The cultural, religious and linguistic rights commission has suspended initiation schools for a year in four regions of the Eastern Cape, especially where deaths occurred, until all compliance-related matters are comprehensively addressed.
On Thursday, the commission also called for the removal of initiates following the death of 23 of their peers from a number of factors, including dehydration.
Commission chairperson Professor David Mosoma said it had observed “with dismay that, in given instances, the cultural practice of initiation robs families and communities of young people who either die or suffer genital amputation”.
“The deaths of initiates are clearly a violation of the sanctity of human life. The true and authentic traditional practice of initiation must be measured and judged by its ability to care and preserve the lives of the young initiates.
“The deaths and amputations suffered by these young men can never be tolerated, especially considering the fact that during the same period last year about 17 boys had lost their lives,” said Mosoma.
The commission strongly believes these challenges and deaths could have been prevented if all stakeholders had adhered to the guidelines and recommendations which were extensively shared with government departments and NGOs.
Some of the major concerns are the continued kidnapping and abduction of children to illegal initiation schools, ongoing criminal activities disguised as initiation activities, the unwillingness by some police stations to enforce the laws, especially when cases of missing children have been reported.
“We appeal and call upon all traditional leaders to address the causes of death of initiates in their care at all the initiation schools throughout the country.
Promoting the sanctity, preservation and protection of life
“The commission calls upon all the key players in this space to do everything in their power to promote the sanctity, preservation and protection of life. Further, the commission calls upon all law enforcement agencies to bring to book those who have been responsible for the loss of lives.”.
Mosoma called for the rescue and removal of initiates who were still at the centres where deaths occurred, as well as engagement with the various structures to address the abuse and commercialisation of the practice.
He appealed to fathers, guardians and uncles to be available and accompany their boys during the initiation season and address criminality at some of the initiation schools.
“Culture does not kill. Everyone has the right to life. We therefore implore our communities to refrain from using culture as an instrument of death because where there is death the community mourns,” Mosoma said.
Centurion – South African fast bowler Kagiso Rabada on Thursday gave a ringing endorsement of the new coaching structure around the national team.
“It’s amazing to have someone like Jacques Kallis in,” Rabada said of South Africa’s new batting consultant and the country’s most-capped Test player. “I’ve never worked with him, he’s a great of the game. So is (new head coach) Mark Boucher.”
Rabada said the experience of Kallis and Boucher, with a combined 313 Test caps, would be invaluable for the Proteas.
“Just to hear their knowledge… it doesn’t even have to be skill-based, just mentally how you want to approach certain situations. It’s great to have them around. They speed up the learning process.”
At the age of 24, Rabada will have to play a key role for South Africa in a fast bowling attack hit by the retirements of Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, injury to Lungi Ngidi and the decision of Duanne Olivier to commit to a Kolpak contract with Yorkshire in England.
A recently-leaked report into South Africa’s poor performance at the Cricket World Cup in England earlier this year pinpointed Rabada’s heavy workload – exacerbated by Cricket South Africa’s insistence on racial transformation – as being a factor in the fast bowler failing to make a major impact at the tournament.
Rabada did not mention his workload in a brief interview during a break in the national squad’s first full day of training on Thursday but said he was enjoying “putting in the hard yards.”
He also praised the return of Charl Langeveldt as bowling coach. “I really enjoy working with him. He’s in the same light as Mark and Jacques. They know what they are talking about. They’ve been playing at this level for a very long time. Everything is well-drilled and well-oiled. There’s no hesitation, they have a plan and they’re really decisive.”
Rabada said he was glad that Enoch Nkwe, who was briefly South Africa’s first black African national coach when he took the side to India earlier this season as interim team director, had decided to accept a position as assistant coach to Boucher.
“Enoch is someone I’ve worked with since age group level, so have other guys like Quinny (De Kock) and Temba (Bavuma),” said Rabada. “The guys who have worked with him know his quality. He’s a valuable person to have in the change room.
“He would have had to make a decision whether he was going to walk away or stay. I’m really glad he stayed because I have a relationship with him and so do a lot of the young players who are in the one-day and T20 formats. He’s made a decision to invest in the team… hopefully we can reap our rewards.”
Nikki Moreno had spent nearly a year struggling for breath, and nothing seemed to help.
Not the inhalers, not the antibiotics and other drugs. Nothing seemed to help her breathe, and nothing got rid of her constant cough.
Stage four lung cancer
It finally got so bad that she landed in the emergency room at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica.
Moreno was not prepared for the series of shocks that followed.
First, doctors told her that her left lung had completely collapsed. Then Moreno underwent a bronchoscopy that revealed the reason for her lung collapse – a two-centimetre tumour had blocked the airway.
Doctors diagnosed her with stage four lung cancer, and told her the cancer had spread to her brain, spine, kidney and pancreas.
Moreno had never smoked. She’d never lived with anyone who smoked. The most exposure to second-hand smoke she’d ever experienced was at outdoor concerts.
“I was completely shocked,” said Moreno, 43, a bookkeeper living in Los Angeles. “That was not at all what I expected it to be. I’d been researching my condition for months and on all of the search engines, nothing popped up that it might be lung cancer. So it hadn’t even crossed my mind.”
Not just a smoker’s disease
Lung cancer is thought of as a smoker’s disease, but as many as 20% of cases occur in people who’ve never smoked tobacco, said Dr Richard Wender, chief cancer control officer of the American Cancer Society.
There are so many cases of non-smoker lung cancer that “if you look at it from just a pure numeric standpoint, lung cancer in non-smokers is as frequent as other cancers, like ovarian cancer,” Wender said.
If it were placed in its own category, non-smoker lung cancer “would still be the seventh most common cause of cancer-related death in the United States,” said Dr Nathan Pennell, director of the lung cancer programme at the Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Center.
Unfortunately, because lung cancer is so heavily associated with smoking, many non-smokers who develop the deadly disease aren’t diagnosed until the cancer has started to ravage other parts of their bodies, the experts said.
“Both the patients themselves, the family members and even the clinicians aren’t as quick to think about lung cancer as a cause of symptoms,” Wender said. “We have so many stories of patients who develop lung cancer where their diagnosis was delayed for many months because they were being treated with inhalers and antibiotics for symptoms that in fact turned out to be lung cancer.”
Overall, about 13% of all new cancers are lung cancers, according to the American Cancer Society. Nearly 230 000 new cases of lung cancer were diagnosed in 2019, and more than 142 000 people died from the disease.
It started with shortness of breath
Moreno’s journey started about 10 months before her 2018 diagnosis, when she found herself short of breath for no good reason.
“I was walking my dog one day and got to the end of the block and realised I couldn’t breathe,” Moreno said. “I thought that was weird, but I didn’t think much of it until it was constant for two weeks.”
She saw a doctor and a series of pulmonologists, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with her even though her breathing was getting worse and she’d developed a daily cough.
They gave her inhalers that helped a little, but her breathing problems persisted, Moreno said. Chest X-rays revealed nothing.
By early November, Moreno says she was in terrible shape.
“I had cold sweats in the morning and at night,” Moreno recalls. “I was dizzy. I was almost passing out.”
Things finally got so bad that she went to the ER, where she learned that she had lung cancer.
Her family – husband Tony and daughters Sofia and Vanessa – were as shocked as she was at the news.
“They were just devastated,” Moreno said.
But there was one glimmer of hope.
Genetic testing shows new drug might work
Genetic testing revealed that her cancer was related to a mutation in a gene called ALK, and a very effective drug called alectinib (Alecensa) had been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2017 to treat that specific form of genetically driven lung cancer.
The drug works so well that doctors held off on surgery and other therapies to give the pill a chance to work, Moreno said.
“When they found out what type of mutation I had, they said we’re going to wait because these pills have been shown to work very effectively everywhere, even in the brain,” Moreno said.
Lo and behold, the pill worked as advertised.
“When I went back for my first scan two or three months after I started the pills, all of the tumours in the brain were completely gone and everything else was shrinking,” Moreno said.
Moreno is feeling much better now, even though doctors are still keeping a close eye on her. She’s back to working part-time, and is going to school to get her master’s degree in accounting.
Causes not limited to smoking
Genetics are just one reason a non-smoker might develop lung cancer. Another is exposure to radon, a colourless and odourless radioactive gas that wafts up from under homes.
Pennell said, “We know exposure to radon is probably the second biggest attributable risk for lung cancer, besides tobacco smoke.”
Anyone, smoker or not, should talk with their doctor if they experience lung-related symptoms that don’t seem to clear up over time, Wender and Pennell said.
These might include:
A cough that doesn’t go away
Chest pain that gets worse with deep breathing, coughing or laughing
Hoarseness
Coughing up blood
Shortness of breath or wheezing
Weakness, fatigue or unexplained weight loss
“Patients know themselves pretty darned well. The big challenge for patients is to not be in denial,” Wender said. “They think, ‘I’m going to get better. This is going to get better. I don’t need to go to the doctor.'”
Be on the lookout for a cold that doesn’t behave typically – for example, one in which you develop a cough but no runny nose, and that doesn’t seem to be getting better over time.
“If it’s not ‘normal’, that means there’s a cause. You owe it to yourself to find the cause,” Wender continued.
Research needs more funding
Lung cancer doesn’t get as much research funding as other cancers, even though it’s the second-leading killer of men and women in the United States, Pennell noted.
“More Americans die of lung cancer than the next four most common cancers combined, and it gets just a fraction of the research funding,” Pennell said. “There just isn’t the same public awareness and advocacy campaigns out there as there are with the more ‘blameless’ cancers.”
Wender doesn’t think that lung cancer is underfunded because of its association with smoking, however.
He suspects it’s more to do with the fact that, until recently, most people who got lung cancer didn’t survive for long.
A ‘loud voice’
“It’s more related to the number of survivors. If there’s not a big cohort of survivors, then there’s less advocacy, there’s less lobbying for research dollars,” Wender said.
“I sure hope it’s not less funding because the tobacco industry addicted young people and it resulted in their deaths,” Wender continued. “Nobody should be blamed for developing lung cancer. I don’t care if you’re a smoker or a non-smoker. It’s not your fault. We know it’s the tobacco industry that got you hooked, and nicotine is highly addicting.”
With the development of new therapies like alectinib, there’s hope that more people will survive lung cancer and go on to be powerful advocates for funding research, he added.
“We’re going to have more lung cancer survivors for a longer and longer time, and they’re going to be a loud voice,” Wender said.
Ince (Pty) Ltd has an exciting opportunity for a Head of Language Services, based in Sandon.
The incumbent will have managerial responsibility for the Language Services Unit, which is staffed by a small team of dedicated permanent and freelance proofreaders and quality control specialists.
As part of the effective management of the unit, which provides services on a shift system, the incumbent will be tasked with enhancing and maintaining both the quality of the service provided as well as the unit’s ability to recover time against jobs which are produced for both the print and digital medium.
Specifically, the individual will also be responsible for reviewing and proof reading of JSE listed companies’ draft integrated reports to ensure that they meet very stringent content, formatting and deadline requirements.
The ideal candidate will be familiar with the JSE and Companies Act Reporting Requirements and should be able to add value by identifying areas where reporting is either lacking or non-compliant and make recommendations for improvement.
The role would be best suited to a seasoned financial editor/financial proof reader/company secretary/ integrated annual report specialist, who has had significant exposure to JSE listed companies, is well acquainted with financial reporting requirements and has an appreciation of and passion for integrated annual and interim reports.
Company Description
Serving mostly listed companies, Ince provides integrated, holistic communications and brand-building services tailored to the individual requirements of our diverse clients across South Africa and beyond.
As a national company, our reach is vast, yet our core ethos is, and always has been, absolute client-centricity built on long-term relationships and a 100% focus on supporting the business objectives and strategies of those who entrust their communications and branding to us.
Ince offers a seamless management process – from concept right through to execution and delivery, to ensure that our clients meet their compliance, communication and brand-building objectives. By offering all of these services under one roof, Ince is able to offer its clients the additional benefits of convenience, cost efficiency, and absolute confidentiality.
Requirements
Required skills and knowledge for the role.
The envisaged incumbent must have in-depth knowledge of:
the revised King IV™ Code of Reporting and Governance Principles for South Africa and how these impact on reporting requirements.
how the new standard of communication under the International Integrated Reporting Council’s framework requires integration of the financial and sustainability reports and how to demonstrate that an organisation’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects will lead to the creation of value over the short, medium and long term.
the current JSE Listings and Companies Act Requirements.
In addition, the incumbent will need to have:
high level editing and proofreading skills.
Grammatical and technical quality control abilities
copy writing abilities in this specialist area.
Personal attributes required for the role include the ability to:
pay exceptional attention to detail
meet tight deadlines
operate well under pressure
work with minimal supervision
problem solve
be a team leader
Posted on 19 Dec 14:06
Apply by email Nomvula Buthelezi
Or apply with your Biz CV
Create your CV once, and thereafter you can apply to this ad and future job ads easily.
CUM Books is looking for a shining example of a professional and high-performance-driven supervisor, who will be responsible for the shop floor, as well as to assist with the training and development of staff members.
The successful candidate will be able to enhance customer satisfaction, meet sales, profit margin goals.
Expectations
Candidates must be willing to work Retail Hours
Driver’s license with own transport
Bilingual: English and Afrikaans
Must have two to three years’ retail experience
Requirements
Computer proficiency: Microsoft Office package
Customer service excellence
Problem and conflict solving
Stock Management
Managing employee productivity
Exceptional communication and assertiveness skills
Assisting with training of staff members
Posted on 19 Dec 13:00
Christian Art Distributors
CUM Books has become a much-loved and popular name in South African homes for many years. This chain of Christian family bookshops began when six NG Kerk-boekhandel shops were bought.
hitch the suit and grab your surfboard, because I am looking for high calibre developers who prefer brainstorming while soaking up the sun or catching a wave on your newly waxed surfboard.
As a developer, you will gain exposure to cloud-based products and international clients within an agile environment. To top it off, you collaborate with your colleagues over a game of golf or during braai Fridays!
The reference for this position is RS48313. It is a permanent position based in Parklands offering a salary up to R1.2m per annum cost to company, negotiable based on experience. Contact Rylene on
az.oc.egrem-e@senelyr
or call her on 011 463 3633 to discuss this and other opportunities.
Requirements
Candidates are required to have 8 years’ experience in C#, with three years’ exclusively in Agile methodologies including Scrum and Kanban. Other areas of expertise include:
CSS
HTML
Asp.Net
Azure DevOps
LINQ
MVC
JavaScript
AJAX
SQL
Duties and responsibilities
Design, develop and test code that adheres to the company standard
Exercise Azure DevOps to manage tasks and application code
Work collaboratively with colleagues to ensure clarity and understanding on requirements
Provide estimates on project delivery
Qualification
BSc Computer science
Posted on 19 Dec 09:13
Apply Rylene Siveram
011 463 3633
Or apply with your Biz CV
Create your CV once, and thereafter you can apply to this ad and future job ads easily.
REGISTERED NURSE AT NURTURE WOODLANDS – BLOEMFONTEIN Woodlands Hospital in Bloemfontein is looking for a dynamic Registered Nurse to join their team. MINIMUM EDUCATION / EXPERIENCE REQUIRED: • Grade 12 with the relevant nursing qualifications. • Registered with the South African Nursing Council. • Must have a minimum of 3 years’ experience in Psychiatric nursing. • Psychiatric trained is essential . COMPETENCY EXPECTATIONS: • Computer Literacy • Demonstrate strong clinical skills • Speak, read and write English • Basic computer literacy • Strong people skills. • Essential effective conflict management skills • Ability to influence • Team player • High attention to detail. • Adapt to daily changes in workload • Professionalism in all undertakings • Flexibility in working hours / shift work • Achieve best possible outcomes for patients and their families. • Prevent risks and ensure highest possible quality of standards. • Knowledge of health and safety standards. If you meet the above criteria and have the relevant experience and attributes, please submit your CV to Alison at alisong@havenhealth.net clearly marked “RNW” with three (3) contactable references. Should you not receive a response within two weeks after the closing date, kindly accept that your application has not been successful.
