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- A Stuijt
- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
Sewage runs in the streets of North West
18:38 | 
Posted by
A Stuijt |
DelaReyville, Brits: desperate residents warn of huge health-dangers
Mrs Annetjie van Rensburg and son Johan are desperate about the health dangers posed by the sewage running in the streets of DelaReyville – and matters are just as bad in Brits. The ANC-run province’s services have collapsed, causing huge sewage backups and growing public protests about the failed service delivery. The ANC national executive committee is holding an emergency meeting on Sunday about the situation in the province.
There should be cholera-warnings at Jukskei river:
One-third of the Jukskei river now is one-third sewage and two-thirds chemically-contaminated water, warned wetland activist Paul Fairall. The river runs from Ellis Park through the Johannesburg eastern suburbs such as Kensington and into the Hartbeespoort Dam – where it is used to irrigate 12,000 hecatares of fruit- and vegetable farms in the Brits area. Sewage is also running in the streets of Brits and pouring into the Crocodile river. Fairall warned that the entire region was threatened by cholera. Nine of 17 water samples taken from the Jukskei River at the Queen Street inlet to the lake had coliform levels above 2,4 million E-coli per 100 ml (the allowable maximum limit is one-thousand e-coli particles per 100ml). He detected cholera fibrio particles in the Jukskei. “There are no cholera warning signs up next to the Jukskei River in Alex where women collect water and children play.” http://www.citizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=108203,1,22
Nicolize van der Walt of Beeld newspaper reports from Delareyville that the sewage has been overflowing into the streets for the past two weeks, the stench is overwhelming and the health dangers are growing rapidly, with many residents forced to walk through the human waste on their daily errands in the town. Swarms of large black flies are everywhere, laying their eggs.
- DelaRey resident Annetjie van Rensburg gets furious when she talks about the rivers of sewage which streams from two manholes in front of her and brother Hans Coetzee’s butchery in Du Toit Street. The manhole covers are missing, the place is covered in swarms of black flies, human faeces and toiletpaper lies baking in the hot sun – and the customers now are forced to buy the meat from the backdoor to avoid the muck.
“Our customers buy the meat and then barbeque it in the lapa behind the butchery. We also serve pap and chakalalak It’s unheard of that these things are this unhygienic right in front of a butchery and a dining place. It’s illegal to spray against the flies inside any butchery…’
The municipality ignores all their complaints and requests, and after the health inspector visited the place, he went on ‘study-leave’. Another official of the technical department just ignores us altogether. ‘Ive told him straight out that the sh.t is running in the street, so he pulled himself up and said; ‘if you hire me, you can talk to me that way’. I don’t know if I will be able to hold my temper if he puts foot in my butchery again,’ she said.
She shows her meat-order documents and points out its details: she’s proud of the fact that they only sell Grade A meat. “It’s a terrible waste if the flies would lay their eggs in that meat. There now are fly-faeces everywhere, and the municipality claims they have been ‘working on the problem for two weeks’ now. It’s ridiculous. We pay R150,79 for sewage services – but there definitely are no services. We also don’t get our municipal waste bins, despite asking for them repeatedly. Our garbage bags have to stand in the street, and the problem extends to the apartment-residents behind the butchery: so they dump their dirty baby nappies, things just are rotting and stinking, said Hans.
The journalist confirmed after a long walk through town that the entire Du Toit street – a busy road with many pedestrians – have several places where the sewage is not only overflowing into the street, but it’s also beginning to seep through from below into the upper soil. The journalist reports that ‘the stench of human waste was heavy in the air’. Children play in the streets, people are walking through this human waste, tracking it into their homes and businesses everywhere, and thus greatly endangering their health.
The newspaper asked comment from Dakota Legoete, who is paid by the city’s taxpayers to manage the so-named Tswaing-munisipality. He does not respond to their enquiries. http://www.beeld.com/Content/Streekkoerante/Nuus/1984/ba70342b88664061b35fc3b0bc266d6f/27-11-2009-07-39/Noordwes_Rioolafval_bevuil_straat_
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Kempton Park woman and toddler son hijacked
Two robbers who hijacked mom and drove off with her little son were shot by police – one was killed, one injured
26 November 2009 - A woman and her 4-year-old son were hijacked by two robbers in Kempton Park. Gauteng police said the woman was travelling with her son in a Toyota Fortune when they were hijacked by two men in the East Rand around 9pm on Wednesday.
The two robbers forced her out of the car, taking off with her four-year-old son. They dumped the child in the Ivory Park area in Midrand where residents took him to the police station. Meanwhile police were led to the hijacked vehicle through its tracking device and caught up with the robbers on Malibongwe Drive between Randburg and the Cresta shopping centre.
“A shoot-out ensued and police fatally injured one of the suspects and arrested another,” Opperman said. The man, who is in his 30’s, will appear in the Randburg Magistrate’s court on Friday to face charges of hijacking, kidnapping and attempted murder.
Meanwhile, it was earlier incorrectly reported that the hijhacked woman may have worked at the US embassy. “Police saw the [licence] disc on the window of the car and assumed that the car belonged to an embassy... (but) the car used to belong to an employee of an embassy and was sold to the complainant,” said Superintendent Eugene Opperman.
- Opperman said during her purchase of the car, the woman forgot to remove the old licence disc. She has since been reunited with her son. The car will remain with the police until their investigation is concluded.
- http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1092024
Racist hate-speech in City Press
“Omo washes brighter for whites”
2009-11-22 City Press reader Sakhiwo Pasha writes: “I ALWAYS watch the Omo challenge to clean “grass, grease and mud” competition presented by Nkanyiso Bhengu on (state-run) SABC1. A lot of women have entered this washing challenge.
- They choose a dirty shirt to wash and afterwards their individual prize is revealed to them. Prizes are in the form of school bursaries for children. http://www.omoauto.co.za/
Black contestants have won bursaries from R10 000 to R20 000. But what surprised me lately was that the first white woman to enter the competition won a R50 000 bursary. On November 3 a black woman at a children’s home in Gauteng won a bursary only worth R10 000. A few days later, another white woman won a R50 000 prize! I was shocked because none of the black women have won such big prizes.
- One begins to question the process of how these competitions are conducted.
- Is the intention for white women to win more money because of their colour?
This raises the question of “fairness” and begins to confirm the “foul play” one might have been suspecting.
I am not in any way a racist by this assertion, but I’m only focusing on the process. To me this indicates that this company is more biased towards the white community than the black community. What they show is that it’s a privilege for blacks to win while it’s a right for whites. When will the business community be prepared to change and embrace everyone as equals? They continue needing money from blacks as consumers of their product, but they continue to demean them. I have taken the decision not to continue buying Omo in protest of their racial discrimination.
Sakhiwo Pasha http://www.citypress.co.za/Content/MyCityPress/Letters/2165/17b1c1e2ff0044dcb50591200799c280/22-11-2009-02-00/Omo_washes_brighter_for_whites
Omo ad a tad too white for black viewers
2009-11-15 - Journalist Lumka Oliphant of City Press reports: “The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASASA) is investigating the Omo door-to-door competition after receiving complaints that it promotes racism.
Viewers of SABC1 and Facebookers say the competition, which runs during the screening of popular soapie Generations, encourages racism and promotes stereotypes about black people. They say black women are shown washing shirts by hand while white women use washing machines.
They also allege that the first white woman to win the competition bagged R50,000 in school bursaries while a previous black woman winner got only R10,000.
City Press readers have also complained about the competition. One reader has vowed never to buy the product “in protest at its racial discrimination”. In the advert for the competition black presenter Nkanyiso Bhengu pitches up at houses around the country and asks if the women have Omo in their homes. If they have they are invited to wash a shirt. They then peel back the collar, revealing the prize.
- Corné Koch, communications manager for ASASA, says they have received complaints about the advertisement and are assessing their validity and whether or not the matter falls in the jurisdiction of ASASA.“It should be noted that ASASA can only rule on the content of an advertisement and not comment on how the competition is being managed,” says Koch.
The makers of Omo ( the UK multinational Unilever) asked City Press to send questions in writing and promised to respond to them. Tilottama Pillai, Unilever’s head of communications, had not responded by the time of going to print. - City Press http://www.citypress.co.za/Content/SouthAfrica/News/2168/bbd23638d4884d9f99b312f791f38082/15-11-2009-02-00/Omo_ad_a_tad_too_white_for_black_viewers_
“Does Africa need whites to grow?”
2009-11-15 City Press reader Wella Msimanga of Cape Town writes: “IT SEEMS to make infinitely more sense to compare South Africa to other former “Dominion” countries such as Canada and Australia instead of Nigeria.
Black Africans make it clear they don’t want any whites in Africa anyway: (Picture by Khaya Ngena, City Press:) The Nov 1 2009 Nedbank-sponsored Soweto marathon showed that 99.9% of all the 8,000+ participants were blacks: there were just a few lone white faces among the crowd – accompanied by a burly bodyguard. White runners in SA marathons have been attacked frequently over the past few years: a bodyguard is not an unnecessary luxury. As it turned out this event was won by a black man, Tshidiso Bosiu and a white woman, Rene Kalmer, (picture) -- winning R100,000 each, plus R 10,000 for various time incentives. Kalmer moreover beat the 2001 race record of 2:45:37. http://www.athletics.org.za/News/FullNewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=394
Instead of attributing South Africa’s exceptional fortune in having imprerecord of 4923 runners completed the 19th Nedbank Soweto Marathon with another 6300 participants in the 10km walk and run events. ssive infrastructure to the supposed inherent superiority of whites, it would perhaps be better to consider the role of JBM Hertzog’s Pact Government of 1924 to 1933.
The Pact Government introduced tariffs to protect local industry, pursued import-substitutionist policies and embarked on an aggressive programme of developing physical infrastructure. This included the establishment of Iscor and Eskom to help in promoting the development of South Africa’s economy that now seems to dazzle Joe Igbokwe from Lagos.
But the crucial enabling factor, without which it is doubtful whether South Africa’s economic trajectory would have diverged from that of the rest of Africa, was the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of Westminster of December 1931.
- The Balfour Declaration emanated from the so-called Inter-Imperial Relations Committee, which was chaired by Arthur Balfour and, significantly, was inspired by among others Hertzog. These two interventions gave impetus to the independence of the former “Dominion” countries, allowing them a measure of autonomy to develop the infrastructure that in South Africa’s case Igbokwe finds so awesome.
However, the British were determined to ensure that their other colonies such as Nigeria and India remained utterly in thrall, perpetually weak and dependent.
- Ironically, Igbokwe does not need to hanker for whites as oil multinationals are already entrenched in Nigeria and, like Western multinationals everywhere, have been complicit in shoring up the kleptocratic and dysfunctional Nigerian state. Wella Msimanga, Cape Town
- http://www.citypress.co.za/Content/MyCityPress/Letters/2165/75caf2eedb7c4b8a91f10682e5bee5fd/15-11-2009-02-00/Does_Africa_need_whites_to_grow
Afrikaans pupil attacked by 16-member gang
Candy King, 17, suffers attack by 16 youths with knives, who kicked her and robbed her cellphone right in front of Afrikaans Hercules High School, Centurion
Virginia Keppler of Beeld newspaper reports that the racist attack against the Afrikaans pupils at the school in Centurion occurred at around 10:40am when the white Standard-Ten pupil was sitting in front of the school with a classmate, waiting for her mom Lee to load them up.
A large group of male pupils from another school, all blacks, then walked up to the girl, threatened her with knives, kicked and beat her and robbed her cellphone. She said the youth gang had first walked up to another schoolmate, hit him through the face and searched him – but found nothing of value on him. Then they did the same thing to two other schoolmates before attacking her, speaking to her in English, demanding to know what was in her satchel. When she said there was nothing in it, he pulled out a knife, held it to her throat, and grabbed her cellphone. She tried to grab it back but three of her friends then also started beating her. She fought back she said, hitting one hard. They then started beating and kicking her and threw her to the ground. “I screamed to my girlfriend to run away, but she stood right there. they pushed me over again, kicked me in the ribs and then ran off.’
A man in a car who happened to drive by, chased the boys in his car – and actually captured one, loading him into his car to try and take him to the police station. Several residents also stormed from their homes around the school and started chasing the boys – who threw them with rocks. The boy in the car then managed to escape, and the entire gang – which was dressed in the uniforms of a neighbouring school – then ran off.
Candy’s dad Ernest said he is livid about the assault on his daughter. “Our children aren’t safe anywhere any longer,’ he said. Police inspector Louis de Bruin said they were ‘going to try and capture the boys as quickly as we can. The police knows which school this gang came from’. http://www.beeld.com/Content/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/1928/c5472fbee92641aeb71246d5cae385f1/27-11-2009-12-33/Leerling_voor_Pta-skool_beroof