council.

But doesn’t that amount to “the soft bigotry of lowered expectations”?

The fog around which level of government is responsible for exactly what in this crisis was made more impenetrable by the fact that the ANC runs the national and its main opposition the Western Province and the City of Cape Town.

The ANC could not contain its sense of schadenfreude: just look at the holier-than-thou DA making a mess! We witnessed very little of the Constitution’s concept of cooperative governance.

It’s no wonder that so many Capetonians, including DA supporters, are now begging Ramaphosa to come and do what has to be done and avoid a catastrophe.

And a catastrophe it will be, perhaps even worse than even the pessimists suspect.

Cape Town and South Africa simply cannot afford Day Zero.

Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.

JOHANNESBURG – The case against African National Congress (ANC) councillors Gamalihleli Maqula and Andile Lungisa is expected to resume in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.

They are accused of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm after a fight broke out in council in October 2016.

READ: Nelson Mandela Bay brawl complainants hire bodyguards

On 23 January, a Democratic Alliance (DA) councillor said he did not feel himself being stabbed, nor did he personally see who attacked him during a brawl during a sitting of the Nelson Mandela Bay city council more than a year ago.

DA councillor and chief whip in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, Werner Senekal, was testifying in the assault case against African National Congress (ANC) provincial heavyweight Lungisa and Maqula.

Lungisa and Maqula have pleaded not guilty to charges of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, relating to the brawl in council chambers on 27 October 2016.

Lungisa is accused of smashing a glass jug over the head of the mayoral committee member for transport Rano Kayser, while Maqula is accused of stabbing Senekal in the back with a sharp object.

African News Agency