Polity.org.za Audio Articles

A 73-year-old Mpumalanga woman is the first person to die of cholera in the province.

Her death was reported by the provincial health department.

The elderly woman, from Phaphamang Section in Phake, Dr JS Moroka, was admitted to Mmametlhake Hospital last Thursday with diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting.

Mpumalanga Health spokesperson Mandla Zwane said the family thought she was reacting to fish she ate during the day.

"She was also a known patient on hypertension treatment. However, when she got to the hospital, a cholera sample was taken and forwarded to the laboratory for investigation. The results came back positive," Zwane said.

He said the patient died on Wednesday at the hospital.

On Wednesday, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said two new cholera deaths were recorded in the past seven days.

To date, Cholera has claimed 23 lives in Hammanskraal, one in Free State and another one in Mpumalanga.

"The Department of Health has deployed an outbreak response team in Dr JS Moroka to investigate possible sources of infection and for contact tracing. The team will conduct intensive community awareness campaigns. Communities are advised to be highly alert for cholera," Zwane said.

According to the health department, cholera is a diarrhoeal disease caused by the vibrio cholera bacteria.

The symptoms include sudden diarrhoea, which is painless, watery diarrhoea (rice stool), nausea and vomiting. In children it presents as a fever, while some individuals do not fall ill.

The disease spreads through the ingestion/drinking of contaminated water with human faeces.

It may start from a few hours to five days of infection. The department said anyone who presents with diarrhoea, nausea, and vomiting should immediately seek medical assistance at a local health facility.

South Africa is considering switching the venue of an upcoming summit of Brics leaders to another country, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would resolve its dilemma over whether to execute an international arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The government is considering asking China to host the meeting of heads of State, or alternatively neighboring Mozambique, the people said, asking not to be identified because discussions about the matter are private and no decision has been taken yet. Department of International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor’s spokesperson, Lunga Ngqengelele, said that as things stand, the summit will be held in Gauteng province, where the commercial hub of Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria, are situated.

“As far as we are aware, we have announced the summit venue as Gauteng, South Africa,” he said. “That is what we know as of today.”

South Africa has invited Putin, along with the leaders of Brazil, India and China, to the August 22 to 24 summit. Because South Africa is a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), it would be obliged to execute an arrest warrant for Putin that the tribunal issued earlier this year if he travels to the country — an eventuality it’s intent on avoiding.

Neither China nor Mozambique are parties to the Rome Statute that established the ICC. Mozambique is unlikely to be a suitable venue because the country lacks the capacity to host an event on the scale of a Brics summit, one of the people said.

The South African government previously drew international criticism in 2015, when it refused to execute an ICC arrest warrant for then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who had been indicted for war crimes and genocide, while he was attending a meeting of African leaders in Johannesburg. South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that the government had acted unlawfully and the ICC found that it had failed to failed to comply with its international obligations.

ActionSA had the most reason to laugh all the way to the bank between January and March, as it was the party that declared the largest amount of donations to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).

The party, along with the African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA), declared donations totalling just under R6-million for the period between January and March, the fourth quarter of the 2022–2023 financial year.

ActionSA reported donations worth R3 730 000, while the ANC and the DA disclosed R1 996 880 and R259 103.83, respectively, according to a statement from the IEC.

"ActionSA's donations were received from three different donors, all of which are individual rather than corporate donors," according to the statement.

Dr BB Mabizela donated R105 000, Chris du Toit R125 000 and Martin Moshal R3.5-million.

The IEC said, "Martin Moshal is a repeat donor to ActionSA who has previously made donations to the same party valued at R11 000 000."

The Ichikowitz Family Foundation donated R1.5-million to the ANC and the Education and Training Unit (ETU) for Democracy and Development R496 880.

The former is a Johannesburg-based entity founded in 2010, while the latter is a non-profit organisation that offers training, facilitation, materials development and strategic planning services.

ETU's donation was an in-kind donation in the form of payment to printers towards the cost of 10 000 copies of the ANC National Policy Conference Discussion Documents. The donation was received in the previous quarter, but declared late.

"The party has been issued with a direction in terms of section 15 of the Act requesting the submission of written reasons why the declaration was submitted later than the regulated deadline," said the IEC.

The DA received an in-kind donation from a "repeat international donor", as the IEC put it, called the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF), of R139 103.83. Throughout the financial year, FNF donated R2 926 144.86 to the DA.

"The second donor is an entity known as Polyoak Packaging (Pty) Ltd, with a monetary donation of R120 000. The latter is a South African business entity that specialises in the design and manufacture of rigid plastic packaging for food, beverage and industrial applications. The donor has previously made a donation of the same amount to the party," said the IEC.

The Multi-Party Democracy Fund didn’t receive any contributions during the quarter.

"The commission will continue to engage individuals and entities, and it is hoped that with the 2024 elections fast approaching, South African corporates will realise the importance of supporting multi-party democracy through funding of political parties."

The unaudited amount of direct donations to political parties during the 2022-2023 financial year is approximately R134-million, about R11-million short of the previous year's audited figure of R145-million.

The number of South African municipalities that received clean audits decreased in 2022, with the Auditor-General telling lawmakers on Wednesday that a dearth of skills, inadequate leadership as well as a lack of accountability in local governance is contributing to ongoing service delivery failures.

Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke was presenting her findings on the audit outcomes of SA's 257 municipalities to Parliament, which showed only 38 received clean audits, down from 41 in 2021.

More than half of the clean audits came from the Western Cape, while no municipalities received clean audits in the Free State or the North West.

"The deterioration of institutions in the local government sphere is unfortunately continuing," she said.

"Our teams have witnessed the impact of water supply issues, and experienced directly the impact of untreated wastewater," she said. "They have seen that in far too many communities there is inadequate sanitation".

She said the deaths from Cholera in Hammanskraal was "a harsh reminder" of the impact of "continued neglect".

In the year to end June 2022, the AG identified R25-billion in unauthorised expenditure.

The vast majority of municipalities were not budgeting enough for the upkeep of infrastructure, she said. Instead, money was being spent on salaries, which was crowding out other spending.

Despite billions of rands in funds flowing through municipalities, the AG said that in many cases infrastructure was neglected and crumbling.

The root causes of poor service delivery was inadequate skills and capacity, a lack of leadership, and a lack of accountability and consequences.

"We have got to start setting a culture where there is an insistence on performance [and] integrity, and an attention to matters of transparency and accountability".

Maluleke said that around half of municipalities had approved unfunded budgets. And a quarter were not certain that they could continue as going concerns.

The AG acknowledged that what she as saying was not new.

"Much of what I am saying will be familiar to you," she told MPs.

"The real problem we will place at the door of those that lead the municipalities."

Former African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Ace Magashule has been found guilty of contravening the party's constitution when he attempted to suspend Cyril Ramaphosa in 2021.

The ANC national disciplinary committee (NDC) recommended that Magashule be expelled from the party for his behaviour.

He has seven days in which to appeal the ruling and explain why he should not be expelled from the party.

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said on Wednesday, during a press briefing at Luthuli House, that Magashule's disciplinary case was held earlier in May.

He was allowed to present to the committee regarding his charge sheet and the hearing.

"His failure to apologise constitutes misconduct. The charged member is found guilty on count one and two as charged.

"He is afforded seven calendar days from the day of being informed to make written submissions to the NDC to show cause why the ANC recommendation that the charged member be expelled should not be imposed as an appropriate sanction," said Mbalula, while reading from the ANC NDC findings and recommendations.

Ahead of his suspension as secretary-general in May 2021, Magashule had led a bitter battle against party leader Ramaphosa.

He was at the time facing corruption charges for his alleged involvement in the Free State asbestos case.

Magashule was facing suspension from his leadership role because of the ANC step-aside rule.

Instead of stepping aside from his role, he took it upon himself to write a suspension letter to Ramaphosa.

Mbalula said Magashule had no legal authorisation from the ANC national executive committee (NEC) to suspend Ramaphosa.

When asked to apologise to Ramaphosa, Magashule refused.

He was found guilty of misconduct and for contravening the ANC's constitution.

The former Free State premier was suspended from his official role at Luthuli House for most of his elected term, which ended in December.

He could also not contest for a leadership position at the ANC national conference in December.

Denying that brothers Rajesh and Atul Gupta's extradition from the United Arab Emirates was bungled, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola announced they would have a meeting with Emirati authorities to iron out the issues.

Responding to the debate on the justice department's budget, Lamola said the Red Notice - a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action - for the brother remained active.

"Which means if the Gupta brothers go to any country, where the Red Notice is active, there is still an obligation to that country to arrest them," he added.

Lamola reiterated they have done everything required of them regarding the extradition application.

He said, "So, the matter has not been bungled, it is being handled, and we are proceeding."

"We want to assure South Africans, with all extradition matters, they are protracted in their nature. But justice will prevail at the end."

The Guptas appeared in an Emirati court on 13 February, with the South African authorities completely in the dark, despite requests to be kept in the loop.

Only in April did the South African authorities catch any wind of the brothers' release, after a note verbale (diplomatic note) from the South African embassy in Abu Dhabi reached our shores.

South Africa could not appeal this decision, as it was heard by the Emirati appellate court.

The Guptas being on the lam is not the only setback in South Africa's quest for accountability for state capture - a week after that news reached South Africa, the first state capture case brought to trial has seen the Free State High Court granting Section 174 discharges to all but one of the accused in the National Prosecuting Authority's (NPA) Nulane fraud and money laundering case.

The final accused closed her case and was acquitted.

Acting Judge Nompumeleo Gusha was scathing in her judgment, saying: "It is an inescapable fact that almost R25-million of taxpayers' money left the fiscus.

"The questions that remain are why and who facilitated this. Regrettably, in casu [in this case], the institutions responsible to answer those questions failed," she ruled.

"At the risk of repetition, to say that the manner in which the investigation was conducted is a comedy of errors would be the understatement of the millennia," she said.

Without specifically addressing these matters, Lamola remained optimistic about the fight against corruption in his budget vote speech, claiming the NPA had made "significant progress in investigating corruption-related cases".

"The South African government is firmly committed to fighting crime, fraud, and corruption," he claimed.

"We have allocated a significant portion of our budget towards this critical mission. We must invest in this effort to ensure its success.

"To combat crime, fraud and corruption, the National Prosecution Authority's overall allocation for 2023/24 amounts to R5.407-billion.

"This amount includes the additional grant of R915-million made by government to strengthen our efforts in fighting crime and corruption.

"The Investigative Directorate is allocated a portion of R336-million out of the overall allocation."

Lamola said the NPA dealt with more than 850 000 criminal cases annually, with more than 600 000 being on court dockets.

"The progress made by the NPA is evident in the numbers. It is encouraging to see that they are growing from strength to strength," he added.

"Although there have been some setbacks, they are not insurmountable, and plans are in place to address them."

Opposition MPs were not as optimistic.

"While the minister is great at making promises and delivering plans on paper, he has been unable to put them in operation and had focused on attempting to propel his own personal career within his party, rather than make a success of the job he was given," said Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Glynnis Breytenbach.

She added one of the most pressing issues facing South Africa's justice...

Hours after the gazetting of diplomatic immunity for Brics attendees, international relations officials have clarified that the decision did not override existing arrest warrants issued by international tribunals, including the International Criminal Court (ICC).

This is as South Africa is under pressure to pronounce on the fate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is set to attend the summit in August despite the arrest warrant issued against him by the ICC.

On Tuesday, in a press statement, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) stated that issuing diplomatic immunities and privileges was standard procedure when hosting international summits and conferences in the country.

The statement read: "This is a standard conferment of immunities that we do for all international conferences and summits held in South Africa irrespective of the level of participation."

It further stated, "The immunities are for the conference and not for specific individuals. They are meant to protect the conference and its attendees from the jurisdiction of the host country for the duration of the conference."

The comments from the department come after the DA decided to pursue legal action on Monday to pressure the South African government into arresting Putin.

In an application filed on Monday at the High Court, party leader John Steenhuisen sought a declaration holding South Africa legally obligated as a signatory of the Rome Statute to comply with the warrant.

News24 earlier reported that Dirco spokesperson Clayson Monyela emphasised that the department's gazetting of the immunity notice was not linked to Putin but was a "normal routine".

He added that this decision was implemented before the upcoming Brics foreign ministers meeting on 1 June in Cape Town.

In a tweet on Tuesday morning, Monyela further said the decision was not unique nor foreign to South Africa, adding that "all countries issue similar immunities" and gave previous examples of when the country gazetted exemptions.

The tweet read: "All countries issue similar immunities. We did this previously when hosting the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP17), and African Union (AU) Summits. The exemptions DO NOT override any warrant issued by any international tribunal (like the ICC) against any attendee."

To avoid arresting Putin and violating the country's legal obligations to the ICC, an inter-ministerial task team chaired by Deputy President Paul Mashatile was set up in May.

The committee is set to address the legal implications of Putin attending the summit and find possible loopholes.

Police Minister Bheki Cele averred on Tuesday that most deaths relating to children are a result of the “domestic set-up” while announcing a decrease in child murders by 19.9% and a slight decrease in assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm in cases involving children.

Cele was briefing the media in Cape Town on the quarterly crime statistics, which reflected on crimes reported and detected by the South African Police Service (Saps) from January 1 to March 31.

He noted that, sadly and alarmingly, 29 more children were victims of attempted murder compared with the same comparative period last year.

The Saps registered and investigated 360 attempted murder cases involving minors.

“If one day we achieve the complete non-murder of any child in the Republic of South Africa, that will be the good day that we work towards that. If one is not mistaken this has been the second decrease in this category of crimes but the number is still very high that you look around more than 250 of these kids being killed,” he said.

He made reference to the Mpumalanga mother who, in 2019, fed her four children bread that she had laced with rat poison and a father who used a hammer to murder his children.

“There is quite a high number of children that are dying on the domestic set-up, hence we need to work in the integrated way as the police, that one cannot be won by the police alone, the departments like Social Development and other stakeholders and NGOs should be part of dealing with this issue,” he added.

Cele said there were those who are just criminals against kids, making reference to a parolee who raped a six-year old in the Western Cape.

“There are those who just prey on young people but there are those muthi issues. It does look like the muthi killings on children are increasing. Unfortunately even there, you find that there is a domestic element, as most of the time those missing children are taken by relatives or family members,” he said.

Meanwhile, women continue to be stalked by violence, mainly at the hands of men.

Cele explained that a double-digit percentage increase of 21.5% was recorded in attempted murder figures for the fourth quarter.

“This means there were 1 485 attempted murders of women in South Africa in the first three months of this year. 969 women were killed in the same period and over 15 000 women were assaulted and the Saps are investigating assault GBV cases,” he said.

Meanwhile, he said murder increased countrywide, by 3.4%, between January and March 2023, however, it is the lowest single-digit decrease recorded, compared with the previous three quarters.

“Though it is a decrease, these are not just figures but human lives that should be protected at all costs. This is why these figures prompt us as the police to double-up policing efforts to decrease contact crimes,” Cele stated.

He announced that 6 289 people were killed with either a firearm, knife, sharp and blunt instruments, stone and bare hands, between January and March this year, with the majority of the killings taking place in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), Western Cape and Gauteng provinces with arguments, vigilantism and robberies topping the motive list for murder.

He added that KZN also reported the highest figures of multiple-murder cases, followed by the Eastern Cape with 206 and 155 victims respectively.

The Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape provinces recorded decreases in murder figures with both the Western Cape and Northern Cape reporting double-digit decreases in murder cases, he outlined.

He said that while more work still needed to be done to combat contact crimes, the drop in murder figures was welcomed.

“These crime figures also show that the Western Cape is turning the corner on contact crimes cases. This is largely owing to combined efforts by law enforcement targeting high crime areas such as the Cape Flats,” Cele said.

The Department of Water and Sanitation is investigating the sewage-spilling manhole in the Vaal River. It has also issued a directive to the Ngwathe Local Municipality to stop polluting the river.

This comes after AfriForum and Save Ngwathe reported that the Vaal River was infected with cholera.

So far, one person has died of cholera in the Free State.

The civic organisations said water samples taken from the Vaal River in Parys on Tuesday last week tested positive for cholera.

The department, however, stated that tap water in Ngwathe was safe for consumption despite the cholera outbreak.

Department spokesperson Wisane Mavasa said it had conducted water quality tests on all sources of drinking water and could confirm that "the analyses indicated that treated water reticulated to taps in the area complied with the South African National Standards 241 quality requirements and was, therefore suitable for human consumption".

Mavasa said it must be noted that the point in the Vaal River where AfriForum took a sample of water and found cholera bacterium was near a sewage-spilling manhole that flows into the Vaal River.

"It is not surprising that raw water from that part of the river tested positive for cholera. However, this does not mean that treated water supplied by the municipality contains cholera."

Last Wednesday, the Free State health department voiced its concern about the increasing number of cholera cases in Ngwathe.

The provincial department said a 33-year-old woman from Vredefort died after she was admitted to Parys Hospital and diagnosed with diarrhoea. The province reported eight positive cases of cholera.

The civic groups said an accredited laboratory took water samples at different locations under the supervision of a water specialist.

They said the first water sample taken at the outlet of the waterworks was not contaminated with cholera.

The second water sample taken from a residential house in Parys tested negative for cholera but was infected with E. coli.

The third water sample was taken in the Vaal River, approximately 10 metres downstream from a manhole pouring sewage into the river for some time.

"It is this very water sample that is contaminated with Cholera and E. coli," their statement said.

AfriForum and Save Ngwathe appealed to residents of all the towns under Ngwathe municipality to refrain from drinking tap unless it is boiled first.

AfriForum's district coordinator for the Mooi River, Alta Pretorius said: "The help that AfriForum has been offering for the last two years has been ignored repeatedly, and now innocent people are paying with their lives."

According to the two organisations, there were several places where the raw sewage flowed into the river due to infrastructure that was burnt out or unavailable, load shedding and the fact that there was no emergency assistance such as generators or emergency pumps.

The groups said it was extremely worrying that the withdrawal point for Vredefort's water was only a kilometre from the sewage spill.

"It is precisely in Vredefort where there are also confirmed cases of cholera and where a resident died from this virus," they said.

In Gauteng, 23 people from Hammanskraal - which falls under the City of Tshwane, have died of cholera.

Deputy President Paul Mashatile has heaped praise on the joint Eskom and National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (Natjoints) security committee formed to tackle vandalism of Eskom infrastructure.

He said since its formation more than 50 suspected vandals were arrested.

"We [the government] have adopted an integrated security approach in collaboration with law enforcement agencies.

"To address infrastructure and associated crimes that affect Eskom's operations, Eskom and Natjoints established what we called the energy security priority committee and more than 50 infrastructure-related arrests have been made since January of this year," said Mashatile.

The deputy president made the remarks at an African National Congress treasurer-general's business breakfast in the North West on Monday.

In February, Eskom said theft and vandalism of its infrastructure were at "disastrous levels."

The power utility said damage to its network was leading to prolonged outages and putting lives at risk as it threatened essential services.

In February, Eskom spokesperson in Gauteng Amanda Qithi said, "The vandalism and theft have extended to include pylons whose tower members are often stolen by unscrupulous criminal elements resulting in the steel structures collapsing and posing extreme danger to members of the public.

Qithi said the vandalism and infrastructure theft also came at a tremendous financial cost to the power utility.

Mashatile said the government needed to ensure that Eskom infrastructure was protected at all costs as it forces ahead with trying to ensure that load shedding is ended.

"We are committed to implementing all necessary steps to maintain the security of our infrastructure for the community's benefit.

"Our government has on numerous occasions acknowledged the negative impact on livelihoods and on businesses that load shedding has, and we remain single-minded in our resolve to end load shedding within a much shorter time frame than initially expected," said Mashatile.

He added that government's approach going forward would focus on "improving Eskom's operational efficiency, bringing more power to the grid from other sources of energy such as solar, gas, renewables; and strengthening demand management measures including taking more people out of the Eskom grid".