SINCERETALK

The accused in the Thabo Bester case appearing in court on Tuesday had not submitted sufficient evidence for bail to be granted, Prosecutor Sello Matlhoko said. The bail hearing of five of the eight accused resumed in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court, with lawyers making closing arguments in favour of bail. The criminal trial is set to begin on 20 June. Bester and his partner Nandipha Magudumana have withdrawn their bail applications. Magudumana’s father, Zolile Sekeleni, is already out on bail. Matlhoko argued that, except for Natassja Jansen who faces lesser charges, it was up to the accused to provide evidence that “the interest of justice will be served by them being released on bail”. He said that the evidence submitted by the accused, via their affidavits, did not suffice. He was responding to closing arguments by lawyers for the accused. Advocate Kagisho Moruri, representing former G4S employee Senohe Matsoara, said that if the investigations took another month to compl...

ANALYSIS W ith the cost of borrowing higher than it has been since the 2008 global financial crisis , some suspect interest rates are nearing their peak. By ratcheting up interest rates even higher, the South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) risks over-tightening, imperilling the country’s already fragile economy. Meanwhile, prices have remained sticky and the risk of stagflation is rising — conditions which will further blunt the central bank’s main tool for taming inflation. In the wake of the recent rand crash, a number of economists expect the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) to lift the repo rate by another painful 50 basis points this Thursday. The Reserve Bank has received consistent criticism since it began raising the repo rate in November 2021.  Higher interest rates, its detractors have said, would throw cold water on the country’s already glacial economic growth. They also pointed out that hiking the cost of borrowing would probably not go far in the...

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Education is a door-opener and a life-changer, especially for girls and women, senior UN officials stressed at the 56th session of the Commission on Population and Development held last month, amid a global learning crisis Sadly, in many parts of Africa, the right to education is not equally accessible to all, especially regarding gende. Despite progress made over the years, particularly in achieving universal primary education, a significant gender gap in education persists across the continent. The gender gap in education across Africa is stark and remains a significant challenge. Despite progress made towards achieving the Education For All (EFA) goals, gender parity in education has not been fully realised on the continent. In fact, as of 2015, only the Seychelles has achieved education for all and in the same year, over 31 million primary school-age children were out of school in the region, with 53% being girls. The accompanying figure highlights the persistent gender di...

Local arms experts have shot holes in the United States ambassador’s claims that South Africa sold arms and ammunition to Russia in December 2022.  This follows the Russian embassy’s own statement on Wednesday dismissing US ambassador Reuben Brigety ’s claims that weapons were loaded on the sanctioned ship the Lady R . In the statement released on its website, the Russian embassy said Brigety should explain why Russia would need South African-produced arms and ammunition matching neither the types nor the calibres of the systems in service with Russia’s armed forces. It also questioned how the “minuscule” amount of “arms and ammunition” that was allegedly “uploaded onto the vessel” would influence the situation on the battlefield in Russia’s war on Ukraine. While the US embassy says it stands by Brigety’s claim, the Russian embassy characterised the ambassador’s statement as a “fabrication” aimed at swaying South Africa from its non-aligned position on the Russia-Ukraine confl...

For all the prodding South Africa to take a position on Europe’s first war in almost 80 years, it’s an impossible decision for a country whose economy is so intrinsically tied to both the Western and Eastern blocs of nations.  Along historical, political, economic and geographic lines, the country can’t afford to make an enemy of either bloc, resuscitating memories of Cold War divisions. Non-alignment is both a political strategy and an economic necessity, analysts say. Last week, diplomatic ties between South Africa and the US hit a crisis after ambassador Reuben Brigety accused the government of supplying arms to Russia, aiding Moscow’s assault on Ukraine . It resulted in the rand tanking past R19 (R19.36) for the first time since April 2020 . Although Russia has faced backlash in the form of economic sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, the government has refused to break ties with it, while also being at pains to stress that it is non-aligned. South Africa and Russia hav...

S ome years back, I had the sad, sorry and very often interesting job of being a markets editor, a position in which you are observed with the gainers and losers on the JSE, the strength and weakness of the rand on a daily basis. Of the two, the rand in particular — because of its liquidity — is the most volatile. After a while, you get the idea that daily moves of the rand are not to be followed with your heart; the moves can induce a heart attack. So, I stopped running to the front page every other day with a story of rand decline or gain, unless what I was witnessing was something that I could paint as a longer term and a structural shift in the currency.  This helped ease my anxieties about the rand that has been on a weakening ticket for well over a decade. The repricing, I’d made my mind up, was more a matter of emerging market nations losing their appeal because the investment world wanted more US dollars, Facebook, Amazon, Google and anything touched by Elon Musk. (Well,...

I f you are a lover of comics then it is likely that at some point you have read the French cartoon series, Asterix . The comic is about standing up for freedom and self-determination against a powerful bully. With its outlandish and intentional stereotypes, it provides an apt analogy that even a child can understand in the never-ending story of global politics. In every book there is a similar theme. Asterix and his supporters are always better prepared than their foes and are able to think on their feet in highly pressured situations.  Asterix, with an outsized moustache and massive nose, has two important weapons at his disposal. The first is his friendship with Obelix, the super strong dimwit who is the brawn to Asterix’s brain. The second weapon is a magic potion that gives Asterix superior strength for short periods of time that allows him to defeat any foe.   The protagonist hails from a self-sufficient village in the corner of Gaul, the ancient name for Weste...

D uring the last years of apartheid, Willem “Ters” Ehlers could feel the political tides turning.  His boss, president PW Botha — who had vehemently defied all calls for reform — was under pressure. Botha’s days of leading his party, and the country, were numbered. In 1989, Botha met Nelson Mandela in a secret meeting at his Tuynhuys office in Cape Town. Mandela was still in prison at the time. For apartheid stalwarts clinging to their notions of white supremacy, it marked the beginning of the end. The only photo of the meeting was taken by Ehlers. The fall of apartheid was bad news for Ehlers. A commodore in the South African Navy, he had risen fast to become Botha’s private secretary and aide-de-camp. He was part of the inner circle of an imperial president, which included defence minister Magnus Malan and apartheid assassin and super-spy Craig Williamson. Ehlers wielded considerable influence and would have had unparalleled insight into the increasingly paranoid and violent...

T he response time of the Western Cape emergency medical services (EMS) in gang red zone areas on the Cape Flats has again been thrust into the spotlight after the death of a woman who had to wait 24 hours for assistance.  Fatgiyah Boyes, 33, allegedly died of heart failure at her home in Donegal Court, Hanover Park , on 26 April. A day before her death, Boyes’ friend and neighbour, Zakiyah Petersen, requested an ambulance at about 12.50pm through 10177, the dedicated ambulance service number for Cape Town. Petersen received a message from EMS confirming that an ambulance had arrived at the stipulated location, despite the fact that it had not. She received the same arrival message after her second request for an ambulance.  With two reference numbers, and no medical assistance, Boyes and Petersen’s mothers worked throughout the night to ease Boyes’s discomfort and pain.  On 26 April, a community group requested assistance for Boyes and a third reference number was l...

B y 2050, up to 5% of Africa’s population — potentially 113 million people — may have to leave their homes because of the effects of climate change , a figure that is up from 1.5% today.  The majority of this movement will happen within countries, rather than across borders, according to the recent African Shifts report.  The report, produced by the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative (ACMI), documents the realities of climate-forced migration in Africa and possible scenarios for future climate displacement.  Climate mobility refers to the movement of people pushed by the adverse effects of sudden or slow-onset climate impacts. Within the next 30 years, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) region in East Africa, an area of 5.2 million square kilometres that comprises Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda, could see up to 10% of the population — about 55 million people — forced to move within their countries. Ru...

In the administration of former president Jacob Zuma, the picture painted was that a family in Saxonwold was running the top office in the land and was to blame for state capture. What we hoped his successor would do was bring the country back to some semblance of proper governance in all matters of state.  Five years later, that well intentioned search for greater accountability in the running of the state, rebuilding of trust and, in turn, the economy has morphed into nothing more than a blame game, finger-pointing about who was wrong, who is still wrong and the cause of our listlessness. In all the bickering that we’ve been through over the past five years, from the long-running saga about the competence of former public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane to this week’s parliamentary hearings into André de Ruyter’s allegations of corruption at Eskom, it feels as if we aren’t making progress in dealing with the structural fault lines in our country. Instead we are running into highe...

A New York jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing and defaming an American former magazine columnist and ordered the ex-president to pay her $5 million in damages. The nine jurors rejected E. Jean Carroll’s accusation of rape but unanimously upheld her other complaints in the closely watched civil trial, following less than three hours of deliberations. It marks the first time Trump has faced legal consequences over a string of sexual assault allegations dating back decades – and the former leader immediately rejected the verdict as a “disgrace.” Carroll, 79, sued Trump last year, alleging that he raped her in the changing room of the luxury Bergdorf Goodman store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in 1996. The former columnist for Elle magazine also claimed that Trump defamed her when he called her “a complete con job” after she went public with the allegation in 2019. Trump, the 76-year-old frontrunner for the Republican nomination in next year’s presidential elect...