The National Chamber Orchestra is set to follow the National Symphony Orchestra into oblivion
Belinda Beresford
The legacy of Lucas Mangope is haunting Shadrack Bokaba, one of South Africa’s few black orchestral violinists. Bokaba had been due to audition for a place at the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in January.
Unluckily his audition was on a Friday, and the NSO announced its closure on the Thursday. At the time he was philosophical, saying he’d stay in Mafikeng with the National Chamber Orchestra (NCO), where at least his job was secure. Unfortunately just over a month later, the death of the NCO has been announced.
The NCO will shut at the end of this month, unless funding – about R3-million – is found.
The NCO was the brainchild of Mangope, who had the “nation” of Bophuthatswana in mind when he named the orchestra.
And, according to Gulam Mayet, head of social services, arts, culture and sports for North-West province, this is where the fundamental problem lies. The integration of the “homelands” into South Africa left North-West Arts and the Mmabana Cultural Centre as provincial responsibilities, outside the aegis of the National Arts Council. The NCO falls under North-West Arts.
“I find it amazing that because we were run as a black government we were not regarded as an arts council. We’ve had no national funding on these things,” he said.
Mayet said the provincial government can no longer afford to subsidise North-West Arts and Mmabana after giving them R21- million out of its R26-million cultural budget over the past five years.
“We asked them to restructure and they said they didn’t know how. So when we audited it we decided the only way they would survive was if they made the reduction.”
The orchestra consumes too many resources for a provincial government determined to spread funding as widely as possible among different cultural forms. The residue of the past means the province has a cultural heritage possibly inappropriate for its economic abilities.
“It was a Mangope madness,” summed up Mayet, giving another example. “We have a stadium here that can take 110E000 people. If I gave a ticket to everyone in Mafikeng and the surrounding areas it would not be a quarter full.”
There is a fundamental conflict between the provincial government, which wants to extend cultural funding to all art forms, and the NCO, which has made determined efforts to reach out to the whole population, and to transform. It has the highest proportion of black players in the country: seven of the 33 musicians are black.
Mayet says that while the NCO has made a commitment to change, its parent organisation has not “transformed and spent in line with equity and redress” as the government wants it to.
The orchestra’s imminent closure also raises again the debate about the elitist nature of orchestral music in a changing society. The NCO “is regarded by people as elitist and only popular among a very small minority of our population and therefore regarded as performing an elitist form of music … We want our people to have access to funding.”
This is firmly rebutted by Walter Mosetlhi, acting CEO of North-West Arts. “This orchestra is not elitist. It’s not eurocentric, not afrocentric. It’s an orchestra that plays the music for the people. When it shares a stage with [reggae star] Lucky Dube, how can you say it is elitist? If there are functions in the community we go out there and provide entertainment.”
It is the orchestra that, in the words of one member, “plays at any performance and plays all types of music”, clocking up 175 performances last year.
Apart from formal concerts, which it tries to do once a week, the NCO plays almost anywhere it’s asked to – in the street, under trees at school functions and at kraal openings. Musicians are contracted to spend 30 hours a week playing, and another 10 hours teaching.
The orchestra costs around R2,5-million in salaries each year, with additional running costs adding about another million. To take its outreach programme to far-flung rural areas it would need another R500E000.
The orchestra raises some R380E000 a year from ticket sales and corporate functions. Musicians earn between R2E500 and R4E500 a month and have had no pay rise since 1996. The NCO cut its first CD at the end of last year; production now looks likely to be halted.
Corporate funding is almost non-existent for the NCO. Based in a poor, mainly rural province, there is little local industry and it is hard to attract the attention of companies based in more prosperous areas.
“We have no corporate sponsorship; we’re not in the centre where big business is. We work primarily in the rural areas, primarily development. It’s not glamorous,” says one orchestra member.
The final word goes to Mayet. Without a corporate or national government saviour “the only hope now is the lottery”.
@ Billboard misses the funny bone
Fiona Macleod
It hasn’t been a good week for Nando’s chicken outlets. First there was the furore about the TV advert showing a guide dog leading an elderly blind woman into a pole. Now a Nando’s billboard in the tourist town of Hazyview in Mpumalanga is coming in for criticism.
The billboard, on the main road to the Kruger National Park about 30km away, boldly proclaims in large letters: “Stop poaching animals. Grill them.”
Residents of the sleepy town are divided about whether it’s funny, but agree that Nando’s irreverent humour probably passes over the heads of most international tourists passing through on their way to “big five” country.
“I don’t think it’s funny, although I understand marketers need gimmicks,” says Eva Wagner, a marketing consultant for the Hazyview Tourism Association.
“An advert like that in an area committed to conservation and so close to the Kruger park is not appropriate. It just doesn’t gel.”
Sherryn Thompson, committee member of the Wildlife Action Group who has lived in Hazyview for 11 years, describes the ad as “a sick joke. What are they trying to do – announce to the world that there’s poaching in the area?”
Both the manager of the Hazyview Nando’s outlet and officials in the Kruger park say they haven’t received any complaints about the billboard from tourists.
Josi McKenzie, Nando’s marketing director, says the company needed to put up a billboard to let people know the outlet had opened last April. With at least two other chicken fast-food outlets in town, competition is tough.
“We think it’s appropriate,” says McKenzie. “We are heightening awareness of conservation, by focusing on what people should be doing with animals and what they should not be doing.
“It’s a cheeky line, but irreverence is part of our strategy.”
Many locals are amused by the ad. “I chuckle every time I drive past it,” says Aubrey Bosiger, manager of the local drinking hole, Hippo Hollow.
“Most of my acquaintances think it’s gimmicky and clever, especially in our part of the world where there are lots of animals.”
@ M&G in a time warp
Mail & Guardian reporter
A century from now the foyer of the Park and Long building in Cape Town could be torn up by enthusiastic Mail & Guardian readers keen to see a real “dead tree” version of their favourite newspaper.
A copy of our souvenir millennium edition is to be sealed in a time capsule and entombed in the entrance to the restored historic building in Long Street.
The contents are intended to be reminders of the end of the second millennium for South Africans entering the 22nd century. This hi-tech “message in a bottle” includes two Yiddish language books, coins, photographs and appetite suppressants.
The metallic capsule also includes a disposable camera. It is unused, on the theory that in a hundred years chemical film processing will be an archaic and unknown process. The appetite suppressants are included as a memory from organiser Gerald Shap who first marketed them in the 1960s.
The canister will be filled with a non- reactive gas and sealed by the mayor of Cape Town later this month.
@ THE WEEK THAT WAS
Shaking hands all round: The Human Rights Commission and more than two dozen editors initially subpoenaed by the commission to answer allegations of racism. The inquiry into racism in the media will proceed next week in an atmosphere of co-operation rather than a trial-style inquisition.
Celebrating: The South African cricket team, which beat India by four wickets in the first Test in Mumbai; if they win or draw this weekend’s Test, they’ll become the first foreign side to win a Test series in India in 13 years.
Hello? Hello? In a cloud of controversy, the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra) awarded the third cellphone licence to Saudi-backed consortium Cell-C.
Causing concern: Reports that both Satra’s technical assessment committee and outside evaluators placed Cell-C third among five bidders; and allegations that at least two of the councillors have business links to Cell-C.
Found guilty: Of assault, two suspended Brixton flying squad policemen, captured last year on a BBC video camera assaulting hijackers, including one man already injured in a crash, while arresting them after a chase last year.
Found innocent: Four New York City policemen who shot off 41 bullets at a blameless young Guinean immigrant, Amadou Diallo, standing in the doorway of a block of flats in the south Bronx, killing him. The four claimed they mistook his wallet for a gun, a story that has failed to impress anyone outside the courtroom where they were acquitted.
Appeal denied: Centurion psychiatrist Omar Sabadia, who lost his appeal against an effective 50-year jail term for the kidnapping and murder of his wife.
Outsourcing (1): Welfare Minister Zola Skweyiya, who says he will ask NGOs and churches to help distribute funds to the poor, since his department apparently lacks the capacity. Welfare officials only got around to distributing R1,4- million of the R250-million earmarked for poverty relief in 1998 and 1999, before Skweyiya was appointed.
Outsourcing (2): Justice Minister Penuell Maduna, who says he’ll pull in private counsel to prosecute complicated commercial cases, and accept Johannesburg Bar Association volunteers to act as judges during recesses in an effort to clear the justice logjam.
Going … The century-old blanket six- month quarantine for animals travelling into Britain, which made a fortune for kennel owners. In a one-year trial, animals from 22 European countries who meet a range of conditions – including rabies vaccination and microchip ID – will sail straight in.
Elected: As chancellor of the Cape Technikon, Naledi Pandor, chair of the National Council of Provinces.
Laid to rest: Betsie Verwoerd (98), widow of apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd, in Orania; Daily News cartoonist Jock Leyden (91), in Durban; Drum publisher Jim Bailey (80), in Lanseria.
Resigned: Jrg Haider, controversial leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, in response to diplomatic sanctions imposed by, inter alia, 14 European countries.
Apologising: For Indonesia’s harsh 24-year occupation of East Timor, reformist President Abdurrahman Wahid, on a state visit to Dili.
Expensive denial: De Beers, which has promised its raw stones will carry a guarantee that they are not “blood diamonds”, sold by African rebels to fund insurgency.
Unbundling: South African Breweries, which will be carving off its Southern Sun hotel and gaming interests, worth an estimated R1,25-billion, into a new listed entity.
Restructuring: New Africa Investments Limited, which has secured shareholder approval to transform from a holding company into two operating companies, one devoted to financial services and the other to media.
Going like a Boeing: South African Airways, finally announcing its decision to award Boeing the contract for upgrading its fleet in a contract worth R4,3-billion.
Rethinking: Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who announced a return to the “status quo ante” in three states that had instituted sharia law, after 10 days of bloody unrest which left some 1E000 people dead. The process has been halted in three other states which had been considering it.
Dying young: A six-year-old girl in Flint, Michigan, shot dead by a six-year- old boy after a playground scuffle at an elementary school. President Bill Clinton challenged Congress to act on legislation that wouldtighten regulations on handgun sales at gun shows and require that handguns be equipped with child-safety locks.
@ Snapshot
Euro, euro: Germany has said it wants a stronger euro, relieving fears that it was prioritising domestic growth concerns. The currency has slipped to its lowest levels in the 14 months since it was launched, touching 93,6 US cents on Monday. This is increasing inflationary pressures in the European Union, and making an interest rate increase from the European Central Bank likely. An increase would attract money into the EU. Europe is showing signs of recovery, but remains in the shadow of the frenzied United States economy. But the bank is unlikely to increase rates for a month or so, holding off for an expected rates increase from the US Federal Reserve.
The screaming Nasdaq: It’s that very US growth which helped knock the Dow Jones industrial index below the 10E000 mark last Friday in a broad downturn. New gross domestic product data (GDP) showed the US grew at an annual rate of 6,9% in the last quarter of 1999, the highest for three years. The markets are worried the Fed will try and cool down growth with another interest rate increase. But they didn’t pause for long. On Wednesday, the tech- biased Nasdaq hit a third record high in five sessions, up 2% to 4E784.
Green cards: Brain drain or chicken run, it’s not just a South African phenomenon. African professionals have been flocking to the US and Europe at a rate of 20E000 a year in the 1990s. It’s a significant contributor to African poverty, says the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
Caio who? The battle over who will succeed Michel Camdessus as head of the International Monetary Fund intensified as the US rejected the EU’s candidate, Caio Koch-Weser, a German finance ministry official. The US argues Koch-Weser is of insufficient stature to head the world’s financial Red Cross.
Re-rated? The Reserve Bank’s monetary policy committee was expected to make a repo rate announcement on Thursday, hopefully that it would allow the rate to continue sinking below 11,75%, where it has sat for the last month. The repo rate determines the cost of borrowing and directly drives the prime rate.
Re-rated: The committee may be encouraged by South Africa’s re-rating by international credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s. Impressed by the government’s economic policy, S&P’s upgraded our foreign and local currency issuer credit ratings, and the ratings on unsecured foreign and local currency debt.
Good figures: Better-than-expected GDP and trade surplus figures were released this week. South African GDP for the fourth quarter of last year rose by 3,6% on the third quarter. It was the fifth such increase, confirming the current economic boom. The country’s trade surplus dropped to R1,76-billion in January from R3,56- billion in December. The result surpassed expectations and eased worries that increased growth may have led to overheated imports.
@ How Buthelezi banked R1m
What was the Minister of Home Affairs doing banking one million rand in cash?
Paul Kirk
Details have emerged of an amazing million-rand cash transaction at an Ulundi bank by Minister of Home Affairs Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
In late December 1998, Buthelezi entered the Ulundi branch of First National Bank with R2,5-million in cash, had R1-million of it converted into a bank cheque in favour of his Inkatha Freedom Party and left the bank with the remainder still held in cash.
In correspondence with Buthelezi’s representative Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, this transaction was not denied.
The effect of Buthelezi’s request for a bank cheque was that it obscured in IFP accounts the fact that the money had originated as cash, as well as the identity of the donor.
IFPtreasurer general Arthur Konigkramer said this week: “Deposits were made at Ulundi during December 1998. It is correct that a cheque of R1-million was made payable to the Inkatha Freedom Party. This money was raised by its leader, MG Buthelezi, who remains a fund-raiser for the party. The funds were intended for the coming general election.”
At present the Mail & Guardian is unable to establish the source of these funds. Buthelezi’s personal assistant, Thami Duma, added that only Buthelezi would be able to throw any light on the origins of the R2,5-million.
Konigkramer did not say where the funds came from, but commented: “The name of the individual who deposited the funds and the amount involved is of no concern to anybody other than those charged with the care of IFP funds. Any imputation of irregularity will be dealt with through the law.”
According to the M&G’s sources, Buthelezi entered the bank on December 22 1998 with a large amount of cash, carefully counted out more than R2,5-million, then had R1-million transacted into a bank cheque payable to the IFP. He then left the bank with the balance of the cash he had first brought with him – R1,5-million of it.
The M&G is aware of at least three groups of people who were paid substantial sums of money shortly after Buthelezi appeared with his millions.
Among the payments was one of R50E000 to Shona Khona Developers which, in late December 1998, was being investigated by police for the alleged theft of R52E000 in government reconstruction and development funds.
The M&G is in possession of the unpublished closure report of the KwaZulu-Natal reconstruction and development programme. It lists 39 companies whose affairs were handed over to the South African Police Service (SAPS) for investigation. It states that Shona Khona was granted R52E000 to train the youth of Lamontville in “multi- working skills”.
Business consultants and auditors Ernst & Young state: “Several unsuccessful attempts were made to locate the project co- ordinator. No evidence, either documentary or physical, could be located to indicate the project existed.” The matter was handed over to the SAPS by Ernst & Young.
The M&G can reveal that the payment to Shona Khona was arranged by Duma. Duma also arranged for Shona Khona to be given a motor car in addition to the cash they received.
When the M&G contacted Duma for comment this week, he said he was not entirely sure of the details of the transaction. He said: “I can’t confirm anything. But also I cannot deny what you say. I know we helped Shona Khona, though. The details are very vague. I was not the only one dealing with Shona Khona, so I am not sure.”
In a subsequent phone call, Duma told the M&G that the payment and provision of the car to Shona Khona was handled entirely by MZ Khumalo, the IFP secretary general for administration. Attempts to reach Khumalo were unsuccessful at the time of going to press.
After checking party records, Konigkramer said: “Funds were advanced to an NGO, styled Shona Khona Developers for electioneering, and they were provided with a car to do electoral work.”
He went on to say: “If this NGO is suspected of a crime, as you suggest, then that is a matter for the police.”
An early draft of this story was sent to Oriani-Ambrosini. He responded by stating that there was nothing irregular or illegal in such a bank transaction.
Oriani-Ambrosini did not deny that the Ulundi bank transaction had taken place. Nor did he provide an explanation for the source of the large amount of cash Buthelezi had in his possession.
The M&G can reveal that, shortly after the transaction, the IFPpaid Andrew Smith Associates – a firm of political lobbyists based in the United Kingdom, whose owner began his political life in Ian Greer Associates, another London-based firm of lobbyists which became embroiled in a scandal in the UK involving the payment of cash inducements to British MPs to ask questions in Parliament.
In 1994, Ian Greer Associates attempted to sue The Guardian – the M&G’s sister newspaper in London – when the paper revealed that the firm had been paying MPs large sums of cash.
Because of the scandal, two British MPs resigned from office. Among the people accused of bribing MPs through Ian Greer Associates was Mohammed al Fayed, the owner of Harrods, the famous London department store.
Konigkramer told the M&G that Ian Greer Associates had been hired by the IFP in 1994. He also confirmed that Andrew Smith Associates were hired by the IFP in 1999 as consultants. The M&G can reveal Smith’s total bill was R2-million plus expenses – roughly a quarter of the IFP’s entire election fund.
But Konigkramer refused to confirm how much Smith’s bill had been, saying: “His fees were paid from IFP funds and are of no concern to anybody but those charged with running the party.”
Smith left South Africa this week after business meetings with the IFP which centred on the forthcoming municipal and other elections. Smith was present at last month’s meeting of the IFP’s national council.
Prior to Buthelezi’s huge 1998 cash transaction, his party is known to have received a cheque for R100E000 from the Gambling Association of South Africa – a grouping of illegal casinos. The donation was made through Ziba Jiyane, then secretary general of the IFP. The party’s own finance committee objected to the donation when they got to know of it. The M&G has been unable to establish any link between this R100E000 and the R2,5-million.
Oriani-Ambrosini threatened to take out a high court interdict to stop the publication of this story. He said he was acting for and on behalf of Buthelezi in doing so.
@ Commission recommends right to die
Barry Streek
A law allowing euthanasia has been recommended by the South African Law Commission nearly a year after the draft legislation was handed to it.
The commission has not decided one way or the other on the key question, that of active voluntary euthanasia – whether people have the right to end their lives at their own volition and to enlist the help of others in doing so.
However, the controversial recommendation does allow doctors and nurses, under specific circumstances, to relieve the pain of a terminally ill patient by prescribing a drug, even if the prescription could lead to shortening the patient’s life.
The Commission report was tabled in Parliament this week. Though cautiously, it recommends that medical practitioners be allowed greater leeway than they currently enjoy in deciding on life and death, especially in the case of brain- dead patients.
Medical practitioners, it argues, should be able “under specific circumstances, to cease, or authorise the cessation of, all further medical treatment of a patient whose life functions are being maintained artificially while the person has no spontaneous respiratory and circulatory functions or where his or her brainstem does not register any impulse”.
The report also provides that a competent person may refuse life- sustaining medical treatment even though this may cause their death or hasten it. A doctor will also be able to give effect to an advance directive or an enduring power of attorney about the refusal, or at a certain point the stopping, of medical treatment or the administration of medical care.
A doctor may stop the medical treatment of terminally ill patients who are unable to communicate decisions about their medical treatment “provided his or her conduct is in accordance with the wishes of the family of the patient or authorised by court order”.
The commission sets out three options concerning “active voluntary euthanasia” for consideration:
l the continuation of the current legal position in which euthanasia is criminalised;
l the empowering of medical practitioners to decide on a request by a patient for the administration of a lethal agent; or
l active euthanasia regulated by a multi-disciplinary panel or committee which will consider requests for euthanasia.
The report notes that matters concerning the treatment of terminally ill people are at present being dealt with on “a fairly ad hoc basis” and “there is some degree of uncertainty in the minds of the general public and medical personnel about the legal position in this regard. Doctors and families want to act in the best interest of the patient, but are unsure about the scope and content of their obligation to provide care.”
The next step: the proposal will be published in the Government Gazette and public comment will be invited ahead of further deliberations by parliamentary portfolio committees.
@ Close encounters in a doctor’s office
John Matshikiza
WITH THE LID OFF
Johannesburg. Strange relations in a medical suite. My treacherous back is killing me. So I make an appointment to go over to my back-quack and sort myself out.
At the back-quack, it’s only me, the deputy back-quack, and the receptionist. We are an odd assortment. I can’t walk straight, she can’t talk straight, and he can’t look me straight in the eye. Nevertheless, we try to be useful to each other.
The back-quack jumps up and down on my aching back and tells me to make another appointment. As I go to pay the receptionist, the doorbell rings, and a fourth unlikely party enters into the arena.
Out of the whole of Johannesburg, a panhandler has decided to make his rounds on this street, in this suburb, at this time. The panhandler is black. The whole medical suite freezes.
The panhandler is not just black: he is extra-shabby, his hair is dishevelled, and he is deaf-and-dumb (as he hastens to point out to us as he shakes us each by the hand, with eloquent motions towards his mouth and ears to make sure we get the message).
The hand with which he has insisted on greeting each of us is covered in open sores.
The deputy back-quack, the deputy back- quack’s receptionist and I are briefly united in fear of being unwilling recipients of a plethora of unspeakable African tropical diseases. We shouldn’t have touched him, but we couldn’t refuse to shake his outstretched hand.
I have to show them I am not afraid of this brother, and I am the first to shake his hand. They have to show me they are not afraid of me, him, or any of our other brothers, and, besides, we have not been able to confer quickly about a joint strategy in this case anyway. We have never talked about anything beyond back problems, and suddenly this guy is inside the door, catching us all by surprise. It’s all about reconciliation.
So while I am trying to get the back- people to just go calmly about their business and take my money so that I can leave, the deaf-mute panhandler is in full swing, expressing himself in sign language.
“What does he want?” the receptionist implores me loudly, staring pleadingly into my eyes as the panhandler waves a piece of paper in front of her.
I try to indicate that it is her problem, since this is her place of business, not mine. But she is already on her feet, moving to where she has hidden her handbag. She brings out a R1 coin and offers it to him, yelling, “Here, now you must go!”
He rejects the measly coin, and waves the piece of paper in front of the doctor. The doctor is looking at me imploringly, with the same question directed at me out of his silent eyes: “What does he want?”
I have no answers. Freedom, maybe? The black, deaf-and-dumb panhandler brother is dancing in front of him, not me. It’s not my problem.
Just because I’m black doesn’t mean I automatically understand what is going on in the minds of every single one of my so-called brothers and sisters. Especially not if the particular brother or sister happens to be seriously challenged in the speech-and-audio department, but dealing with it rather stylishly, all the same. I have to admire the guy’s domination of the situation in spite of, or maybe because of, his disability.
Finally the doctor ducks into his office and slams the door, leaving me and the receptionist alone with the squeaking, bobbing panhandler brother.
Panhandler knows the score, and continues to hop and squeak in front of the closed door, turning his back on us. The receptionist lady watches him in exasperation and then says to me: “I don’t know why I always let him in. It’s always like this. Why do I always open the door when he rings the bell?”
At which point I realise that I am, yet again, inside a recurring South African nightmare that I would never have been part of if I had done the sensible thing and remained in exile.
I stare incredulously at the receptionist, this countrywoman from an alien tribe with whom, through Madiba, I have agreed to share South Africa. She herself is no perfect specimen, with a disability that has left one side of her face immobilised and distorted. She is in only a slightly better physical condition than the energetic and silent black man who is holding us hostage.
What sets them light years apart, however, is that niggling little question of colour. The panhandler is beyond recognition, or even comprehension, not only because of his physical disability, but because he is black. The fact that he is both black and disabled puts him way beyond the pale.
Before she can dumbfound me with more of her observations, however, the deputy back-doctor reappears, hands over a R10 note, and shows the panhandler the door.
The panhandler leaves without a backward glance – no doubt to exercise his silent terror on the next unsuspecting dwelling down the way.
At which point the receptionist recovers herself sufficiently to take my money, give me my receipt, and allow me to leave as well.
I have no idea why I allow myself into all of these insane situations. Except that I have chosen to live in South Africa. Which means that every little tangled bit of it is mine, I suppose. This, when it comes down to it, is the birthright that I have fought for.
@ KRISJAN LEMMER
Come out fighting
Haven’t witnessed scenes like it in the Dorsbult Bar since Muhammad Ali rumbled in the jungle with George Foreman; regulars waving bottles of witblitz over their heads and shouting, “Come on Barney”, “Sock him Phil”. Lemmer’s got such a headache from all the noise he can hardly see this keyboard.
Attaboy
The brawl certainly woke up some old war horses and got them snorting in the lists. Melanin-deprived columnist Tony Weaver – who, together with the similarly deprived fellow journalist Chris Bateman helped nail apartheid police to the cold-blooded murders of the Guguletu Seven – waxed particularly vociferous.
“Let’s go back to the origins of this thing,” thundered Weaver indignantly in the Cape Times. “Does anybody else spot the contradiction in terms when the Association of Black Accountants and the Black Lawyers’ Association call for a probe into racism in the media?
“To me, that sounds a bit like that other well-known oxymoron, military intelligence. How can two racially exclusive organisations accuse anybody of being racist?”
Well said, Tony, well said! Not that we haven’t said it endlessly before.
But they just would not listen.
Fan
Another old war-horse that came galloping to the Mail & Guardian’s defence was what is often referred to as the world’s most powerful newspaper, the New York Times.
In an editorial which referred to this newspaper in admiring terms, the Times suggested that South Africa should heed the recent warning by Mamphela Ramphele against a culture of silence.
“Blacks,” she noted, “too often avoid criticising their government for fear of being accused of disloyalty, while whites fear the unanswerable charge of racism.”
Thanks, guys. If you ever need help, give us a call!
Wave-length
In case anybody is thinking of raising questions about the failure of President Thabo Mbeki to share with South Africa his thoughts on the Human Rights Commission/press battle, Lemmer would offer some reassurance.
The president did offer his thoughts, in the form of a letter to the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers which followed an earlier one written by his legal adviser, Mojanku Gumbi.
The main thrust of the presidential missive was an indignant denial that his government would ever consider interfering in the constitutionally guaranteed independence of the commission.
Lemmer is glad to hear of this. Particularly after hearing his legal adviser – yes, the same Gumbi – on SAfm’s Tim Modise Show on Monday springing to the defence of the HRC with such fatuous statements as: “The subpoena is not coercion. It is just an instrument which ensures compliance.”
Cross-caller
The excitement has had one Evita Bezuidenhout getting all pumped up. In a breathless telephone call to the Parliamentary press gallery she begged for Barney’s unlisted telephone number. “After all,” she trilled, “I am the last of the racists.” Lemmer suspects the world has not heard the last of subpoena envy.
Press freedom
Earlier this week there were more helicopters hired by television crews in the air over Mozambique’s floods than those from the South African Air Force.
And how many people did the journalists pick up?
You’ve guessed it!
On the rack
Lemmer would offer a reminder to his fellow hacks in South Africa that few in our profession here know what it can be like when the going gets tough.
As a stark reminder he would offer the case of U Win Tin, the former editor of the Myanmar (Burma) daily newspaper, Hanthawati.
U Win Tin was jailed by a military tribunal in 1989 for 14 years after being accused of membership of the Communist Party.
He was reported to have been badly beaten for taking part in a 1990 hunger strike. Afterwards he was found to be suffering degeneration of the spine.
In 1995 he was put into solitary confinement in what had previously been a kennel for prison guard dogs after being accused of smuggling out letters to the United Nations’ special rapporteur, Professor Yozo Yokota, describing conditions in Rangoon’s Insein jail.
In 1996, refused legal representation at a trial held inside the prison, he was sentenced to a further five years’ imprisonment for being found in possession of writing materials.
Cut off from family and friends who have been stopped from visiting him, or sending him food or medicine, he is reported to be near death with seven years of his sentence still to be served.
Who was whom?
With the announcement this week that Denn Alberts had been appointed commissioner of the South African Police Service in the Northern Province came the disclosure in his circulated CV that his physical condition was: “Good of healthy.”
Which is just as well because it also disclosed that in 1983 he headed the investigation into the “Samora Marschall Air disaster”. Must have been the one President Thingummy was involved in!
Devil worship
Former dominee Cassie Aucamp, MP, the leader of the Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging, put the African Christian Democratic Party down with a telling anecdote after the ACDP’s sanctimonious rejection of the new national lottery as “evil”.
Aucamp said he was approached by a member of his former congregation at Thabazimbi with a proposal that a share of the profits from gambling be donated to the church.
“No, that is the devil’s money,” exclaimed the MP.
“Just put it in your bank and give me a cheque,” replied the congregant.
@ The case of the dead men’s fingerprints
Peter Dickson
On March 15, a saga that Eastern Cape police are calling “something out of a Hollywood mafia movie” will unfold in the Umtata High Court when boutique mistress and micro-lender Nolundi Yanta (37) goes on trial for the contract killing of public servant Ntsikele Zixesha.
The killing came towards the end of a two-year probe into what is the biggest ever syndicate fraud operation in the pro-vincial government.
According to the charge sheet, the fraud involved the replacement of dead pensioners’ fingerprint cheque identity with those of gang members before the cheques were cashed and deposited in a fake bank account.
The charge sheet names Yanta’s cousin as the Department of Welfare functionary who facilitated the fingerprint switch.
Zixesha was gunned down in his government office in Idutya on June 15 last year.
He was killed allegedly by two hitmen paid a mere R12 000 for the murder.
Umtata police are also probing another five public servants suspected of collusion.
But first they had to overcome a major stumbling block put in the investigation’s way when provincial government bankers First National Bank “mislaid” crucial supporting documents.
The documents, which went missing in Butterworth halfway through the police investigation, detailed Yanta’s account transactions.
The loss of the documents means that fraud charges amounting to only R750 000 have been brought – as against the R13- million that detectives believe was defrauded from the provincial welfare department.
The accused, her husband Thabo Yanta and cousin Fortunde Nomlindo were arrested on July 23 last year after intensive investigations backed up by the elite special investigations unit (Scorpions) and the asset forfeiture unit (AFU).
Yanta’s brother was arrested a month after his sister’s September release on R50 000 bail for fraud, murder and conspiracy to murder charges, for allegedly hiding assets to be seized by the AFU.
After being freed on bail he incurred attempted murder charges for allegedly menacing witnesses and investigators, together with AK-47-toting friends.
His arrest follows a deployment in late October of two Scorpion operatives by National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka to help local police after the AFU won a court order to seize R750E000 in Nolundi Yanta’s assets.
Police interventions came only after almost a year of anarchy in the Transkei town, one of the poorest in the Eastern Cape, in which two of the region’s most powerful taxi associations fought a turf war that would eventually end in a Scorpions-directed crackdown in far-off East London.
Local police were among one of the province’s most understaffed -with a 57% absenteeism rate on any given day on grounds of sick leave alone.
The situation was “appalling”, the report concluded, mostly because “a vast number of public servants have taken it upon themselves to loot the funds in the overstretched budget”.
The bizarre tale is contained in a report issued by NGO the Human Rights Committee this week.
The committee said :”Passing the buck has taken on a new meaning in the Eastern Cape.”
Calling for drastic measures that included NGO and private sector partnership in effecting socio-economic programmes, the report said lack of co- ordination between Bisho and the national government had aggravated the situation and that the “monitoring of implementation of policy seems to be ad hoc”.
The commission slammed the provincial public service – which accounted for one in every five people in the Eastern Cape and included 16E000 “supernumerary bureaucrats paid to do nothing” – as lazy and largely corrupt.
@ Hundreds die waiting for aid
The death toll in flood-stricken Mozambique is believed to run into the hundreds, if not thousands, and there’s no end in sight with the United Nations warning of a new bout of flooding before the end of the week
Chris McGreal in Maputo
There is something wearily familiar about the sequence of events in Mozambique. For three weeks the country laboured under the worst floods in living memory.
No one outside took much notice. South Africa despatched a handful of military helicopters on rescue and aid missions. Britain gave some money to cope with the medical emergency. The United Nations sent a team to investigate.
But it was only when the television cameras arrived, and viewers across Europe and America got a glimpse of what it is to have your house washed away while you climb the nearest tree, that the crisis was taken seriously.
It was the same story in Somalia, Ethiopia and Goma. The Americans were dragged into Somalia by the television pictures. Western governments pretended the Rwandan genocide didn’t exist, but as Hutu refugees started dying in their tens of thousands from cholera on the nine o’clock news, the money gushed into Goma.
A disaster is only defined as such when sufficient numbers of people look its way. But by then it is often too late for many victims who might have been saved. Each time there are the same promises that the lessons will be learned.
No doubt some are, but when it comes to the next crisis they rarely seem to be applied.
One British official this week said the worst-case scenario in Mozambique is worse than anyone predicted. It is true that natural disasters are notoriously difficult to plan for. But the flooding in Mozambique has been drawn out over four weeks with sufficient warnings that it was going to worsen, and that when the time came, help would be required very fast and on a large scale.
The first floods hit nearly a month ago, turning vast swathes of southern and central Mozambique into lakes. Cyclone Eline compounded the misery when it ripped through the country more than a week ago. It wasn’t difficult to predict what the effect would be.
The cyclone poured rain on already badly flooded settlements before moving on to Zimbabwe and South Africa where, in a double whammy, Eline dumped a huge amount of water into rivers flowing back into Mozambique. Some of that water hit on Saturday night, consuming large towns such as Chokwe. It left tens of thousands of people stranded on roofs, in trees and on tiny islands of high ground. Hundreds of thousands were made homeless.
The UN, and British and other foreign officials, insist they were planning to deal with an escalation of the flooding. They reel off their donations of blankets and logisticians and what they are going to do in the coming days. But what really mattered in the first hours and days were rescue helicopters, and they were not on hand except for the ones already sent by South Africa. No money had been set aside for additional aircraft. No one bothered to explore where more helicopters might be found.
On Sunday – a day after the latest torrent of water carried away Chokwe – rescue workers were not discussing how many more helicopters were arriving but whether anyone was going to pay to keep the five South African aircraft flying.
To its credit, Britain pledged $1- million, but that did nothing to improve the situation.
On Tuesday, British officials were trumpeting London’s latest donation to pay for another five helicopters. Even if you take Saturday night’s flooding as the moment that kickstarted the expansion of the rescue effort, it has still taken Britain four crucial days. It is an awful long time if you happen to be perched in a tree.
The flaw is in the system. Disasters such as the Mozambique floods require a much larger organisation and funds than individual aid organisations or governments can offer. They require a pot of money already to hand, and people with the authority to spend it to provide whatever is most urgently required.
In Mozambique, it happens to be helicopters and boats.
Presumably, that responsibility should fall to the UN. After the first wave of floods hit Mozambique three weeks ago, the UN sent a team from its humanitarian disaster office which spent ten days in the country.
Its critics say it left without establishing a means of co-ordinating relief efforts. A similar team has now returned to do the same job. The two most senior UN officials in Mozambique were out of the country as the latest crisis hit.
Like most disasters, we will never know how many lives could’ve been saved by a quicker reaction. For the moment, no one knows if the death toll is in the hundreds or the thousands.
But you can be reasonably certain of one thing. Afterwards there will be hand wringing and meetings and promises that the lessons of Mozambique 2000 have been learned. Then some time in the next few years, another human calamity will befall another African country. And the victims had better hope it’s a slow news week on CNN.
@ At the mercy of strangers
Chris McGreal in Palmeiras
There is one question at the back of most Mozambican minds at the moment. How many dead?
It is more than academic for Tania Costa. The nine-year-old girl struggled to safety as the Incomati river consumed her home more than two weeks ago but she still does not know the fate of her family. Her father works in South Africa but the last time she saw her mother and two sisters they were disappearing into a wave of torrential rain as they fled the water sweeping through their village at Calanga.
Costa’s family might have escaped to the other side of the river and through the flooded villages and fields. Perhaps they are still clinging to an island of high ground, or the roof of a particularly tall building, although she could not remember ever seeing any. Or perhaps the worst has happened.
“We were all running away from the water and my mother was holding my sisters and then I just couldn’t see them any more. There was so much rain, I didn’t even know where I was running. I saw some other people and they called to me and told me to go with them until we got to the road,” she said. “It took a long time and the water was very high. All the time I was praying to God that my mother and sisters were still alive. I’m sure they are but I just can’t find them. I ask everyone, but no one knows where they are.”
Save the Children Fund says more than half the children it has accounted for in some areas are separated from their families. It is one more task the government and aid workers will have to grapple with once the immediate urgency of rescuing tens of thousands of people still stranded in the floods is past. But for now, the well being of many children is left to the kindness of strangers.
Costa is one of four children from four different families being cared for in the house of Maria Teixeira. All four have lost their mothers and fathers, at least temporarily. Teixeira took Costa in after she came across her sitting by the road, soaked to the skin, without so much as a change of clothes.
Word spread over the next couple of days, and the three other children came knocking at the door. Teixeira could not turn them away.
“The flooding is terrible for everyone but it is worse for the children.
“They suffer so much. They do not understand what is happening to them. I see them crying all the time because they want to be with their mothers. All I can tell them is that there is hope. If they survived then I am sure their mothers survived too,” she said.
Teixeira does not have much money. The food to feed her guests comes from her own harvest of cassava and maize. All the children sleep on the concrete floor in the same room of the tiny house. And all consider themselves very lucky to have encountered such caring. At other sites, dozens of children are crammed into a single house with only a couple of adults to look after them.
But they too are lucky.
There are still many children trapped in the flooded areas. They are at even more risk than their parents because they are more susceptible to the cold that sodden clothes bring, and to being forced to drink contaminated flood water. It is particularly bad for babies. Some can still suckle their mothers, but the women have often not had anything to eat in days. If there is an outbreak of cholera or dysentery, as some aid workers fear, the children will be most vulnerable.
No one is predicting how many children will require care after the floods pass, any more than anyone knows the number of dead. But it is presumed that tens of thousands of young people, with or without their parents, will need feeding.
Some will also require medical attention for wounds infected by the flood waters. Many will need new homes.
Even those children fortunate to escape with their parents face a difficult time. In parts of the capital, Maputo, whole neighbourhoods disappeared with the floods. Now two, three or even four families are crammed into a room. Save the Children has distributed blankets and cooking pots. Doctors have checked the children. But the immediate future is bleak.
Costa does not look her age. Her hair is tightly bound, with two little ridges running either side. She looks frail and exhausted. When she speaks, it is in a whisper.
“Every day I go to look at the water, to see if it is going down so I can go home and see if my mother is there. She doesn’t know where to look for me so I must find her. But there is still a lot of water and people say it is dangerous to go. I am not like a man. I cannot fight the water. I must wait and hope,” she said.
Teixeira is prepared for the worst. If any of her new charges’ mothers are dead, or cannot be found, then her temporary home could become a permanent one.
“It is for the government to decide what should happen to the children who lose their families. Perhaps they have other relatives in their villages. Costa’s father is in Johannesburg although she hasn’t seen him in a long time.
Perhaps he will come for her. But if it is necessary, I will tell them that I will look after any of these children here as if they are my own. We must all endure this together,” she said.
@ ‘The world can do more’
Chris McGreal in Maputo
The first contributions of a growing international aid effort to rescue Mozambicans from the worst floods of modern times arrived in the country on Wednesday this week, but the United Nations warned that it was still only a fraction of what is required with a new bout of flooding expected before the end of the week.
British-funded helicopters, American emergency supplies and hordes of aid workers were delivered to the stricken African country. But with an estimated 100E000 people still stranded in trees, on roofs and islands of high ground – and helicopters only able to rescue a few thousand people each day – the crisis is far from over.
Some people have been trapped by the floods for more than a week with little to eat, only contaminated flood water to drink and malaria rife. The death toll is believed to run into hundreds, if not thousands.
Brenda Barton of the World Food Programme said the emergency airlift is still a race against the clock.
“By no means are things in hand. We’ve just got a drop in the ocean of the aircraft we need. With all those people discovered in trees and on roofs, we will need an awful lot more before this crisis is over,” she said.
“Everyone is bracing for another wave of water on the Limpopo and the Sabi rivers.
“The authorities are trying to persuade people to move but they’re not moving. This disaster could get very much worse before it gets better.”
The UN now predicts that a fresh flood of water, on its way down the two rivers from neighbouring Zimbabwe and South Africa, will hit badly stricken southern and central Mozambique by the weekend. That could considerably worsen the plight of those already trapped, and strand tens of thousands more.
Mozambique’s president, Joaquim Chissano, pleaded for more aid not only to rescue those trapped by the floods but to assist an estimated one million people forced from their homes. Many are without shelter and, even when the waters subside, they will return to their towns and villages to discover their homes wrecked, their crops destroyed and their livestock dead.
“Our people have nothing. The world can do more,” he said.
Britain has sharply increased its aid to about R42-million since the crisis began a month ago. Three Puma helicopters, paid for by the United Kingdom, began work rescuing people on Wednesday. A Sea King helicopter was expected to arrive on Thursday and another smaller one on Friday.
Britain is also sending two transport planes carrying 30 emergency personnel, 69 inflatable motorboats and 39 life rafts. A contingent from the RNLIEis also expected.
The United States government approved an additional $10-million for food and rescue missions. The South African Rubber Duck Society has offered to send jet skis.
But even though 17 helicopters are expected to be pulling people out of the floods before the end of the week, the UN would like to see at least three times as many. The South African military has provided the backbone of the air rescue effort but air force representative Colonel Pikkie Sieberts said his government hesitated to despatch more aircraft until it knew who was going to pay for them.
“The situation could change now that we’re getting extra money from other countries. Just remember it costs about 1 700 [R17 000] per hour to operate one helicopter,” he said.
The most successful mission of the day was the rescue by a South African helicopter of a one-hour-old baby born in a tree as her mother perched above the floodwaters. A paramedic severed the umbilical cord between Sophia Pedro (22) and her baby daughter, Rositha, before the pair were airlifted to dry ground.
The World Health Organisation has appealed for baby delivery kits for the estimated 3E400 Mozambican women who will give birth in the next three months.
@ When things start to fall apart
Mercedes Sayagues
The euphoria of the constitutional referendum two weeks ago is over. Zimbabweans are back to a grim reality of hurricanes, fuel shortages, forex scarcity and farm invasions.
In spite of heavy rains, thousands of war veterans and their families invaded nearly 50 white-owned farms across the country.
The veterans are protesting the rejection, by 55% of voters, of the government’s draft constitution. Its clause 57 would have allowed the government to seize farms and pay compensation only for improvements.
Never mind that there are crops on the land and the tobacco harvest is on.
The invaders somehow have fuel to truck in people from towns and tractors to peg plots. They are organised, so far disciplined, and linked via cellphones to their headquarters – which many assume to be the ruling party Zanu-PF.
The war veterans, who act as praetorian guard for their patron, President Robert Mugabe, were bought off by hefty gratuities two years ago. Their controversial leader, Chenjerai Hitler Hunzvi, is accused of massive fraud in processing disability claims.
Hunzvi makes himself useful to the regime by sending out his shock troops when needed. He has threatened to attack striking workers, whites and rioting township youth.
There is little doubt that the government sponsors this wave of farm invasions. No farm belonging to top Zanu- PF officials has been targeted, although they own many large, often under-utilised farms.
The government’s passivity after a week of invasions points to its complicity.
In the invasions of two years ago, ministers were quickly dispatched to talk to the settlers. Not this time.
On Tuesday, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri said the invasions were a political issue to be resolved by politicians. “What do you expect the police to do?” he asked.
Opposition parties have condemned the invasions as a Zanu-PF ploy. The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), which groups the approximately 4 000 white farmers in Zimbabwe, reacted feebly.
Its leadership appears afraid of antagonising the government or risking accusations of racism.
The CFU agrees there is an urgent need for land reform to resettle peasant farmers now crowded on poor land. But they want this to be effected on a willing-seller-willing-buyer basis.
The spate of farm invasions has been interpreted as Mugabe’s venting, by remote control, his frustration at losing the recent referendum. Campaigning for a Yes vote, Mugabe trumpeted the land issue to win support in rural areas.
“The International Monetary Fund and donors will be unhappy if our government is seen to be promoting land invasions that scare property owners and investors,” says economist John Robertson.
Already Zimbabwe’s economy staggers from day to day, drip-fed by fuel and energy from South Africa.
Over the weekend, petrol and paraffin were unavailable. Diesel barely trickled in. In the townships, riot police with sjamboks kept angry people at bay. In the posh suburb of Avondale, an irate motorist shot and injured a man who tried to jump the queue.
The shortage is slowly paralysing the economy. Workers don’t show up because they are queueing for fuel. Bread and fresh produce are not delivered. Imports of raw materials are down.
“We see a massive decline of business efficiency across the economy,” says Robertson.
Interviewed on Zimbabwean television about the fuel crisis, Mugabe appeared nervous and fidgety. Stammering a couple times, he professed no fresh ideas to solve the crisis except to place the ministry of energy in the President’s Office.
Minister of Energy and Transport Enos Chikowore, a relative of Mugabe, resigned last Friday. Last year, Chikowore said on TV that oil importer Noczim was “the most corrupt and inefficient of all the agencies under my ministry”.
He failed to do anything about it. This week police arrested Noczim’s top management on charges of irregular tender awards.
To top it, cyclone Eline hit at the worst possible time. Its effects – 35 dead, 250E000 homeless, crops destroyed – were compounded by the government’s inefficiency. Rescue efforts were hampered because many helicopters were committed to the war in the Great Lakes region.
When Mugabe and half a dozen ministers toured the flooded south in his luxurious French helicopter, irate villagers complained the officials had come empty handed.
The ministers, however, did not leave empty handed. They packed the helicopter with watermelons bought cheaply at the roadside, later unloaded at Manyame air base.
With popular discontent soaring, Zanu-PF worries it could do poorly in the parliamentary elections scheduled for April.
Joining the fray is former prime minister Ian Smith. On Wednesday he and independent politician Lupi Mushayakarara unveiled a coalition of small opposition parties, the National Democratic Front.
Mugabe can legally postpone the elections until mid-year – except he is in a Catch-22 trap.
At Z$38 per US$1, the Zimbabwe dollar is artificially pegged; it should be at least Z$45 to the dollar, according to economists.
The tobacco auctions, Zimbabwe’s prime forex earner, are scheduled to open at the end of April. But before the auctions open, exchange controls will have to be lifted, otherwise the farmers would almost certainly refuse to deliver their tobacco.
But this would mean the Zimbabwe dollar would fall to its real international levels – leading to increases in inflation that already stands at 60%, and rising public anger.
@ Red tape snags ‘bobbies on the beat’ plan
Police are looking into the legality of a suburban rent-a-reservist scheme
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni
A scheme reportedly responsible for a 5% reduction in crime in just two months in a string of Johannesburg suburbs is being disbanded in one and radically changed in another as police look at its legality.
Shop owners in Emmarentia, Parkview, Parkhurst and Greenside were taking community policing to new heights, with security guards registered and trained as police reservists, kitted out in police uniform and supplied with state firearms.
But the scheme is foundering on a technicality: the guards-cum-reservists are being paid by the people whose areas they patrol.
The projects have been run by shop owners jointly with the Parkview Police Station. And although shop owners and residents in the suburbs affected hail the projects as a solution to the crime wave in the suburbs, police authorities say national Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi “did not authorise the utilisation of police reservists as security guards”.Gauteng police representative Director Azwindini Nengovhela says Gauteng’s provincial commissioner has ordered the area commissioner to investigate the matter. A report is due soon.
Meanwhile Parkview has disbanded its “bobbies on the beat” project. And Greenside has given back its police uniforms and weapons, with guards relying solely on cellphones and two-way radios to contact the station if they need to arrest anyone.
Last week the Mail & Guardian visited the Greenside shopping complex to view the project, set up there in December last year.
The project has been spearheaded by the Greenside Traders’ Association. Its chair, Dimitri Panayiotou, explains that his organisation has employed six policemen to guard the Greenside shopping complex. But Panayiotou quickly amends that description. “I would rather call the six policemen ‘street managers'” because “they are not really policemen”. Still, “a reservist has a lot more flexibility” than an ordinary security guard. And the six “street managers” patrolling the shopping complex are well trained.
Panayiotou says Parkview police authorities “come around to check if everything is up to standard and they deal with the discipline part of it”. The Greenside Traders’ Association, Panayiotou says, “takes care of the six policemen and pays them monthly salaries”. The association pays for police uniforms as well and has bought two cellphones for its “street managers”.
“We use the cellphones to communicate with shop owners. If somebody has a problem he can call us and we react quickly,” says Constable Jeffrey Matyobeni, who patrols at Greenside. “We have managed to drive drunken people and shoplifters away from this place. They fear to see policemen around here,” he says.
Will they be as effective without uniforms?
“It won’t be as effective as it is now,” says Panayiotou. “The uniform is one of the biggest deterrents; criminals will avoid the area if they notice cops all over the place.”
Panayiotou, who is the owner of the Greenside Spar supermarket, says the idea of “street managers” was introduced to his association by businessmen from Parkhurst, Emmarentia and Parkview. Shop owners pay a fee ranging from R200 to R2E000 for protection.
Sergeant Andre van der Merwe has been responsible for training police reservists at Parkview police station. Companies, he says, “first employ people to be security guards and then ask us [police] to train them as police reservists”. Police reservists, he says, guard shopping centres in the suburbs on a voluntary basis. The guards in Greenside and other suburbs “do not get paid for doing police work. Rather they get paid for being pavement managers.”
Gauteng police fear the project is open to abuse. Gauteng police officials say former national police commissioner George Fivaz “issued a circular that police reservists are not allowed to perform police work on a private basis”.
“The essence of this thing is that people are being paid as street managers but not as reservists. The system itself is not illegal, as the reservists sign for the state firearms they use,” Van der Merwe says.
Now it all seems set to change – although Greenside, at least, is determined to keep its pavement managers on, in some form. “It’s a system that’s working, and I think it should spread through the country,” says Panayiotou.
@ Rwanda implicated in Congo gorilla massacre
While war continues in Congo, the region’s famous primates are being slaughtered
Gregory Mthembu-Salter and Ruth Kansky
Dozens of rare eastern lowland gorillas and hundreds of elephants have been slaughtered in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kahuzi-Biega national park near the Rwandan border since war first broke out in the area in 1996 – and the carnage is continuing.
According t