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- A Stuijt
- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
No ritual slaughter allowed at WC2010 says FIFA
15:33 | 
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A Stuijt |
Only 10 percent of Kruger Park WC2010 spaces booked
Only about 10 percent of the accommodation available in the Kruger National Park had been booked by World Cup accommodation agent Match, an official has said. "Very little" of the accommodation previously reserved for Match had been sold, said Glenn Phillips, the SA National Parks (SANParks) tourism and marketing manager.
The SANParks had agreed to have 30 percent of its inventory marketed for the World Cup through official Fifa agents. "There were to be specific release periods if the inventory was not sold on time by Match," Phillips said. SANParks would now immediately release 14 ,731 room nights to the general public. – Sapa http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?from=rss_&fArticleId=5375366 Submit your comment
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“No ritual slaughter plans for World Cup 2010” – FIFA assures Dutch animal-rights party:
March 3 2010 - The Dutch Animal-Rights Party – represented by two MPs: lawyer Ms Marianne Thiemen and marketing manager Esther Ouwehand – write me today that FIFA has assured them that “no ritual slaughter’ would be allowed at the WC2010.
The party launched an investigation after our petition against the publicly-announced plans that ‘ritual slaughter rituals’ were planned around the World Cup 2010 football tournaments in South Africa. In January I had alerted the party to these very persistent reports – fuelled by SA cultural department official Zolani Mkiva, chairman of the Makhonya Royal Trust, who had announced plans to publicly sacrifice live cattle at the opening ceremonies of the FIFA World Cup 2010 football tournaments in South Africa in June. It’s amazing that the Dutch party took so long to respond – they usually are so alert to protecting the rights of animals. I only received their email this morning – coincidentially also the date of the countrywide municipal elections…
- Also read: “Bull-killing splits South Africa”. and: SA President’s wedding not quite traditional and My petition to Dutch Animal Rights Party
South African traditional leaders announced that they had intended performing ritual animal slaughters in order to bless the Soccer Football Stadiums, with Mkiva quoted as saying: “The tournament has to to be blessed in true “African style” and they are going to slaughter cows in sacrifice at each of the 10 stadiums to be used for the event.
Mkiva's plan was supported by Land-Reform and Traditional Affairs cabinet-minister Sicelo Shiceka who according to the BBC supported the plan for the live slaughter at least ten cows/ór bulls at each of the ten football stadia. Also reported was that the national South african animal-rights association did not have any objections to the ritual slaughter ‘provided it was undertaken humanely’.
- However in reality such ritual animals are not ever humane – the creatures are slaughtered very slowly … accompanied by a great deal of very obvious pain and bellowing. The ritual on video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaxRE44Erss
The Dutch party officials write me today: “The Animal Rights Party is a vehement opponent of the public- and unnecessary slaughter of animals. We have been informed by FIFA in response to our enquiry that there were no plans to conduct such ritual slaughter at the WC2010. However if this turns out to be inaccurate we will raise our voice again’. (signed by Tweede Kamerfractie Partij voor de Dieren; telephone 070 31 83 460; media telephone 06 26 94 59 00 email: partijvoordedieren@tweedekamer.nl
On online petition also was launched against Mkiva’s plans: http://thewordwright.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/2010-soccer-world-cup-animal-sacrifice-planned/
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Australian citizen Ian Murrell paid a murderer in his cell to avoid rape
Two UK tourists who were illegally arrested at Beit Bridge border-crossing and kept in a jail cell in ‘harrowing circumstances’ in 2007 were awarded damages of R90,000 each to be paid by the SA Minister of Security and Safety, reports Beeld journalist Jeanne-Marié Versluis on March 3 2010.
Acting Pretoria High Court judge Jody Kollapen ruled that these ‘two carefree holiday-makers had arrived to enjoy the country’s extraordinary beauty. Within an hour they were treated as criminals and placed in cells so shockingly filthy that they were well below the standards set by the Human Rights Manifest, he said.
He ruled that the two visitors – Mr Ian Murrell of Australia and Ms Siyananiso Mashava of Zimbabwe – had arrived from their permanent domicile in Great Britain on 14 A
ugust 2007 to vacation in South Africa when they were illegally arrested and kept in custody in the reportedly “filthy, dangerous and unhealthy” Musina SAPS jail. The couple had rented a Toyota Tazz at Avo Car Rental in Boksburg which rental period was set to expire on 24 August. On August 21 this rental vehicle was reportedly involved in a ‘small accident without any damage’ at the Beit Bridge police station. The police checked its computer system and claimed that they had found out that it was a stolen car – and arrested the couple even though they showed their legal car-hire documents to constable Mamabola – and Avo Car Rental had moreover also confirmed by telephone that the couple had hired the car from them legally. Kollapen said in his summary that it was ‘common cause’ however that this specific car had been recorded as stolen on 10 May 2007 – and that it was found back two days later. The police had failed to update their documents – yet the couple were arrested, held overnight in a Musina police cell and released the next day. Kollapen said ‘it is difficult to understand for any ‘reasonable person’ who received all that information about the legality of the rental car ‘could still persist with the conviction that the couple had carried out a crime.”
Murrell was held with 20 other men in the same cell and neither food nor water were available. “He shared a sleeping place with a self-acknowleged murderer and had to pay for his safety with money and cigarettes’, said Kollapen. Ms Mashava als shared a cell with other arrestees – and the toilet in this cell was ‘covered in faeces’. She sat against the celldoor for eleven hours. After their release Murrell was immediately admitted to hospital with symptoms of pneumonia – and he returned still ill on 25 August 2007. “there is a widespread suggestion that his subsequent poor health could have been directly caused by the conditions during his incarceration. However there was no evidence to prove this and will not be considered in this ruling,’ the judge said.However there also was ‘no doubt that the complainants had experienced a traumatic time period.’http://www.beeld.com/Content/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/1928/8008089e6e914a9d8cf104224383e7a6/03-03-2010-03-37/Twee_toeriste_11_uur_aangehou_
Municipal protests grow larger, more violent…
Racist ANC-minister blames white ratepayers for collapsing municipal services …
With increasingly violent and larger mobs demanding better (and free) municipal service-delivery, ANC-cabinet minister Sicelo Shiceka has shifted all the blame for the ANC’s disastrous local-management skills to white ratepayers today – accusing “white ratepayer associations of creating ‘parallel governments’ which ‘deliberately undermine the ability of municipalities to deliver services.”
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Mass protest of 100,000 black Brits residents planned -- maids stay away from work; shops close down… Meyerton also restless: Langlaagte road sabotaged with oil…
In Brits a mass protest is being planned from today -- with organisers hoping that up to 100,000 black residents will overwhelm the centre of this small rural town behind the Magalies Mountains. Radio 702 also reports at 14:00 that Meyerton protestors have been throwing petrol-bombs at the local police after the local DA-run municipality had confiscated residents’ possessions due to non-payment of rates. Earlier Midvaal’s Mayor Timothy Nasc promised to return the possessions – but residents once again clashed with police. Mr Nasc accused “political forces of instigating violence’; that ‘the ANC was trying to make the DA-led council ungovernable”.SAPS constable Tikoane Sonopo said more than 150 people vowed not to leave the Johan le Roux road until the mayor or a representative came to address them."They are alleging that most of their furniture was confiscated by a sheriff sent by the municipality for unpaid rates and taxes on Tuesday.They want it returned or somebody to tell them when it would be returned." http://www.ewn.co.za/articleprog.aspx?id=33871
Advance warnings of the pending mass-protest in Brits were sounded yesterday by the Afrikaner People’s Party. They wrote that protest-organisers were openly threatening to loot and destroy all local businesses and attack white ratepayers in their homes this week.
(The last time I personally witnessed such a mass-protest as a journalist was on June 22, 1992 in Boipatong township - when three streams of tens of thousands of Pan Africanist Congress of Azania protestors diverged similtaneously – deliberately blocking all the roads and meeting at one narrow intersection in front of the local brewery. This resulted in 45 deaths during this so-named Boipatong massacre when agent-provocateurs were spotted inside these restless crowds and undermanned riot-police units also tried to protect white residential areas and the central business district of nearby Vereeniging. )
Police suspect that roads are also being sabotaged today – for instance police are investigating who could have been responsible for a coating of oil on the Main Reef road near Langlaagte – and which had forced its Western-lane closure. http://www.news24.com/Content/SouthAfrica/News/1059/e3653eeaeac44a4ab389043bff4288cb/03-03-2010-09-08/Oil_poured_along_Joburg_road
Our Facebook members in Brits also reported at 13:00 that all the shops have battened down the hatches and the domestic servants have also massively failed to show up for work at the homes of their white employers this morning. The domestic workers allegedly told their employers that they are being threatened and intimidated into staying away from work and many also are forced to participate in the mass protests.
- At 3pm it was reported from Brits: “Police are right now firing rubber bullets against growing numbers of black protestors to try and curb the delivery-protests,” write several Facebook members.”The whites at certain shops which remained open were threatened with murder and they were forced to close up. The reasons for the mass protests given by the protestors are amongs others; : the large number of worms in the drinking water and the lack of municipal services to the black townships. "
Pietermaritzburg municipal workers want ANC-managers arrested: fear not being paid
- Workers at the Msunduzi/Pietermaritzburg municility fear not getting their salaries at the end of the month because the ratepayers's coffers have dried up months ago… according the Municipal Workers Union ‘s Pietermaritzburg branch secretary Nokubonga Dinga. Municipal services came to a grinding halt on Wednesday when thousands of workers took to the streets to deliver a memorandum to the office of Cooperative Governance MEC Nomusa Dube.
Municipal services such as the collecting of garbage had been affected since workers went on a go slow last week. Dinga said the union wanted managers to be arrested and the municipality’s executive committee to be disbanded because they had failed the people of Pietermaritzburg.
They also want the mayor, Zanele Hlatswayo, to be recalled by her party, the African National Congress (ANC). http://www.news24.com/Content/SouthAfrica/News/1059/fe4a525482ee4340a74ed6f0e45a6785/03-03-2010-02-22/Municipal_workers_fear_not_being_paid
With the ANC-cabinet minister now trying to shift the blame to white ratepayers it could be fuelling these flames of hatred even more. Only two days ago a violent service-delivery protest in Boipatong township was defused single-handedly by one particularly courageous Boer cop – however hundreds of black protestors have already been arrested for public violence since January this year all across the country – and usually the SAPS resort to firing at violent protestors with rubber bullets and tear gas; which in turn cause even more reactive violence and anger.
Due to the gross mismanagement of the great many self-enriching, greedy and incompetent ANC-managers countrywide - only three percent of all the sewerage-purification plants in South Africa, all built during apartheid by white ratepayers, now are still are in working order . There is understandable outrage over the dangerously potholed roads, the collapsing electricity-grids and the widespread fresh-water pollution from constantly-overflowing sewers. Hundreds of thousands of township residents – for instance in Orange Farm this week and in the town of Brits near Hartbeespoort Dam last month – now often find themselves frequently wading through stinking sewerage overrunning their streets and backyards… http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/263485
Protestors are ‘babies crying for their parents’
Shiceka - the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs – didn’t merely blame the white ratepayers however – he also lashed out at the huge mobs of very angry service-delivery protestors calling them “babies crying for their parents’.
He made his angry anti-white accusations at a media briefing in Cape Town. The ANC-government is increasingly under pressure from these widespread and increasingly violent daily protests by hundreds of thousands of black residents who demand ‘better municipal service delivery’ – even though they are not willing to pay for them. Less than 5% of all of Soweto’s several million electricity consumers for instance actually pay for their electricity bills. The rest syphon electricity illegally from the grid – or simply refuse to pay their bills. They also mounted huge protests against the pre-paid meter programme of ESKOM – destroying the meters as soon as they were installed.
The Minister admitted that ‘the majority of the ratepayers in South Africa are whites.” He forgot to mention that they also suffer equally from the lack of service delivery although they do pay rates and taxes and their municipal services get cut off if they happen to be slow in paying their bills.
‘280 white ratepayers associations now place their rates in trust accounts…’
Yet - Shiceka this week claimed in his conference that he had “‘made the startling discovery’ that more than 280 white ratepayers’ associations were now already placing their money for municipal services in private trust accounts.’ He forgot to say however that all these associations only did this after they had officially declared legal disputes in local law courts – with the full knowledge of ANC-run town managers.
- This very specific law allows the ratepayer-associations to then administer their own service-delivery projects by skilled, unpaid volunteers; using the rates to hire private contractors (without any political links) – in order to carry out the maintenance and upgrades of all the municipal infrastructures. The ratepayers associations also recently won a ground-breaking court case in Port Elizabeth which ruled that Ratepayers’ Associations which had declared such disputes and were running their own municipal services were also allowed the legal right to fire incompetent and/or fraudulent municipal managers…
This system is proving itself: once the dispute is declared and the rates are diverted legally to a trust fund, the ratepayers’ associations very rapidly get the broken-down sewerage works electricity grf and road-maintenance programmes working again – and this also of course greatly benefits all the local residents including those millions of blacks who pay no rates and taxes at all but still demand that all these free services be delivered to them – as indeed is constantly being promised to them by the ANC-regime.
The Minister is thus sweeping up a great deal of anti-white sentiment among the black residents who are increasingly irate with their ANC-run municipalities and shifting away the blame from ANC-run municipalities. He said on Wednesday that “they (the white ratepayers’ associations) take the money instead of paying service to municipalities and put it in a trust account. That undermines ability of municipalities to deliver services (…) Everybody must come to the party. If you are unhappy about potholes, about lack of service delivery, let us discuss that. That is what municipal service turnaround is all about. It must be driven by all the people."
He undoubtedly knew about all this but claimed that he had ‘just discovered this’. The man added: “"Anger has been boiling up. “ Local MECs and ‘local government leaders’ were holding an emergency meeting on Thursday to draw up a plan ‘to cap violent protests.” He also described the widespread protest campaigns demanding better municipal services as “babies crying for their parents. We have found it is like a baby who cries when it sees a parent. We are dealing with the issues now people are raising these thing more so that they can get attention. By 2014 we would like a situation where there are no violent protests in South Africa, where we are able to be responsive we can tend to peoples issues. They don't have to go to streets to burn tyres, to burn property for them to be listened to."
- Another main reason why the ANC-cabinet members are getting so vitriolic is the possible failure of the World Cup 2010 – it is simply not drawing the projected 450,000 visitors hoped for. WC2010 organiser Pule Selepe admitted yesterday – only 100 days before the tournaments – that only 150,000 tickets have been sold. “The outside world views us as crime-ridden’, he admitted. He even somberly admitted that ‘your guess is as good as mine’ when it came to the exact number of visitors which would still be arriving from abroad.http://www.news24.com/Content/SouthAfrica/News/1059/8fad1084b0844156aca90ca919966a15/03-03-2010-01-02/Whites_undermining_delivery
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BENEFIT-CONCERT TO GET INCURABLY-ILL SOUTH AFRICAN GIRL TO BELGIUM
A benefit-concert is planned in Gentbrugge, Belgium on June 20 2010 by an unknown South African gospel singer called Jenny Brown -- to help pay the travel costs to Belgium for her sister and deadly-ill little niece who live in Breidbach in King William’s Town. The singer’s niece Melody suffers from the incurable muscular disease Friedreich Ataxia - but her mother Bernadine can’t afford the medical care in South Africa -- and the collected funds will also go towards providing medical care for little Melody.
Jenny Brown is her stage name – her actual name is Jennifer De Bruyne-Thompson. Friedreich's ataxia is an inherited and incurable disease causing progressive damage to the nervous system – with muscle weakness, speech problems and heart disease. Ataxia results from the degeneration of nerve tissue in the spinal cord and of nerves that control muscle movement in the arms and legs. Symptoms usually begin between the ages of 5 and 15 but can appear as early as 18 months or as late as 30 years of age. The first symptom is usually difficulty in walking. The ataxia gradually worsens and slowly spreads to the arms and then the trunk.
The collected funds will also be earmarked for two other purposes: the non-profit group Sinethemba in the Swartland region; and the Oklahoma-clinic, Malmesbury.
The organisers did not provide a legal income-tax deduction number -- which is required in Belgium before funds can be collected for any charitable purposes, however.
Jenny will sing to the accompaniment of pianist Etienne van Beethoven on 20 June 2010 at the “Vierde Zaal” in Driebeek Street - located in the Flemish town of Gentbrugge.
- The tickets cost €8 each. Payments and electronic transfers to donations can be made directly to the Bank:
- IBAN : BE30 0625 8408 1011 - BIC : GKCCBEBB marked to the name of Ivan Gheysens, Jova-straat 8; 9050 Gent-Gentbrugge
- Contact information in Belgium for the artists: tel 32- (0) 9-253 51; or 32 71 (0) 9-253 79; or 24 (0) 9-231 55 17
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5.3-m. hectares of black-run farms (90%) are fallow
… Yet Land “Reform” Minister wastes another R461-million to prop up non-productive, incompetent black farmers
Land “Reform” Minister Nkwinti moaned at a media briefing yesterday that despite the State having spent ‘many billions' -- the government “would not meet its target of turning over 30 percent of arable land to the black majority by 2014 -- as it simply did not have the R72-million needed to achieve this.”
This is a very misleading statement: South Africa’s very arid landscape has only ever allowed six percent of its entire surface to be used for food-cropping: what the South African State has already done is to confiscate as much privately-owned farmland as possible. Less than one percent of the entire land-surface now is being food-cropped because of this massive Stalinist-style farm-land destruction programme.
The SA State has already spent ‘many billions’ to buy up 5.9-million hectares of commercial farmland for ‘redistribution’ to black residents – who just as was done in the Stalinist land-confiscation programmes, also had never farmed before. And now this minister bemoans the fact that a full 90% of these farms have already failed within just two seasons of being taken over by dismally incompetent people who have no knowledge nor interest in the complicated process of farming in the semi-arid South African landscape.
The Minister’s startling admission also confirms exactly what the much-maligned Philip du Toit wrote in his controversial book The Great South African Land Scandal. http://greatsalandscandal.blogspot.com/ – in which he also accused the ANC-regime of engineering famine - writing:
The racist ANC-regime is engineering famine’
- “The Marxist, racist ANC regime is engineering famine in South Africa. It commits systematic genocide against white farmers to steal their land. Absolute power flows not only from the barrel of a gun, but also from the hand which holds the food. Stalin starved 11-million Ukrainians in 1933; Cambodian dictator Pol Pot 2-million in 1975. Mugabe in 2000 … and is SA next?” (contact: boerboel@mighty.co.za)
So what does Nkwinto plan to do about these 5.3-million hectares of destroyed farmland and indeed what about all those millions of poor black people who can now lay claim to this land? He said at the media briefing yesterday that he wants to ‘improve the current output of the land which was already distributed’.
He talks tough – warning that “if people don’t use this land for agricultural output they will have to get off it”- and that the "use it or lose it principle” will be firmly applied to redistributed farmland to ensure that South Africa's agricultural output does not decline further.” However his tough talk is just talk: it will never happen that the regime would forcibly remove those millions of black people from State-owned farms they’d already been given settlement rights to. It would sit very poorly with the voters:
- The overwhelming support which was received at the last ANC-conference in Polokwane/Pietersburg for its troika-partner - the SA Communist Party proposal to alienate all the privately-held properties in South Africa – including all its private homes in the cities; the mines; all the farmland and private game-reserves and all the businesses, was definitely a wake-up call for the rulng ANC-leadership. Throwing millions of unproductive ‘new black farmers’ off the State-owned land simply will never happen. READ SA Communist Party proposal to alienate all the privately-held properties
Plans to waste another R461-million to prop up non-productive black farmers
So his tough talk to throw unproductive black farmers off the State-owned farms did make the headlines – but well hidden inside the story remains the fact that he is still throwing even more taxpayers’ funds at keeping those very same unproductive black farmers on the land: budgeting another R254-million ‘which will “flow towards 200 black farmers in distress” as he put it -- and also getting capital-financing for an extra R207-million to help ‘struggling” black farmers pay off their (State-owned) Land Bank loans.
- Whether he will even succeed in removing these by now millions of “new farmers’ who were granted permission to settle on these 5.9million hectares of State-owned farm land -- is actually a moot point. The ANC-regime will never embark on such a course. The issue of private land-ownership has always been the mainstay of ANC propaganda: they get votes from the black electorate because of their constant stream of promises that they will take away all the viable farmland from Afrikaner farmers (even though the Afrikaners produce all of the country’s staple-foods) to hand it over to black communities. thus Mr Du Toit’s claim that the ANC is ‘engineering famine’ in South Africa’ also is entirely accurate. That’s the result of their policies.
Less than ONE PERCENT of the entire South African land-surface now is still used for food-cropping at all: the ANC’s land-‘reform’ policy clearly is a dismal failure… as any bush-pilot who flies over this dismal landscape will be able to tell you…Now the country ‘s more than 50-million residents have to be fed for the most part by staple-food imported from off-continent – mostly from South America.
It’s still an amazing admission by an ANC-cabinet member: there seems to be a dawning recognition that South Africa’s food-security is more important than such political considerations – however he’s not really talking about food-production itself: he’s actually talking about losing the tax-revenue from South Africa’s once so flourishing agricultural industry.
Of course Nkwinti uses a lot of ANC-doublespeak which can be interpreted in many different ways – and as all ANC-government statements this one also is deliberately complicated. For instance he says he is not going to apply the ‘use it or lose it’ principle to those black residents who were given land in the so-named ‘reconstitution’ process. And that’s different from the ‘redistribution’ process.
- The latter group – who were given perfectly good white-owned farms and proceed to destroy them in short order as the Minister has just pointed out – are the ones he is talking about. So who are these people who received ‘reconstituted farms”? He didn’t say – and the journalists present at his media briefing didn’t ask. Perhaps they are familiar with the ANC-codespeak. Perhaps they didn’t dare ask any intelligent questions.
What is clear however is that this ANC-cabinet minister basically was admitting that ninety percent of all these so-named ‘redistributed’ farms had failed. And it gets even worse each year: he also revealed that “last year more than half the farms bought by the government as part of its land redistribution for agricultural development programme had failed or fallen into decline.”
In other words – it took these ‘new farmers’ just two harvest seasons to destroy their farms’ ability to produce any excess food. Yet the white commercial farmers who had been forced to sell the land were producing so much excess food on those very same farms that South Africa – right up to 2002 – still was the largest food-exporter on the entire African continent, and also had more than enough affordable, excess food for local consumption. Now, South Africa has to import more than 60% of ALL its staple-food needs, ordering massive supplies from South American countries.
- The above opinion-piece was written based on the information in the following article: http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=163515&sn=Marketingweb_detail
- also: Farming reform a failure for 9 out of 10