Indholdsfortegnelse for 2023-01-09 i Cape Argus

ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa has issued a stern warning against party leaders who are involved in corrupt activities and crime. He also warned against racism after the Christmas Day altercation in which two teenage boys were assaulted at Maselspoort Resort and Conference Centre outside Bloemfontein, Free State, in what appeared to be a racial incident. Ramaphosa was speaking at the governing body’s 111th anniversary held in Bloemfontein yesterday, where about 10 000 supporters were in attendance to celebrate the party’s birthday. “The ANC reaffirms its long-standing principle that corruption is an enemy of the people and is therefore a counter-revolutionary act that must be combated and defeated. This means that our movement must take a tough stance against corruption within its ranks. Any ANC member implicated or involved in…

It is with a heavy heart that we convey to you the passing of educationist and community activist Allan Liebenberg on Saturday after a short battle with cancer. Allan grew up with humble beginnings in the suburb of Lansdowne and attended Livingstone High School, but his potential was evident for all to see at the tender age of 13 and he garnered the respect of his teachers and peers. Allan attributed his political awakening to the killing of Imam Abdullah Haron in 1969. The killing of the Imam at the behest of the apartheid government while in detention had a profound influence on him. He soon rose to become the chairperson of the Student Representative Council at Livingstone and led many student demonstrations and boycotts against the oppressive apartheid regime…

The recent visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, with the protection of the Israeli regime forces, needs to be strongly condemned. This deliberate provocation has definitely enraged Muslims and it is a glaring violation and abuse of applicable international declarations. The visit undermines the historic and legal status quo of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site for Muslims, after Makkah and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It is part of the efforts by the Israeli regime, the occupying forces, to subjugate and seize the historical Al-Aqsa Mosque. Such clear aggression against Al-Aqsa Mosque can inflame tensions which can escalate to increased violence between the Israelis and Palestinians – the indigenous people of the Holy Land in Palestine. Over the past few…

The Health Department has confirmed the highly transmissible sub-variant of Omicron XBB.1.5, also referred to as the “Kraken” variant, has been detected in the country. Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (Ceri) director, professor Tulio de Oliveira, announced on Twitter the first XBB.1.5 case was detected by Stellenbosch University Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA) on Friday. “At present, no increase in cases, hospitalisations or deaths,” he said. De Oliveira said the sub-variant, at a low prevalence, was detected in a sample taken from December 27, 2022 in the Western Cape and that this was not surprising due to the number of international tourists. De Oliveira said he did not expect a big wave of infections with hospitalisations due to high population immunity and previous waves of Omicron…

Orlando Pirates have been unable to arrest their downward spiral after they suffered three Premiership defeats on the trot. Looking at their last three Premiership performances, they have been undone by bad luck but not necessarily under-performance. On Saturday, in Cape Town, it was a combination of both as several key players underperformed. The Ghost must be thinking the football gods are against them. In the run-up to the match, Pirates lost the services of their No 2 goalkeeper Siyabonga Mpontshane. This followed a long-term injury to their classy Ghanaian keeper Richard Ofori, the club’s premier goalmouth custodian. In their absence, Pirates were forced to hand former Chippa United shot-stopper Sipho Chaine a debut, and it turned out to be a nightmare performance between the sticks. For the entire match,…

TOKYO: The heirs of a former owner of one of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” paintings, which is currently owned by Sompo Holdings in Tokyo, has filed a lawsuit in a US court seeking the return of the painting they claim was sold amid Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. Sompo Holdings has countered the appeal, saying the company will vigorously defend its ownership rights to the painting. According to the complaint filed in the federal court in Illinois, the former owner, who was Jewish, was forced to sell the painting by the Nazis in 1934. | The Washington Post…

Glasgow Warriors (10) 24 Tries: Cancelliere (2), Steyn, Jones Conversions: Horne (2) Yellow Card: Bean Stormers (12) 17 Tries: Dweba, Blommetjies, Pokomela Conversion: Libbok The Warriors and the Stormers dished up an entertaining United Rugby Championship clash yesterday, one that oscillated between exciting play and physical confrontation. It was indeed a clash of styles, with Glasgow more willing to spread the ball to expose space in the wider channels, while the Stormers used their power game to stay in touch with their hosts. As early as the eighth minute, an industrious Warriors attack cut the Stormers defence open, wing Sebastian Cancelliere and centre Huw Jones interlinking with pleasing play for the No 14 to cross the whitewash. Cancelliere, in particular, was a handful throughout the encounter and kept the Stormers…

Adriaan Vlok, a feared minister under South Africa’s apartheid system, and one of its few high-ranking officials to be prosecuted, died yesterday aged 85 in a hospital near Pretoria, his family said. The former law and order minister, who oversaw a brutal police crackdown on opponents of white rule, “passed away early this morning in the Unitas Hospital in Centurion after a short illness”, a family spokesperson said in a statement yesterday. In the late 1980s, Vlok oversaw bomb attacks on churches and trade unions seen as hostile to white rule. “I believed that apartheid was right,” he told AFP in 2015. “It was our job to make people fear us.” One of the victims of Vlok’s brutal security police, Mcebisi Skwatsha was a youth activist in the 1980s. “I…

The DA has condemned the attempted murder of Eskom’s outgoing CEO, André de Ruyter, at Megawatt Park. According to the DA, De Ruyter has been left out to dry amid ANC shenanigans, but now criminal syndicates within Eskom are hell-bent on cementing their stranglehold on Eskom which is destroying the economy. “It is clear they will stop at nothing. All this – worthy of a Mafia movie – now plays out while the ANC does nothing to secure our electricity supply, despite DA requests to take decisive action,” the DA said in a statement. “Load shedding, rolling blackouts, continue to hobble the economy and have become an embedded feature in the daily lives of millions of South Africans. The DA calls on President Cyril Ramaphosa to outline to the nation…

A joint operation between SAPS, Home Affairs and City Law Enforcement resulted in arrests in Delft. The operation was conducted in the Delft policing area where gang conflicts, robberies and GBV cases are common. Search warrants, roadblocks and foot patrols were carried out. The police said the team arrested 40 suspects on issues related to firearms, drugs, stolen property, dealing in liquor without a licence, and people without documents. Traffic fines to the value of R282 300 were issued to unlicensed drivers and unroadworthy vehicles. Police commissioner Thembisile Patekile praised the team for making the operation a success and ensuring communities were safer. The suspects will appear in court today. Meanwhile, Bonteheuwel ward councillor Angus McKenzie (DA) encouraged residents to keep tipping off officials about criminal activities. This comes after…

OVER the years, FlySafair, a local airline in existence since 2013, has won numerous local and international awards for its supreme managerial skills and its airmanship. Effective leadership is the most important ingredient for organisational success, and a pivotal reason for FlySafair is it’s outstanding resilience even during the height of a raging pandemic. This strategy and vision has enabled FlySafair to achieve success in the 21st century. Through such visionary leadership, it is easy to comprehend the way crucial elements such as communication, collaboration, power and politics influence group dynamics in organisations such as FlySafair. This outstanding airline guides its ethical behaviour and builds its vision on four key values: success, sincerity, equality and concern for others. The important reason for its success in diverse areas is the great…

LOAD SHEDDING is not only killing the country but causing businesses to close, factories are battling to manufacture, crime is spiralling out of control – and then we watch how the ANC celebrates its birthday with a lavish party while the country is suffering with no power. How can this be? Surely we need to say enough is enough, this has gone too far? We have suffered with 15 years of loadshedding and all Cyril Ramaphosa and Gwede Mantashe can say is we must fix this problem, but they don’t know how to. I can guarantee you that if the DA were in power, they would restore power to all within six months. The Communist Party and unions are holding Cyril over a barrel, as they will not allow him…

Residents from Mamre, Atlantis, and Pella camping annually at the Silverstream Resort want the City to resolve challenges they say they experience while holidaying at the Grotis Park camp site. The resort which is situated off the West Coast R27 road is a family getaway that offers camping, caravan, and braai facilities. A two-bedroom chalet at the resort costs R525 a night during high season (between Easter weekend and Freedom Day up to and including Workers Day weekend and December 15 to January 15) while from April 1 to September 30 (excluding Easter weekend and Freedom Day up to and including Workers Day Weekend) patrons pay R351. The challenges that the residents said needed urgent interventions included lack of ablution facilities, a limit of six people per camping site, and…

Three years after the novel coronavirus emerged, a new variant, XBB.1.5, is quickly becoming the dominant strain in parts of the United States because of a potent mix of mutations that makes it easier to spread broadly, including among those who have been previously infected or vaccinated. XBB.1.5, pegged by the World Health Organisation as “the most transmissible” descendant yet of the omicron variant, rose from barely 2% of US cases at the start of December to more than 27% the first week of January, according to new estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Health Department has confirmed that the “Kraken” variant has been detected in South Africa. More than 70% of cases in the Northeast are believed to be XBB.1.5. While there is no…

HONG KONG: Hugging her boyfriend goodbye, student Yuri Tan was among hundreds excitedly heading north across Hong Kong’s border with mainland China yesterday as pandemic travel restrictions were mostly lifted, finally allowing separated families to reunite. “I am going back because I don’t have to undergo quarantine anymore,” an elated Tan said, clutching luggage containing a few boxes of fever medication for family. Tan, 23, was planning to travel to Shenzhen just across the border from Hong Kong and then take a connecting flight to her hometown of Yangzhou in eastern China, a journey that until recently would have meant weeks in mandatory isolation first. China lifted quarantine rules for all international visitors yesterday, ending almost three years of self-imposed isolation. On the same day, the border between mainland China…

BRUSSEL: The European Union has lowered the extraction rate from its underground gas storage facilities (UGS) because of warm weather and almost doubled the volume of electricity generation from wind power plants, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) and the WindEurope association showed. European UGS are filled by 83.21% as of January 7, losing 0.02 percentage points a day. Gas reserves in European UGS remain high at 90.5 billion cubic meters – 35bn cubic meters higher than the average figure over the past year. The EU also boosted energy generation at wind farms – now at 28.4% of total daily volume, it said yesterday. | Sputnik…

Orlando Pirates head coach Jose Riveiro says he can’t explain his side’s poor conversion rate in front of goal after his men suffered yet another defeat, this time a 2-1 loss against Cape Town City on Saturday. The Buccaneers’ latest loss means they have now lost three consecutive league matches after going down to Kaizer Chiefs before the World Cup break and Mamelodi Sundowns after the resumption. The Sea Robbers’ failure to score in the second stanza against City saw them extend their barren run in the second half of games to 15 matches, a first in the club’s history. “There’s no explanation for that. If you want to go deep with the analysis, then we have to speak about the chances we create and not the amount of goals…

Helen Zille alleges Swellendam leaders violated key clauses of party’s constitution Three former DA officials from the Swellendam Municipality, the latest black members to be forced out of the party, have threatened court action challenging the constitutionality of their suspension from the party. The trio said they were ostensibly axed for trying to improve the municipality’s employment equity, but DA Federal Council chairperson Helen Zille said they had violated the party’s key clauses, which ceased their membership. Former speaker Bongani Sonqwenqwe, deputy mayor Abraham Pokwas, and councillor Gcobisa Mangcu-Qotyiwe who were notified of their suspension last month by Zille, allege that the termination of their membership came after they did not abide by a caucus decision to hold back on advertising for the appointment of a director for corporate services…

Outgoing Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula says there are “engagements” on extending driver’s licences beyond the five-year expiry period. DA MP Benedicta van Minnen had asked if he would extend the validity beyond the five-year period in light of the recent breakdowns in the machine used to print licences, which resulted in a backlog. Mbalula said: “The decision on whether to extend the validity of driver’s licence cards beyond the current five-year period will be made once all engagement processes have been finalised.” He said the licence backlog had been eradicated by July last year, and the Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA) had been attending to card orders as they arrived. He said the machine had been operating since 1998 and had the end of its operational life. “To…

I should begin by wishing my readers well for 2023. Yet it all sounds so superfluous, even trite and overused these days. We all live in a world where timeframes -– the marking of years – have no meaningful use anymore. Years begin and end with a value similar to the boiling of water or the changing of toilet rolls. As a child of the 1960s, I do recall a nostalgia around these “new year” moments, which have all been replaced by the most meaningful things – whether I have uploaded my latest pictures to my social media platforms and have received the appropriate amount of likes. There is a nostalgia that I wish to ponder – the lost value of being a good human friend. We have reduced the…

The ANC National Executive Committee has one coloured and one white woman out of 80 people. There are two ways of analysing this. First, minorities do not want to partake in ANC activities due to the corruption and scandals. Second, the ANC exposed its tribalism by rejecting minority participation. The first opinion is based on a reality that since 1994, billions have been stolen, wasted and misused. This suggested that corruption, wastage, the abuse of authority was normal within African governance practice. Since everyone generalises, blacks in governance can be measured with the same yardstick that blacks measure whites. This suggests that if every white is a potential racist, then every black is potentially corrupt. Generalisations can be tested and dismissed if evidence is absent. For example, about 20 years…

HUMAN Settlements officials met with banks to raise their concerns over how financial institutions carry out repossessions to recover outstanding balances of less than R100 000 on defaulted mortgage loans by low- and middle-income earners. Minister of Human Settlements Mmamoloko Kubayi revealed information about the meetings after concerns were expressed by the EFF in Parliament over the number of home repossessions that would be triggered by the constant increases in the prime lending rates by the SA Reserve Bank. The meetings came as a R60 billion class action lawsuit in the Gauteng High Court recently exposed a R1.3 million property was sold at an auction for R1 000. Kubayi, who doubles as the ANC’s economic transformation chief, told MPs her department was fighting during “periodical” meetings…

On the eve of the South African BRICS chairmanship scheduled for this year, I would like to point out that the world is now undergoing an irreversible transformation to become multipolar and, as I believe, more equitable and fair. I would like to quote the extracts of the speech of the President of the Russian Federation, Mr Vladimir Putin, which he addressed during the BRICS summit last year: “Only honest and mutually beneficial co-operation will make it possible to look for proper and successful ways out of the crisis situation in the world economy that has arisen out of the selfish actions of individual states that use financial mechanisms to shift responsibility for their own mistakes in macroeconomic policy to the other.” Russia and South Africa are effectively co-operating within…

DAKAR: THIRTY-eight people died and about 80 were wounded in central Senegal after two buses collided in the early hours of yesterday, said President Macky Sall, who announced a three-day mourning period, starting today. The crash, one of the deadliest in the country’s recent memory, was on one of the main east-west arteries 220km east of the capital, Dakar. The accident occurred after the tyre of one passenger bus burst, sending it into the path of another coming from the opposite direction, a statement from the prosecutor said. In 2017, two buses collided, killing 25 people. | Reuters…

Jakarta: Tourists are concerned about Indonesia’s new criminal code that includes a ban on extramarital sex, reported NHK World. The revisions of the colonial-era penal code are leaving some in the tourism industry worried travellers may be deterred from visiting as the tourism sector is still recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. Indonesian President Joko Widodo approved the revision earlier this week. It will apply to both citizens and foreigners in the country, including tourists, reported NHK World. | ANI…

Wayne Parnell is as far removed from a Pretoria local as you can get. The Proteas all-rounder is a social media influencer of note, often snapped in his funky street gear, dyes his hair all shades of silver, and is married to a Cape Town model. But for the next month, Parnell will call the capital of the nation home as he leads the Pretoria Capitals in the upcoming Betway SA20. And he knows that one way to get the locals on his side is to get the team winning from the outset, especially as they are accustomed to success with the Titans in South Africa’s domestic competitions. “Obviously everyone wants to win that beautiful trophy, but there is a process that needs to be put in place first and…

Kaizer Chiefs’ title aspirations suffered a huge blow after losing 1-0 to Sekhukhune United on their anniversary on Saturday, but coach Arthur Zwane remains optimistic. Chiefs ended 2022 on a high as they won back-to-back league games, including beating Orlando Pirates, to be fourth on the log. Zwane’s men were expected to continue with that purple patch on Saturday night as they hosted Sekhukhune at FNB Stadium on their 53rd birthday, but Chiefs came up short. An early second-half strike from Vusimuzi Mncube sunk them. A win would have taken them up to third after fellow title competitors Richards Bay and SuperSport United lost. Instead, they remaining fourth on the log, 13 points behind leaders Mamelodi Sundowns, but Zwane is optimistic his side will find consistency in the coming weeks…