Johannesburg – President Jacob Zuma on Sunday characterised 2017 as eventful and fruitful, while saying radical transformation was on the cards for next year.
“We have come to an end of a very eventful and productive year,” the president said in a New Year’s statement issued by his office.
When it came to the economy, Zuma described it as having been a “turbulent 2017”, yet, said that “we are pleased that we emerged from the technical recession”.
“The country’s GDP began to show welcome improvements.”
Next year, “extra efforts together” would be needed to “reignite” the economy, ensuring a growth that benefitted all, said the country’s president.
“The programme of radical socio-economic transformation will thus be the main focus of government in the year 2018, and it will inform the delivery of our programmes.”
Zuma said that a key way this transformation would manifest would be through his recent promise of free higher education for poor and working class students at universities and colleges.
“The intervention must be the beginning of a skills revolution in our country, in pursuit of the radical socio-economic transformation programme.”
‘Significant strides’ made in 2017
When it came to basic education, there were also measures needed to improve access for all.
“We will continue to eliminate mud schools and inappropriate school structures, replacing them with state-of-the-art buildings, especially in rural areas and other neglected communities.”
“Significant strides” made in 2017, included those against “poverty, inequality and unemployment,” said Zuma.
Among the successes he noted was progress in providing “electricity, housing, roads, water and sanitation, health care, social grants as well as accessible education”.
JOHANNESBURG – South African President Jacob Zuma on Sunday released his New Year message to South African, touching on both the challenges and successes.
In the statement released on Sunday, he touched on the country’s economic woes in 2017, including the rescission, and called for renewed efforts to boost inclusive economic growth.
Improving the quality of life of the South African people, especially the poor and the working class, remains a key priority of government, he said.
“Significant strides” were made in 2017 in fighting poverty, inequality and unemployment, Zuma added, failing to touch on South Africa’s rising unemployment further.
“Despite serious challenges on the economic front, together we made substantial progress in providing basic services such as electricity, housing, roads, water and sanitation, health care, social grants, as well as accessible education.
He also touched on free tertiary higher education for low and middle income families, but again failed to discuss how it would be funded.
*Additional reporting ANA
Full statement:
Fellow South Africans
We have come to an end of a very eventful and productive year, which we had dedicated to our leader, the late Oliver Reginald Tambo.
The improvement of the quality of life of our people, especially the poor and the working class, remains a key priority of government, as we work to achieve the type of society that OR Tambo fought for. In pursuit of this mission, significant strides were made in 2017, in fighting poverty, inequality and unemployment.
Despite serious challenges on the economic front, together we made substantial progress in providing basic services such as electricity, housing, roads, water and sanitation, health care, social grants as well as accessible education.
On the economic front, following a turbulant 2017, we are pleased that we emerged from the technical recession.
The country’s GDP began to show welcome improvements.
In the New Year, we will need to put extra efforts together, to reignite the economy and promote growth and also to make it inclusive and beneficial to all.
The programme of Radical Socio-Economic Transformation will thus be the main focus of government in the year 2018 and it will inform the delivery of our programmes.
Through our Industrial Policy Action Plan and other programmes, South Africa will continue to promote investments particularly in key strategic sectors such as energy, manufacturing, transport, telecommunications, water, tourism, the oceans economy, mining and agriculture.
We will also continue to lay a firm foundation for greater growth through our infrastructure rollout programme.
We will also intensify investment in education in 2018.
We have already over the years expanded access to free education for children from poor households.
More than nine million children attend no fee schools, which represents at least 80 percent of our schools.
We will continue to eliminate mud schools and inappropriate school structures, replacing them with state-of-the-art buildings, especially in rural areas and other neglected communities.
We announced the provision of free higher education for young people at universities and colleges who come from poor households earlier this month.
The intervention must be the beginning of a skills revolution in our country, in pursuit of the radical socio-economic transformation programme.
Compatriots,
We must work harder to build a truly caring society in 2018.
We must work together to eradicate crime, drugs and substance abuse as well as violence against women and children in our communities.
The year 2018 marks the centenary of the late President Nelson Mandela.
We should use the year to celebrate his contribution and promote unity and togetherness in our country.
Let us work together to build a truly united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa.
Where we disagree, let us do so with dignity and respect and promote unity and cohesion as we build our country together.
As we enjoy our festive holidays, let us do so responsibly, and promote the safety and security of all in our country together.
We also wish the Matric Class of 2017 success as they await their National Senior Certificate results.
We wish you a happy, fruitful and prosperous New Year, 2018!
Lome- Tens of thousands of demonstrators thronged the streets of the Togolese capital on Saturday, the latest in a series of mass protests against the rule of President Faure Gnassingbe.
Anti-government marches have been held across the country nearly every week since August, attracting hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the exit of Gnassingbe, who has ruled for more than 15 years.
“We will never tire. This time we are going to see this fight, which started several months ago, through to the end,” said a motorcycle taxi driver who joined the marches in Lome on Saturday.
“Nobody will give up because we are already seeing the end of this regime,” another protester told AFP.
The scion of one of Africa’s longest-ruling dynasties, Gnassingbe took power in 2005 after the death of his father General Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled the country for 38 years.
Opposition parties have persistently called for the introduction of a maximum two-term presidential mandate and a two-round voting system.
However, Gnassingbe has refused to rule out running for president again.
Although Saturday’s demonstration passed peacefully, there have been confrontations with police at several previous rallies, most recently on Thursday when 12 people were hurt after officers fired tear gas at protesters.
PARLIAMENT – Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday emphatically ruled out International Monetary Fund (IMF) assistance for struggling state-owned power utility Eskom, saying it could cost the country in terms of sovereignty.
“Eskom is a jewel of our democracy and we need to pay attention to it and we will,” Ramaphosa told the parliamentary press corps at a breakfast meeting where he was asked if he would countenance IMF intervention.
“For that reason, we should not go to the IMF because once we do we are on a downward path, we will be sacrificing our independence in terms of governing our country and sacrificing our sovereignty.”
He noted that there was a real risk the conditions the IMF would impose in exchange for financial help for Eskom, could include cuts in social spending. The fund could for example order Eskom to do away with free electricity quotas for the poor and indigent, Ramaphosa added.
Eskom has borrowings of R360-billion, of which more than R200-billion is guaranteed by the government. It has emerged that the company’s liquidity reserves are dwindling and last month, in his medium-term budget policy statement, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba termed its financial position the single biggest threat to the stability of the economy.
Ramaphosa described Eskom’s financial woes, amid mounting evidence of corruption at the company, as “almost the perfect storm” but said the government knew how to resolve these and that it needed to act fast.
“We are going to reposition Eskom in a short space of time and then it will be fixed,” he said.
“I don’t think it can get much worse. Now we know what to fix, we will put in place the right people and shore up the fortunes of Eskom.”
Johannesburg – The EFF is looking forward to its date with “constitutional delinquent” President Jacob Zuma after Friday’s court order that the National Assembly develop rules to hold him to account, which could pave the way for impeachment.
“We look forward to the National Assembly reconvening very soon to actually develop the necessary rules and hold the president accountable,” Economic Freedom Fighters general secretary Godrich Gardee said in response to the Constitutional Court’s majority judgment on the issue.
“The constitutional delinquent, Mr Zuma, in no time will be scrutinised, will be brought before Parliament to be [held] accountable, because his own political party has actually failed to hold him accountable, and we can’t wait [another] day longer,” said Gardee.
“We need to be in Parliament in no less than 30 days before the State of the Nation Address of 2018,” he said, speaking outside the Constitutional Court.
The State of the Nation Address is scheduled for February 8, 2018 and the ANC, which is the majority party in Parliament, has said it would discuss the judgment on January 10 during a meeting of its national executive committee.
Zuma was replaced as the party’s leader when Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was elected ANC president at the party’s 54th national conference earlier in December.
The EFF envisages a format for impeachment which includes Zuma giving evidence at an inquiry akin to the long-running SABC hearings, and that witnesses also be called.
However, Gardee expressed concern over Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’s apparent “irritation” during the sitting on Friday, and his call for his own minority judgment to be read into the record in full.
“We consider that as an abuse of power,” Gardee said.
Mogoeng expressed concern over the “judicial overreach” of the majority judgment, saying it encroached on the separation of powers.
The EFF, the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and the Congress of the People (Cope) applied to the Constitutional Court for relief on the grounds that the National Assembly had failed to hold Zuma to account over a previous Constitutional Court judgment.
That previous judgment found that Zuma failed to uphold the Constitution with regards to the Public Protector’s remedial actions for the upgrades to his Nkandla homestead.
Several motions of no confidence in the president have failed in Parliament and most of the opposition parties believe that impeachment is the only way to remove Zuma. To do this, the National Assembly must set in motion certain procedures.
The capture of Parliament
DA leader Mmusi Maimane said in a statement the majority judgment was a “consequence of the ANC capturing Parliament and turning it into a lapdog of the Executive for the sole purpose of consistently protecting Zuma and his corrupt acolytes at all costs”.
“Parliament must earnestly apply itself to the question of whether Baleka Mbete is still fit to hold office as Speaker of the National Assembly in light of the damning judgments against her,” he said.
“It is now the task of Parliament to ensure that the rules governing impeachment do not fall victim to another farcical ANC process in which majoritarian tactics are used to bully the Rules Committee into devising rules designed to absolve Jacob Zuma.
“The rules devised by the Rules Committee must be constitutionally compliant and the process must be imbued with constitutionality. Accordingly, we request that the Speaker comply with the order of the highest court in South Africa and do the honourable thing – accede to our requests and set Parliament back on course to fulfill its constitutional mandate.”
‘Something to celebrate’
Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota explained after the judgment, that the court had already handed down previous judgments, recording that Zuma had violated the Constitution and that he had broken his oath of office over the handling of the Nkandla issue.
“But simultaneous with that, the Constitutional Court has also found that the National Assembly itself, which is dominated by the ANC, had already broken oath of office,” Lekota added.
“What we have achieved today has been to expose the fact that the National Assembly, led by the Speaker, tried to collaborate with President Zuma by hiding and protecting him,” he commented.
“Now the court has found that they failed in their duty, they broke their oath of office for the second time because they should have developed the procedure urgently thereafter to enable us to hold the president accountable.
“By protecting him they have showed themselves to have failed the mandate of the people.”
“Now they have been instructed to go and develop the procedure to hold the president accountable by way of an impeachment procedure.
“That makes it impossible for anybody who will become Speaker or occupy those offices in future to continue to toy with the mandate the people give to Parliament to hold anyone, who behaves like a scoundrel, from being held accountable.
“This is something to celebrate.”
‘Battle accelerated’
The UDM stated on its Facebook page: “Strengthened by today’s Constitutional Court ruling, our urgent and continuing battle to have Mr Zuma removed will be accelerated.”
“The United Democratic Movement, in tandem with any and all parties unified by an honest desire for the very best for our country, will redouble its efforts to rid government of the single most destructive occupation since our hard-fought freedom, and perhaps, even ever.”
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), noted the judgment as another “blow” to Zuma, and said it hoped that the order would be carried out quickly.
“…Once again, the courts have been called to force elected officials to do their duty. We can only hope that this judgment will be implemented very soon,” Ben Theron, OUTA Chief Operating Officer, said.
Zuma cannot be singled out as the only culprit
The SA Federation of Trade Unions said that following the ruling, the ANC had to “act decisively” against Zuma and remove him as president of the country.
“Saftu, however, warns that Zuma must not be singled out as the only culprit in these matters. All the other public officials, state-owned enterprise executives and their accomplices in the private sector who have been implicated in the Gupta emails, Jacques Pauw’s book [The President’s Keepers] and elsewhere must face the might of the law.
“The promised independent inquiry into the former Public protector’s ‘State of Capture’ report must proceed without delay and be given the mandate, resources and terms of reference to investigate not only that report but all the other allegations of corruption, fraud, money-laundering and other crimes, which are continually being exposed.”
Saftu said it would join civil society organisation and political parties outside the gates of Parliament when Zuma delivers his State of the Nation Address, to demand that he be dismissed as leader, and brought before the courts.
Cape Town – The Constitutional Court ruling on Friday morning, declaring that the University of the Free State’s (UFS) English-only language policy lawful, proves minorities were misled in the 1994 negotiations, minority rights group AfriForum said.
In a majority ruling, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng denied AfriForum’s application for leave to appeal a Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruling from March. The SCA overruled an earlier High Court order which said the University’s policy decision was unlawful.
In a statement, AfriForum’s deputy CEO Alana Bailey said minorities, such as Afrikaans speakers, were misled in 1994 to believe that their language rights would be protected.
Afrikaans is South Africa’s third most common language, with an estimated seven million speakers.
Bailey expressed fear that the ruling will heighten racial tension on South African campuses.
“The South African past (consider for example the events in Soweto in 1976), but also many other countries such as Bangladesh and Belgium, prove that denying students the right to study in their mother language might lead to increased tensions and even violence,” Bailey said.
“With English monolingualism, only a tiny group of English-speaking students will be privileged, while the rest will have very little hope left that any indigenous language will develop further in future.”
The FF Plus, which advocates for Afrikaners to have the right to self-determination or self-management, said the Constitutional Court ruling is a “tremendous setback for mother-tongue instruction”.
“In a country with eleven official languages, the mediums of instruction must rather be expanded to include more languages instead of languages being taken away and institutions becoming anglicised,” FF Plus chairperson Anton Alberts said in a statement.
Others welcome judgment
While AfriForum and FF Plus expressed disappointment in the ruling, the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) and the Higher Education Transformation Network (HETN) welcomed the judgement.
In a statement, SANCO spokesperson Jabu Mahlangu said AfriForum opposed to the new language policy because, except for the “preservation and domination of the Afrikaans language, it has no interest whatsoever in peaceful solutions to any challenge facing South Africa”.
“[AfriForum] is a reactionary formation that is part of the right-wing movement that thrives on heightened racial tensions to appeal to those who wish to plunge the country towards a slippery slope as well as a vicious cycle of conflict, racial hatred and violence,” Mahlangu explained.
On their part, HETN said the ruling should be considered the “official flattening of AfriForum’s racist campaign to retain Afrikaans as the sole medium of instruction in formerly Afrikaans–only public higher educational institutions”.
“Whilst it may not be possible for the government to provide for indigenous language education for all, English should remain the international standard medium of instruction to ensure that all students from all South African communities are able to access higher education equally,” HETN Executive Director Mothepane Seolonyane added.
The language of instruction at formerly Afrikaans universities such as the University of Free State (UFS), Stellenbosch University (SU) and the University Of Pretoria (UP) have come under fire recent years.
UFS and UP have opted for English-only instruction as a means to assist in its transformation, while SU gave Afrikaans and English equal status as languages of instruction.
SU’s policy, however, adopts a preference for English in certain circumstances in order to advance the university’s goals of equal access, multilingualism and integration.
JOHANNESBURG – The son of the notorious paedophile Gert van Rooyen has been arrested on charges of theft and fraud.
According to North West police spokesperson Brig Sabata Mokgwabone, Gerhard Van Rooyen and Elana Van Rooyen (his wife), both aged 49, appeared in the Klerksdorp Magistrates’ Court for theft and fraud.
They were remanded in custody until Friday, 05 January 2017 for a formal bail application.
According to Mokgwabone, “The accused’s arrest follows alleged fraud wherein they sold cars to unsuspecting clients and convinced them to deposit money into their accounts. The suspect would then fail to give clients cars or refund them.
“We cannot at this stage confirm if Gerhard will be questioned about his father’s crimes.”
Van Rooyen and his female accomplice, Joey Haarhoff, are believed to be responsible for the abduction, sexual assault, and murder of several missing girls, aged between nine and sixteen-years-old, across eastern South Africa.
In early 1990, when faced with arrest after the escape of their latest kidnap victim, Van Rooyen killed Haarhoff before committing suicide.
Despite the evidence against them, the two were never formally convicted due to their deaths, and the bodies of their supposed victims were never found.
These claims included how his father dissolved the bodies of the girls he kidnapped in acid in a Satanic ritual, the acid supposedly supplied by Flippie from Iscor where he worked at the time.
He also implicated that three National Party cabinet ministers were involved in the kidnappings of Odette Boucher (11), Anne-Mari Wapenaar (12) and Joan Booysen (16). Gert van Rooyen was also linked to the disappearances of Yolanda Wessels (12), Fiona Harvey (12), Joan Horn (12) and Tracy-Lee Scott-Crossley (14).
Flippie further claimed that they were buried in sand dunes near Umdloti, that his father had kidnapped and sold 40 young girls, and that he was helped by politicians to smuggle them out of the country.
Flippie was then already in jail for a death sentence which had been commuted to life imprisonment, for the murder of a 15-year-old Zimbabwean girl. He was paroled in 2008.
