May 13 2011 at 04:39pm
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS
President Jacob Zuma. Picture: Bongiwe Mchunu
The ancestors will be upset if the ANC loses control of Nelson Mandela Bay in the local government elections on May 18, President Jacob Zuma said on Friday.
"The ancestors will be upset if Nelson Mandela Bay is lost because this is the home of the ANC," Zuma told a crowd of about 25,000 at Dan Qeqe Stadium.
Zuma, who was accompanied by Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi, was greeted by singing and dancing before he spoke.
Earlier Zuma said there had been a big debate before the general election in 2009 about whether the Congress of the People would win the metro from the ANC, but this had never happened.
"This is the home of the ANC. No one will take the ANC and no one feels threatened," he said.
Before the rally Zuma handed a new wheelchair to a woman he had met on a previous visit to Zwide. She had complained of struggling to operate her previous wheelchair. Zuma had promised to return with a new one.
The Democratic Alliance and Cope expect to win control of the metro from the ANC in a coalition after the election.
The rally on Friday was Zuma's last bid at winning over the cash-strapped metro's voters before voting on Wednesday. His campaign visit comes amidst widespread unhappiness in the Eastern Cape ANC over the party's lists of mayoral and ward candidates for the elections.
Party members in the province have complained about flaws in the candidate selection process, leading to court cases and even alleged assassination plots.
In Mthatha, King Sabatha Dalindyebo municipality mayor Siyakholwa Mlamli is under a cloud after his bodyguard and driver were arrested for allegedly soliciting a hitman to kill five prominent provincial ANC leaders.
Earlier this week an Eastern Cape chief, Mwelo Nonkonyana, claimed former ANC president Oliver Tambo spoke to him in a vision about candidate lists in the OR Tambo region. The party's Eastern Cape spokesman Mlibo Qoboshiyane dismissed it as an act of desperation.
Vavi warned that the ANC faced losing the Nelson Mandela Bay metro due to individualism and greed.
“You may find a very embarrassing situation: Nelson Mandela Bay under a Democratic Alliance leadership,” he said at a meeting in Johannesburg earlier.
“There is real danger that our people, who are sick and tired of all that is continuing to happen in that metro? may decide to stay away instead of voting for anybody else."
Losing control of Nelson Mandela Bay would be a major blow to Zuma as he neared the end of his first term as party president. In the past weeks he had visited the Eastern Cape and Nelson Mandela Bay several times, trying to reassure voters the ANC was still working for the people.
He told a rally in Graaff-Reinet in April the ANC needed to regain its two-thirds majority to be able to govern without the “interruption of opposition parties”, and that voting for the opposition was a waste of time.
The ANC-run municipality in Nelson Mandela Bay had had a difficult time delivering services due to a severe shortage of funds, drained by the building and maintaining of infrastructure for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
The Democratic Alliance's caucus leader in Nelson Mandela Bay, Leon de Villiers, believed mayor Zanoxolo Wayile failed residents of the metro by mismanaging the municipality's finances.
"The current cash crisis has seen an amount of R790 million being slashed from what was already a very depleted budget, as a result of the cost of hosting the World Cup."
Ratepayers in the municipality, unhappy about the city's "fruitless and wasteful" spending, have promised to take councillors to court every time they made a poor decision.
Nelson Mandela Bay ratepayer chairman Kobus Gerber cited R9
million spent on a city jazz festival while 22,000 poor people still used bucket toilets, as an example.
The city dismissed the criticism, saying its auto-industry-fed economy had been hit by the "great recession". One of the municipality's biggest successes, its spokesmen said, was the 22,000 houses built for the poor since 2008. The DA believed a lower turnout of ANC voters could sway things in its favour in the metro.
The party won 25 percent of the vote in 2006, taking 30 out of 120 council seats. In the 2009 general election support for the ANC dropped from 69 percent of the city to 49.6 percent, while Cope won 17 percent of the vote.
DA leader Helen Zille, who had also been wooing voters in the city, had been selling the party's success at governing Cape Town, Baviaans in the Eastern Cape and Midvaal in Gauteng.
Planning Minister Trevor Manuel said Zille had "lost her marbles" when ,after a rally in Nelson Mandela Bay earlier in May, she alluded to ANC heroes and said the DA was taking the "struggle forward".
“We must never forget our heroes," Zille said.
"Nelson Mandela is the father of our nation. We think of heroes like Oliver Tambo and Helen Suzman. Our heroes struggled for a better life for all. Which party is actually delivering a better life for all?" - Sapa
The Star
Comments by Sonny
Look around you and tell us what has really improved since 1994?
Only racism, affirmative action, hate, corruption and greed!!
We do not live in Wonderland and we certainly don't believe 'Alice Zuma!'
‘Shiceka is off sick’
May 14 2011 at 09:36am
Independent Newspapers
Co-operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka.
The co-operative governance and traditional affairs ministry was unable to confirm on Friday whether Minister Sicelo Shiceka was in hospital.
“What I know is that he is recuperating at home. We have not heard that he has been admitted to hospital,” his spokeswoman Vuyelwa Qinga Vika said.
She added the ministry was not going to give “running commentary” on his condition.
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa was appointed to act in Shiceka's position on February 24 “until further notice”, after Shiceka was given time off to “attend to his recovery following illness”.
ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe, answering questions for the ANC in a live Twitter interview, said: “Minister Shiceka is off sick. We will not continue while he is in hospital, but he (sic) outcome will be determined.” He was referring to progress on a probe into Shiceka's alleged abuse of state funds.
According to ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu: “All I know is that he's sick... I don't know if he 1/8Mantashe 3/8 meant he's in hospital in a literal sense.”
Mantashe could not immediately be reached for comment.
Shiceka allegedly used taxpayers' money for flights and luxury hotel accommodation, and state resources to build his private home in the Eastern Cape. The Sunday Times reported that municipal trucks were used to ferry water to the building site at Ingquza village in the Eastern Cape, while no water was being delivered to most of the surrounding community.
A R32 million tarred road was allegedly being routed past Shiceka's house, while residents in the area used dirt roads to reach their villages. It was claimed Shiceka's house would be among the first to get electricity.
He became the first minister since 1994 to be probed by Parliament's ethics committee. The public protector was asked to investigate his alleged spending of R335,000 on a trip to Switzerland to visit his girlfriend in prison, R640 000 in one year to stay at the One&Only hotel in Cape Town, and R160,000 in eight months flying his extended family around the country.
President Jacob Zuma had earlier said action would be taken against Shiceka if he was found guilty. - Sapa
The Star
Comments by Sonny
This thief is only off sick pending the elections on 18 May 2011.
He has embarrassed the ANC 'Big Time!'
‘Shoot the Boer’ appeal: judgment on Monday
May 13 2011 at 06:18pm
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS
ANC Youth League president Julius Malema with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela outside the Johannesburg High Court during his trial on charges of hate speech. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng
Judgment is expected to be handed down next week in an application by the ANC for leave to appeal an order that the lyric “shoot the boer” was incitement to crime, AfriForum said on Friday.
Judge Leon Halgryn was expected to hand down his ruling on Monday after judgment was reserved in the High Court in Johannesburg in November last year.
In March Mpumalanga farmer Willem Harmse successfully applied for an order that the words ANC Youth League president Julius Malema sang be banned. He and a businessman in the area, Mohammed Vawda, belong to a group called The Society for the Protection of our Constitution and they had planned a protest march against crime and farm murders.
Vawda wanted to put the words on a poster because he interpreted them to mean “shoot apartheid”. Harmse and Vawda argued about this, which led to Harmse taking it to the High Court in Johannesburg.
Halgryn, in the March application, declared the song illegal and unconstitutional.
The ANC applied for leave to appeal, feeling that Halgryn did not take into consideration the historic context of the song and that his order was too broad. It would, for example, ban academic discussion of the song, or prevent a group of anti-apartheid veterans from singing the song at a private gathering.
AfriForum's legal representative, Willie Spies, in a statement said it was important to distinguish between the case being heard on Monday and the hate speech case brought by his organisation against Malema for singing the struggle song containing the words “shoot the Boer”.
“It is further also important to note that Monday's ruling is no indication of the merits of the controversial order, but only whether the ANC on the one hand, and AfriForum on the other will be allowed to become parties to the case and lastly, whether leave to appeal will be granted to the ANC,” he said.
“The ruling will nevertheless be followed with great interest.”
The hate speech case continues on May 19. -
Sapa
The Star
Comments by Sonny
The above article is 'traditional' of the ANC ruling party!!
They hate the 'whites with a vengeance' and find it hard to hide the fact!
There aspirations are greed, power and money!
DEMOCRACY SHALL OVERCOME!!
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