Innehållsförteckning för 2024-01-03 från Cape Argus

SOUTH Africa’s decision to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over Israel’s unceasing military and humanitarian violations on the Gaza Strip, has made international headlines, as the country is the first to launch such an application amid global condemnation and widespread calls for a ceasefire. On Friday, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) revealed the country had approached the ICJ under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) over Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Both South Africa and Israel are State parties to the Genocide Convention and are thus obligated to prevent the occurrence of genocide under the treaty. In retaliation to attacks by Hamas that claimed 1200 lives, Israel launched an assault on Gaza resulting in the deaths of…

The Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness welcomed the birth of 253 babies born at the provinces health facilities on 1 January, 2024. The total number of New Year's babies reported from 00:00 on New Year’s Day comprises of 107 boys and 146 girls. The first baby was born at the stroke of midnight at Mowbray Maternity Hospital. The hospital announced the birth of the baby boy at 00:00. The baby was born to Mantombi Ndabezimbi and weighed a steady 4 060g. Fifteen minutes later, the province welcomed its first pink foot of the year, a baby girl, at Khayelitsha District Hospital to mother Sanelise Maku. The little girl weighed 2 960g. Within nine minutes, at 00:24, baby Hanekom gave his first breath at the Worcester Hospital, weighing in…

THE South African Hajj and Umrah Council (SAHUC) has urged those left stranded by a Cape Town travel agent to lodge a formal complaint to the Hajj and Umrah Ministry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Around 30 people, intending to leave to perform the sacred pilgrimage of Umrah, were left stranded at Cape Town International Airport last Wednesday as flights were cancelled. The individuals reportedly paid over R40 000 for flights and accommodation through New Age SA Travel & Tours started by Shahied Davids. When contacted last Wednesday, Davids said the flights were not cancelled by him. During an interview with the Voice of the Cape radio station, Davids said the ticket agent cancelled the tickets at the last minute due to Davids not being able to…

This is in response to a letter to the editor (Cape Argus on Tuesday, December 26), by Leonard Oosthuizen. Hamas behaved in a barbaric manner. Israel, with the virtually limitless military support of Britain and the US, could have blockaded Gaza forever, and killed the Hamas terrorists, one-by-one, at leisure; AND most if not all neutrals (like me) would have stood with Israel. However, since Israel has chosen to be as barbaric as Hamas, neutrals (like me) choose to wash our hands of both sides.…

Our country is in the throes of election fever as new parties, with their new agendas, are spewing to a gullible audience. Recycled politicians wearing new garbs and making false promises that cannot be implemented. Honest politicians have become a rare commodity. It was US President Theodore Roosevelt who offered the profound words of wisdom: “We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity.” When a society loses sight of distinction between fact and fiction, truth-telling and lying, what happens is that…

Japanese rescuers battled the clock and powerful aftershocks yesterday to find survivors of a New Year’s Day earthquake that killed at least 48 people and caused widespread destruction. The 7.5 magnitude quake that rattled Ishikawa prefecture on the main island of Honshu triggered tsunami waves more than a metre high, caused a major fire and tore apart roads. On the Noto Peninsula, the destruction included buildings damaged by fire, houses flattened, fishing boats sunk or washed ashore, and highways hit by landslides. “I’m amazed the house is this broken and everyone in my family managed to come out of it unscathed,” said Akiko, standing outside her parents’ tilting home in the badly hit city of Wajima. The way 2024 started “will be etched into my memory forever”, she said, after…

JAKARTA: More than 2 000 residents have been evacuated to temporary shelters amid heightened volcanic activities in a volcano in eastern Indonesia, officials said yesterday. Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki in East Nusa Tenggara province has erupted several times in recent weeks, including an eruption on Monday that spewed volcanic ash 1.5km above its peak, according to the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation. The agency recorded another eruption from Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday but ash clouds were not observed. Indonesia has nearly 130 active volcanoes. | AFP…

India’s young batsmen will simply have to find a way to cope with South Africa’s “challenging” conditions, India captain Rohit Sharma said yesterday. Sharma said he did not expect conditions for the second Test, starting at Newlands today, to be much different from those at Centurion, where India were beaten by an innings in the first Test last week. “The pitch looks pretty similar to Centurion,” he said. “Maybe not full of grass but there is enough covering of grass on the pitch.” Sharma missed his team’s tour two seasons ago because of injury but said teammates who were in Cape Town said conditions appeared to be much as they were then, when the highest team total in a tightly contested match, won by South Africa, was 223. Three of…

SHUNNED at national team level, Iqraam Rayners is likely to be firing on all cylinders when Stellenbosch FC battle it out with the Carling Black Label All Stars for the competition’s ‘super cup’ at the Peter Mokaba Stadium on Saturday. Rayners has been one of the standout performers in the DStv Premiership this season and was influential in helping Stellies to their maiden trophy success. They beat TS Galaxy on penalties in the final of the inaugural Carling Knockout Cup. He has four goals in the league so far as well as numerous assists, the 28-year-old being a focal point of many of Stellies’ attacks while his pace and guile have made him a thorn in the side of many opposition teams. He contributed a goal in the quarter-finals as…

Media personality, influencer and DJ, Cyan Boujee has confessed that last month was the first time she paid her own rent. This was only because the DJ recently lost her “sugar daddy”, who used to pay for “everything”. On her YouTube vlog recently, Boujee spoke about their relationship. “I have been crying and crying. I am so grateful for every single thing I have achieved. I’m grateful for everything I have, but I think I’m crying the most because I have someone really, really close to me that passed away. “It’s been 24 days since he passed away ... It’s really not the best time for me right now ... I am grieving. I am so happy that I got to this point because I was not emotional, I didn’t…

AN EFF ward councillor from Polokwane has appeared in court on charges of possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition and the possession of illegal explosives. It is alleged that the councillor was one of seven people arrested last week for allegedly breaking into an SAPS Stock Theft Unit office and stealing weapons, along with 400 rounds of live ammunition. The suspects, who have been remanded in custody, appeared before the Seshego Magistrate’s Court yesterday. Their bail hearing was postponed to Friday, January 12. It is alleged that an insider within the police unit helped the suspects execute their mission. IOL reported last week that, according to community members, one of the arrested men was an EFF ward councillor. This has also been confirmed by ActionSA in the province, with the…

THE Hollywoodbets Cape Town Street Parade attracted thousands of klopse lovers who lined the streets of the Mother City to get a glimpse of their favourite teams. Some diehard fans said they had been camping out for two days before the event to make sure they got a perfect spot to view the proceedings. The annual HollywoodBets Cape Town Street Parade showcases up to 20 000 minstrels, kitted out in the bright colours of their teams as they sing and dance to bring in the new year. Cape Town-based stand-up comedian Rezah Forbes served as MC on the main stage, while Novocaine The Band also performed along with talented, proudly local acts such as Uncle Kim, DUO, Shadley Schroeder, IMO-Vee, Milicent Malazi and more. Twenty minstrel teams formed a…

Animal organisations in Cape Town said they were inundated with distress calls from across the metro, including in the vicinity of the V&A Waterfront, where the New Year’s Eve fireworks display took place. Last week, the Cape of Good Hope SPCA lost its bid to get an interdict to halt the V&A Waterfront fireworks show. The SPCA argued that the anticipated fireworks spectacle posed a significant threat to the local wildlife, including endangered and protected species residing in the V&A Waterfront area. However, after legal hearings, the Western Cape High Court dismissed their application. Now, two days into the new year, SPCA spokesperson Belinda Abraham said that a report will soon be made public regarding the impact the fireworks display at V&A Waterfront had. “A report is being compiled based…

We have popped the Champagne corks and gatecrashed 2024! The year 2023 was, in so far as my activism for finding dignified and sustainable pathways off the streets for those experiencing homelessness, again a mixture of the best of the best and the worst of the worst. So I have decided to travel light but not entirely weightless into 2024. Hopefully this will assist me in scaling greater heights while remaining firmly grounded. So, let me start off by getting rid of my biggest frustrations of 2023: 1. The lack of political will by City of Cape Town, the Western Cape provincial government and the national government to address the issue of homelessness even when presented with potential solutions. 2. The absence of organisations that spent the past two years…

There are three dogmatic and dangerous groups of people in modern-day South Africa: religious, traditional/cultural and ideological fundamentalists. The common thread among the groups is that they would not accept that there is no culture, tradition, custom and practice throughout the whole world that is static. This explains partly why black boys in the Eastern Cape are sacrificed annually in the name of tradition and/or cultural ritual, and that few of us see that there is something wrong and criminal about the practice. The traditional and/or cultural passage to become a man in the Eastern Cape is becoming too extreme and dangerous for many black boys. It looks like the traditional and/or cultural beast’s lust for the blood of more black boys in the Eastern Cape will never be satisfied.…

TOKYO: Five people aboard a Japan coast guard aircraft died yesterday when it hit a Japan Airlines passenger plane on the ground in a fiery collision at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. All 379 passengers and crew on board the passenger plane which burst into flames were safely evacuated, Japanese transport minister Tetsuo Saito said. But five of the six crew members from the smaller plane, bound for central Japan after Monday’s huge earthquake, died, Saito said. The captain survived but was injured. Those on board the plane included eight children. | AFP…

WASHINGTON: A growing number of Americans, or more than one-third of US adults believe that US President Joe Biden’s 2020 election was not legitimate, a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll revealed yesterday. While most US adults (62%) still consider Biden’s 2020 win legitimate, 36% have an opposite view. This represents a 7% increase compared with poll results for the same question in December 2021, when only 29% said Biden’s election victory was not legitimate. Republicans who consider Biden’s election victory legitimate have shrunk from 39% to 31%. | Sputnik…

HUGO Broos was speaking for the entire country when he said, “if we do not go past the group stages, we will not be happy”. What the Belgian coach of South Africa’s senior national team that will be contesting the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) set to take place in the Ivory Coast from mid-January to early February should be made aware of is that unhappiness will not be the only outcome of Bafana Bafana’s failure to reach the knockout phase. Surely Broos must swell the ranks of the unemployed should he fail to steer the team into the round of 16. Granted he has the requisite experience to know that the biennial continental tournament is one of the toughest competitions out there. “You know, going past the group stages…

A man accused of killing his girlfriend and stuffing her remains in a freezer coldly stared at the prosecutor who read how the grim discovery was made. Brian Miripiri was arrested on Saturday after the police and family members of Busisiwe Mthethwa, 56, found her chopped-up body in a chest freezer in her Samora Machel home. He then reportedly went home with another woman and spent a night with her. The victim was last heard from two days before the arrest. Miripiri reportedly told the people close to her that she had decided to go to the Eastern Cape. Her relatives were informed by a neighbour that the accused was selling her things. “When we arrived there, the shack was locked. People said they hadn’t seen her the entire day…

The ANC in eThekwini says it has managed to counter the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party’s surge among its branches in the region. In an effort to counter support for the party backed by former president Jacob Zuma, the ANC in eThekwini last week directed its branches to compile reports on the impact the new party was having on its members. Yesterday, the party said the preliminary report from branches suggested MK had had very little impact as few members have left the ANC for it. ANC regional spokesperson Mlondi Mkhize said although the branches were given until today to submit assessment reports, the preliminary findings revealed no major shift except for a couple of members who have left. Mkhize said although losing one member was concerning for the ANC,…

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has distanced itself from remarks by Sylvester Mangolele, who called for the removal of President Cyril Ramaphosa from office. Mangolele served as Lieutenant Commander in the SA Navy. In a statement, the SANDF confirmed that Mangolele was dismissed from the defence force in 2018 and his utterances were not on behalf of the military. It said that he was expelled due to misconduct. This comes after the fired commander made a video on social media, threatening to remove Ramaphosa from office in 48 hours if he failed to report to the Naval College in Gordon’s Bay, Western Cape, to physically hand in his resignation. In the video, Mangolele can be heard calling for Ramaphosa to step down as the time had come, citing…

Having visited Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens over the weekend, I was appalled to find the gardens bordering on derelict – plant beds dry and many dead, cigarette butts all over, plastic cool drink bottles lying in flower beds, lawns unkempt and unmowed, dead leaves and twigs all over the brick walkways, etc. A link on their web page offers a mumbo jumbo explanation as to why it’s happened. It reeks of politics and corruption in the making. Once the pride of Cape Town and internationally recognised as a must-visit destination for tourists, it’s now in disgraceful condition while the political squabbling goes on. The answer is crystal clear – hand management of the gardens over to the City of Cape Town under guidance of mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis who will make short…

Lebanon, under the influence of the terror group, Hezbollah, is playing with fire, and is surely going to get burnt. Hezbollah, since its creation, has used terror to achieve its goals – the “destruction of Israel and the establishment of a Shia theocracy in Lebanon”. Hezbollah has strong support among Lebanese Shia Muslims, but Sunnis have disagreed with its agenda. It is also a powerful political force in Lebanon. Southern Lebanon is a Hezbollah stronghold, from where it continues to serve the interests of Iran and Syria.…

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has reported almost 3 million registrations for the 2024 national and provincial elections, with youth between the ages of 16 and 29 amounting to 70% of the new registrations. This comes after several social media trends in the form of hashtags were circulating on all platforms, where young people expressed their hopes for change, as they feel 2024 is the new 1994. This has given rise to debates on whether or not there is still hope to consolidate South Africa’s democracy, since more people are willing to participate in the upcoming elections, as compared to the 2019 elections. In as much as the youth are willing to partake in the elections, there is still scepticism on whether there is a suitable party that…

Moscow: Russia said it had accidentally bombed a village in its southern Voronezh region near Ukraine yesterday but stressed there were no casualties. The accident occurred the same day as Russia hit Ukraine with a large-scale missile attack. It is not the first such incident during Moscow’s almost two-year-long Ukraine offensive. The ministry said six private houses were damaged in the accident in the village of Petropavlovka, Russian news agencies reported. An investigation into the circumstances of the incident was under way. | AFP…

Ever the pragmatist, John Plumtree is keenly aware of the current situation the Sharks find themselves in, and the Herculean task ahead to return the team to the favour of the rugby gods. The Durban-based outfit wrapped up 2023 with an improved performance against the Stormers in Cape Town, even though it still ended in a narrow 16-15 loss. It was their seventh defeat in the United Rugby Championship (URC) out of their eight matches so far, leaving the Sharks dwelling around the basement of the standings in 16th with a poor return of eight points. So, although coming within a whisker of upsetting the former champions at the weekend will lift the mood at Kings Park ever so slightly, Plumtree will appreciate the fact that Saturday’s follow up against…

103* v New Zealand, Gqeberha, 11 Jan 2013 As the saying goes, the first one is always the most special. It certainly was for Elgar, particularly after an innocuous start to his Test career when he registered a pair on debut in Perth. Elgar’s maiden century provided him with the assurances that he could play at this level. 103 v Sri Lanka, Galle, 16-20 July 2014 Elgar’s first Test ton on foreign soil played a pivotal role not only in winning the first Test, but ultimately the Proteas’ first series victory on the picturesque tea-loving island in 20 years. It also ended any doubts about his ability to play spin and score runs on the subcontinent. 127 v Australia, Perth, 3-7 Nov 2016 Elgar buried the memories of his Test…

The turn of the year does not only call for a brief break in the 2023/24 campaign but has also triggered the opening of the January transfer window. Defending DStv Premiership champions Mamelodi Sundowns have surprisingly made the first audacious move in the transfer market with the acquisition of Under-23 international Zuko Mdunyelwa from Chippa United. The Brazilians currently lead the league standings with a six-point buffer, having played three games less than their nearest competitor, and they closed off the year by capturing the inaugural African Football League (AFL). The Chloorkop-based outfit, as they have done in previous years, are not resting on their laurels and are raising the bar, which is expected to trigger a response from Soweto giants Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates. Chiefs’ interim head coach…