Monday, November 28, 2011

Bomb left in Eastgate Mall



Bomb left in Eastgate Mall
2011-11-28 14:25




Eastgate evacuated


Related Links
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Petrol bomb thrown into East Cape truck

Lauren Hess, News24
Johannesburg
- An explosive device was left outside a jewellery store in Eastgate Mall on Monday, police confirmed to News24.

Captain Katlego Mogale said that the Johannesburg mall was evacuated after police received a phone call about a “suspicious case” which was left in front of a jewellery store.

The bomb disposal unit and sniffer dogs were sent in and it was found that there was in fact a bomb inside the briefcase, Mogale said.

EWN quoted the mall's management as saying that police had detonated the device, and that was the explosion people heard.

Mogale told News24 that the jewellery shop had received a “letter” warning of the explosive device.

Shoppers at the mall tweeted that they also saw a man running on the roof while police went after him and a helicopter circled overhead.

- Are you there? Send us your eyewitness accounts

- News24

Related to the above story


Device at Eastgate not a bomb
November 29 2011 at 11:58am
By Theresa Taylor and Thandi Skade


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INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS

Staff wait outside Eastgate Mall following a bomb threat at the shopping centre.

A device uncovered outside a store at Eastgate Mall was not a bomb, police said last night.

Gauteng police chief General Mzwandile Petros told Talk Radio 702 that the device had been a box with wires.

He said the police’s bomb squad had used a type of explosive to “neutralise” the device.

On Monday afternoon, police said they had detonated a bomb in a controlled explosion.

About 11am, Bedfordview police were alerted to a suspicious-looking package in the mall and alerted the dog and bomb disposal units.

Police spokeswoman Lieutenant-Colonel Katlego Mogale said a shop in the mall, believed to have been a jewellery store, had received a letter threatening them with a bomb and had then alerted security when they noticed a suspect suitcase outside the store.

The package was removed from under the escalator outside Bellagio Jewellers, but the owner denied receiving a letter and said it was the centre’s management who had alerted authorities.

Customers and staff were then evacuated from the premises. - The Star

Terrorist Watch...History in South Africa from the past !



TERRORIST WATCH!
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Terrorist watch! www.netcomuk.co.uk/~springbk/enemy.html

Mandela & the Church Street Bombing


Here are two photos showing the Church Street bombing. As mentioned before, in his so-called book, "Long Walk to Freedom", Mandela says that he "signed off" with this act of terrorism. People should take a look at what Mandela "signed off" with while he was in prison - convicted for other acts of terrorism! President P.W. Botha told Mandela way back in 1985, that he could be a free man as long as he did one thing: Publicly renounce violence. Mandela refused. That is why Mandela remained in prison until the appeaser F.W. de Klerk freed him unconditionally. The bottom line is that Nelson Mandela never publicly renounced violence - and we should never forget that.




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This is a story about Nelson Mandela, the world-famous "freedom fighter" and "democrat." You'll have to pardon those slightly sardonic quotes, because I'm afraid this is that kind of story: a bit iconoclastic, and likely to provoke howls of outrage from Western liberals who see Mandela as a benign black moderate who led an army of hymn-singing Uncle Toms to the promised land.

The technical term for those liberals is "useful idiot," but even I must concede that their intervention was actually quite intelligent, back in the 1950s, when this all started. In those days, good men were weak, and their apartheid adversaries invincible on all but one score: propaganda. The war of perceptions thus became the most critical of all battlefields, with the African National Congress constantly seeking to exaggerate apartheid's evils while portraying itself as "good" in a way that was universally appealing.

In the early sixties, Special Branch detectives came upon a piece of evidence that made this a bit tricky in Mandela's case - a handwritten essay titled, "How To Be A Good Communist," in which the leader of the ANC's newly-formed military wing opined that South Africa would become "a land of milk and honey" under Communist rule. We were told that Mandela was innocently toying with Marxist ideas, trying to understand their appeal, but this made little sense. Almost all his co-conspirators were Communists, wedded to a Sovietist doctrine that envisaged a two-phase ending to the SA struggle - a "national democratic revolution," followed by second revolution in which the Marxist-Leninist vanguard took power.

If Mandela wasn't in on this plot, it would have been exceptionally stupid of him to participate in it, and Mandela was not stupid. On the other hand, he had to be very careful what he said on this score. The ANC needed the support of Western liberals, and by l964, those folks had come to realize that Communist revolutions inevitably led to the outcome satirized in George Orwell's Animal Farm - a dictatorship of pigs who hogged the best things for themselves, impoverished the proletariat and murdered or imprisoned dissenters by the million.

In such a climate, one didn't want to focus attention on that hand-written "milk and honey" essay. On the contrary: one wanted the world to see Mandela as a democrat, willing to die for values that Westerners held sacred. Toward this end, Mandela and his lawyers (with a bit of help from British journalist Anthony Sampson) crafted a masterful speech for Mandela to deliver from the dock during the Rivonia trial.

"The ideological creed of the ANC is, and always has been, the creed of African nationalism," he said. "It is true that there has been close cooperation between the ANC and the Communist Party. But cooperation in this case is merely proof of a common goal - the removal of white supremacy."

Mandela went to describe himself as a democrat in the classic Western sense, and a fervent admirer of the British and American systems of governance. "Africans just want a share in the whole of South Africa," he said. "Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent...It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

These words rang out around the world, and still echo today. Type Mandela's name into Google, and you come upon millions of essays, articles and book-length hagiographies depicting Madiba in exactly the way he presented himself in that speech: a black liberal, driven to take up arms by a white supremacist state that seemed utterly impermeable to calls for dialogue.

The Rivonia statement has become the foundational text of a semi-religious movement that seeks to canonize Mandela as the 20th century's greatest proponent of freedom and democracy. Or perhaps I should say, "bourgeois democracy," in order to distinguish between democracy of the sort practiced in Britain and America and the diseased parody encountered in Marxist-Leninist police states. Nelson Mandela never stood for that sort of democracy.

Or did he?

It takes a brave man to address that question, and lo, one such has emerged. Professor Stephen Ellis heads the African Studies Centre at the University of Leiden, and holds the Desmond Tutu chair of social sciences at the Vrije University of Amsterdam. He is also one of the great authorities on the ANC, author of Comrades Against Apartheid and a former editor of Africa Confidential, a magazine valued for its authoritative gossip about what was really going inside the anti-apartheid movement in the l980s.

Now Ellis has published a study that sheds startling new light on Mandela's early political career and the circumstances under which he launched his armed struggle against apartheid. The study contains at least one revelation that can only be described as a bombshell -- Mandela was, at least for a time, secretly a member of South Africa's Communist Party.

The strange thing about Ellis's bombshell is that South Africans appear to be deaf to its detonation. I know this because I started hyping it to fellow journalists the instant it appeared in print. To a man (or woman) they all shrugged and said, "So what? It's not really a story." This tells us something interesting about South Africans: we are at once riven with ideological obsessions and hopelessly ideologically na�ve.

The blame for this rests largely on our charming and literate Communists, who go to great pains in their memoirs to disguise the true nature of their beliefs. They tell us that they stood for fairness, justice, and racial equality, and against all forms of exploitation and oppression. They'd also like us to believe that their party was outlawed in l950 because they treated blacks as friends and wanted them to enjoy the franchise. Well, yes. I suppose this was a factor, but the overriding consideration that led to the SACP's banning was something else entirely.

At the Yalta Conference of l945, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin assured the Western powers that all the countries his forces occupied at the end of World War 2 would be allowed to determine their own destinies via free elections. With his international image in mind, Stalin instructed commissars in the occupied territories to observe the outward forms of "bourgeois democracy." Towards this end, liberals and social democrats were lured into broad fronts in which all key decisions were secretly made by tiny Communist minorities, with the backing of the Soviet's secret police apparatus.

These Communist conspirators then staged spurious elections that brought Soviet puppet regimes to power throughout Eastern Europe, usually with majorities implausibly close to 100 percent. Historians concede that Tito of Yugoslavia was genuinely popular, but elsewhere, the rule of Soviet proxies was imposed by deceit and enforced by tyranny. Tens of thousands of class enemies were executed, millions imprisoned, all vestiges of freedom eradicated.

The problem with Communist parties, including the South African one, is that they blindly supported this Soviet outrage, and seemed intent on pulling similar moves everywhere. If Joe Slovo and Rusty Bernstein were still alive, they'd stoutly deny such charges, but they'd be lying. We know this because Rusty's wife Hilda lived long enough to acquire a shrewd understanding of herself and the Communist movement of which she was a life-long part. "Joe and Rusty were hardline Stalinists," she said in a 2004 interview. "Anything the Soviets did was right. They were very, very pro-Soviet."

It is important to note that Mrs. Bernstein was by no means suggesting that her husband or Joe were evil men. On the contrary: they were religious zealots who genuinely believed that the Soviets had discovered the cure for all human misery.

"I've often thought about this," she said. "They wanted something bigger than themselves, something to believe in. People are always seeking for the meaning of life and if you're not religious, what is it? To us, working together in a movement that had rules and attitudes and comradeship gave important meaning to our lives."

In short, being a Communist was much like being a Christian. One studied the sacred texts of Marx and Engels, engaged in polemics as a form of prayer and ruthlessly suppressed all doubts, including one's own. Mrs. Bernstein says she was adept at this until l956, when Kruschev revealed the appalling extent of his predecessor Stalin's atrocities (he murdered around 16 million people, either by having them shot for thought crimes or starving them to death with mad policies). Her husband dismissed these reports as "lies and capitalist propaganda," but Hilda's bones told her it was all true.

"We had a fight," she said, "a battle that went on into the small hours of the morning. I wanted to leave, but we had three dependent children, and there wasn't any possible way in which we could have separated economically and so on. So we stayed together, and I accommodated myself by refusing to talk about it any more."

And so it came to pass that Hilda Bernstein, the secret doubter, had a ringside seat for the epochal events of the late fifties and early sixties, a time when her husband Rusty was one of South Africa's most senior Communists, and one of Mandela's closest allies moreover.

It was in this capacity that she learned of Madiba's secret membership in the Communist sect. "Mandela denies that he was ever a member of the party," she said, "but I can tell you that he was a member of the party for a period."

When this interview appeared on the website of the O'Malley archive, it caused a brief frisson among old Cold Warriors, especially when former SACP central committee member Brian Bunting verified Hilda's account. The interview also caught the eye of the aforementioned Professor Ellis, a lifelong student of the byzantine inner workings of SACP. He notes that the SACP of the early sixties was of necessity a pathologically secretive organization, a network of cells with little or no knowledge of each other and no official membership records.

"SACP members were formally required to keep their membership secret," says Ellis. "In principle, only the members of each four or five-person cell knew each other. One person reported to the next higher level, and so on. But there was also a special category of ultra-secret members who were not required to join a cell and whom even very senior party members might not know about." With this in mind, Ellis proceeded very cautiously before publishing anything about Mandela's apparent role in the Communist conspiracy.

One item in his files was an old police report claiming that two arrested Communists had identified Mandela as an SACP member. A similar admission appeared in the minutes of a 1982 SACP meeting. The final breakthrough came when Russian researcher Irina Filitova interviewed veteran conspirator Joe Matthews, who confirmed that Mandela served on the party's innermost central committee alongside him. "In the light of this evidence," Ellis concludes, "it seems most likely that Nelson Mandela joined the party in the late l950s or in 1960, and that he was co-opted onto the Central Committee in the latter year, the same year as Joe Matthews."

Even as I write this I sense that I am losing the average South African. I can almost see you shrugging and saying, "So? This still isn't a story." But it is a story, and here's why: if Ellis's evidence is correct, the fatal decision to launch a war against apartheid had nothing to do with the ANC. It was a decision taken unilaterally by the Communist Party, and then imposed on ANC president Albert Luthuli by a prominent African nationalist who was secretly a member of the Communist underground. His name: Nelson Mandela.

It seems fair to say that black South Africans have entertained thoughts of armed revolt since the day Jan van Riebeeck landed in Table Bay. It is therefore clear, as Ellis stresses in his landmark paper, that no political party held a patent on the term armed struggle. The Pan-Africanist Congress was dead keen on it, and elements in the ANC thought it was inevitable from the early fifties onwards.

The difference between those organizations and the Communist Party is that peaceful change via the ballot box was never really on the Communist agenda, because that sort of change invariably left the capitalist edifice standing. "Classes do not commit suicide," said Joe Slovo, a dutiful acolyte of Vladimir Lenin. Enemies of the working class had to be undermined, subverted, and conclusively defeated before the socialist millennium could begin.

There was a time when this socialist millennium did not seem particularly attractive to South Africa's so-called "bourgeois nationalists," Marxist code for Africans who would have been perfectly happy to defeat the Boers in a bourgeois democratic election and then help themselves to a fairer share of the nation's riches. Communists did not approve of "bourgeois nationalists," and vice versa, which is one reason why Nelson Mandela spent the l940s breaking up Communist rallies with his fists.

In the early fifties, however, the SACP realized that cooperating with the nationalists was likely to hasten the fall of the Boers, thus creating conditions conducive to a more rapid advance towards true socialism. At more or less the same time, nationalists like Mandela realized that the Communists could bring several desirables to the party. Around half of them were white. They had cars, houses, telephones, organizational skills and access to funding. Soon, Communists were supporting the ANC's legal campaigns and recruiting ANC members into their own underground party.

As Ellis observes, this strategy did not enjoy the approval of the high priests of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary science, who were located in Moscow. It was a home-grown initiative, devised as a means of amplifying the influence of a tiny body of true believers. (At the time, the SACP had barely 500 members.) The SACP was thus delighted to discover, at a 1960 conference in Moscow, that these high priests were now thinking along similar lines. The imperial powers were pulling out of Africa, and alliances with previously detestable nationalists provided a way for tiny bands of Communist intellectuals to stay in the game, and perhaps wind up in control of a few key ex-colonies.

Out of this emerged the SACP's new revolutionary doctrine, which has always reminded me of the hoary old fable in which a scorpion convinces a frog to carry it across a river. The frog (or bourgeois nationalist) does all the work, staging a "democratic national revolution" that topples the imperial or colonial power. The scorpion (representing the Communist cause) goes along for the ride, only to sting the frog to death just as it reaches the far bank. The punchline of the original remains entirely apposite: scorpions do such things because that is their nature.

Something else happened in l960, something very important. The catalyst was the PAC, a movement of hardline African nationalists who'd broken away from the ANC the previous year on the grounds that it was "dominated by white Communists" whose ultimate loyalties were open to question (see above). In April, l960, the PAC staged a nationwide protest against the hated pass laws. In Sharpeville, police opened fire on a crowd of PAC supporters, killing an estimated 69. The resulting outburst of rage shook the apartheid government to its core, and led to the outright banning of both the PAC and ANC.

From afar, it seemed that the mood in South Africa had at last turned revolutionary, which is presumably why Joe Matthews and Michael Harmel of the SACP were given a stellar reception when they turned up in Beijing a few months later to canvass support for armed struggle.

According to Ellis, the Chinese had previously been sceptical of such plans, but now, the SACP delegates were considered so important that Chairman Mao himself took time to meet them. They were accorded a similar honour in Moscow, where they apparently stayed in Stalin's former dacha while conducting top-secret talks with senior Soviet officials.

The precise outcome of these discussions remains uncertain, but Ellis presumes that Matthews and Harmel came away with pledges of support, because the SACP now moved swiftly forward, adopting a policy of armed struggle at a conference in Johannesburg "towards the end of 1960."

It now became necessary for the SACP to convince the ANC to join its initiative. White Communists couldn't act in this regard, because they weren't allowed to join the racially exclusive ANC or take part in its deliberations. The task thus fell to black ANC leaders who wore two hats - which is to say, were members of both the ANC and the SACP. In some cases, this joint ANC-SACP affiliation was open and well-known, at least to those in the underground. In others, it was secret. The most important of these secret members was the charismatic Nelson Mandela.

On the day the SACP took its fateful decision, Mandela was a defendant in the Treason Trial, a marathon affair that had been dragging on since l956. The rest of South Africa was extremely tense, but inside Judge Rumpff's courtroom, the atmosphere was oddly congenial, considering that Mandela and his co-accused were on trial for high treason, and that the three judges were officials of a white supremacist regime that Mandela frequently characterized as "Nazi."

In theory, the gap between the white judges and the mostly black accused was unbridgeable, but these men had been staring at one another across the courtroom for years, sparring, joking, taking each other's measure and acquiring a measure of mutual respect.

All the accused were out on bail, but when they were re-detained during the post-Sharpeville State of Emergency, Judge Bekker's wife came to their aid, running errands on their behalf and carrying messages to their families. Judge Kennedy was so impressed by the pro-ANC testimony of Professor ZK Matthews that he came down from the bench and shook Matthews' hand, saying, "I hope we meet again under better circumstances." Judge Rumpff was a grumpy old Afrikaner and a reputed Broederbonder, but even he seemed to be softening.

On March 23, l961, Rumpff took the unprecedented step of interrupting the defence's closing argument, saying, in effect, we don't really need to hear this. Some of the accused took this to mean that the judges had decided to disregard the evidence and hang them - the predictable totalitarian outcome. They were wrong. A week later, Rumpff asked the accused to rise, and pronounced every one of them innocent.

This was a dumbfounding outcome, given the enormous resources the apartheid state had devoted to the treason case. Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was in the habit of telling the world that most blacks supported the principle of separate development, and that only a handful of misguided troublemakers opposed it. Rumpff's judgement annihilated that argument. In rejecting the state's case, he had in effect ruled that the ANC's cause was just, its grievances legitimate, and its strategy of non-violent defiance acceptable in the eyes of reasonable men.

This outcome hugely strengthened the hand of ANC president Albert Luthuli, a devout Christian who continued to believe that peaceful change was possible in South Africa. After the Sharpeville shootings, his stance was bitterly criticized by ANC radicals, who thought the time for talking was over. Rumpff's verdict suggested otherwise. It showed that South Africa was still a land of law, with judges willing to hand down decisions that infuriated the ruling party.

South Africa also had a relatively free press, a vigorous democracy (albeit for whites only) and, as Mandela acknowledges in Long Walk To Freedom, a police force that still conformed to British norms, with due process respected and torture at this stage unheard-of. Some observers saw Rumpff's verdict as a watershed of sorts, a development that could easily have led to further liberalization.

Nelson Mandela was totally disinterested. In Long Walk To Freedom, he writes that he went underground within hours of Rumpff's verdict. Officially, his mission was to organize popular support for a national convention, but Ellis thinks this unlikely. "A close analysis of the campaign for a national convention concludes that this initiative was primarily intended to provide proponents of armed struggle with a paper trail that would justify their forthcoming change of policy," he writes.

In other words, the SACP was angling to regain the moral high ground. It knew that the verdict had come as a surprise to international observers, who were left wondering if Verwoerd's regime was indeed as evil as it was held to be. But the SACP also knew that Verwoerd could be relied on to reject any call for a national convention, thus restoring his reputation as an intransigent racist. As Ellis notes, this would allow the party to present the coming declaration of war "in the best possible light for public and international consumption."

The second leg of Mandela's underground mission was of course to convince ANC president Albert Luthuli to follow the lead the Communists had taken. Luthuli was not a pacifist per se, but he believed that non-violent options remained viable. Like many others in the ANC and even the SACP, he also believed it would be folly of the highest order to take up arms at a point when the ANC was still struggling to organize effective protests.

Luthuli and Mandela had it out in June l961, at a tumultuous meeting of the ANC's national executive in Tongaat, Natal. The debate raged through the night, but when the sun rose, Mandela was triumphant; the ANC had authorized him to launch Umkhonto we Sizwe, and to start making preparations for war against the apartheid state.

This is Mandela's version - or more accurately, one of his versions. In Long Walk, he acknowledges that the outcome of his clash with Luthuli was actually very messy. "The policy of the ANC would still be that of non-violence," he writes, and the new military organization was required to be "entirely separate from the ANC." Luthuli himself remained committed to non-violence until his death six years later.

Reading between the lines, Mandela seems to be suggesting that Luthuli was willing to turn a blind eye to his military adventure, provided it did not damage the mother organization. Durban Communist Rowley Arenstein rejected this out hand. "Luthuli was simply brushed aside," he said. "Adoption of armed struggle by the ANC was the act of a Johannesburg SACP clique, a hijacking."

Arenstein was subsequently purged from the party. Mandela returned to Johannesburg to plan his sabotage campaign, heedless of the counsel of men with clearer heads. "If you throw a stone into the window of a man's house," said SACP general secretary Moses Kotane, "you must be prepared for him to come out and chase you. The backlash will be fantastic. The police will go mad."

The first MK bombs went off on December 16, 1961. The rest is history.

- article by Rian, August 16, 2011




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Poster distributed by the Federation of Conservative Students (the official Conservative Party student organisation) in Britain during the early 1980's, clearly illustrating that people overseas were more aware of the evil nature of Mandela and his fellow ANC terrorists than most people in South Africa were.




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South Africa's "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" - ostensibly set up to cleanse that nation's psyche of its tortured past - is finding that the Marxist revolution fought there between 1948 and 1994 witnessed a departure from the normal rules of war by both the communist African National Congress and the Christian, pro-West NP government.

The TRC's official goal is to investigate crimes committed by both the Marxist ANC and the right-wing government during the �apartheid era�. Crimes committed by other groups, including the Inkatha Freedom Party, are also being investigated. If those charged with crimes promise to tell all they know to the commission, they can be granted amnesty. Under ongoing hearings before the �Truth and Reconciliation Commission�, the sordid and often macabre blood sport that characterized this war has been leaking out in dribs and drabs to a global audience. Most of those appearing before the TRC can apply for amnesty and escape prosecution if they admit their guilt. Many have chosen this route and testified against either the Afrikaner leadership or the ANC. Others, like Winnie Mandela (ex-wife of Nelson Mandela) and former South African President P.W. Botha, have maintained their innocence to the very end. The ANC at first denounced a parliamentary bill granting amnesty for those who request it from the �Truth and Reconciliation Commission�. The feeling among the ANC was that it would provide a blanket amnesty for the torture and killings conducted by the right. However, as more and more of the ANC's misdeeds are exposed, some have concluded that the Marxist organization is also in need of blanket amnesty.

The misdeeds of the Soviet-sponsored ANC have been well chronicled. It operated under and parallel to the South African Communist Party, established in the early 1920s as the first Communist Party outside the Soviet Union. In fact, the party was set up under the slogan "Workers of the world unite and fight for a White South Africa". Throughout the Cold War, the Soviets provided training and advisors to the ANC. The Soviet Union sent troops and billions of dollars in arms to fight a war in Angola. This was a part of the Brezhnev Doctrine to "seize the strategic mineral treasure chest of Southern Africa and deny these materials to the Western military-industrial complex." These minerals included titanium, used to build fighter jets, and zirconium oxide, a rare commodity used to sheathe nuclear reactor fuel.

The crimes committed by the ANC in the name of liberation are legion. First, there was the practice of "necklacing," in which a petrol-filled tyre is placed around the neck of a victim and set ablaze - an action carried out by Winnie Mandela and her minions. Another horror was the "Church Street Massacre," in which Nelson Mandela approved of a bomb set to explode at rush hour to maximize casualties of Afrikaner women, children and babies. The same Mandela who told the Black youth of South Africa to "burn down" their schools has produced a lawless, unemployable generation. Mandela recently travelled to Libya and presented Gaddafi with South Africa's highest military medal.

Through the work of the �Truth and Reconciliation Commission�, the gulags of northern Angola - where the ANC mutilated and tortured cadres who would not go along with the terrorist campaign - have also been brought to light. The ANC has admitted that torture and "staggering brutality" were committed at their Angolan re-education camps in the 1980s and "could have caused prisoner deaths." In an internal report, the ANC documented 17 eyewitness accounts of detainees who survived the camps. "The ANC routinely violated its own code of conduct with physical and psychological torture," said the report. One detainee has written a book about the camps, which he referred to as "a scene from [the film] 'Spartacus.'" The report - which was authored by two ANC officials and an independent advocate - did not single out any ANC members responsible directly for torture, although it is believed the late ANC activist Chris Hani was involved. Nelson Mandela has refused to apologize for what he said were "inexcusable" violations of human rights during the ANC's terror campaign
against the White-led government. Mandela did, however, admit that torture occurred at ANC prisons and camps, but the report now documents that this
abuse was widespread and far-reaching. Torture and murder occurred not only in Angola, but also in ANC re-education camps in Uganda and Tanzania.

This report was a major embarrassment to the ANC, which had been lionized in the West for its war to end apartheid and install a supposedly democratic government in South Africa. Detainees recounted in the report that they were tortured for disagreeing with Marxist orthodoxy, refusing to carry out bombings of civilians, being accused of spying, questioning ANC policy, or trying to leave the organization altogether. Even the late Joe Slovo, a Lithuanian-born KGB colonel and the main leader of the South African Communist Party through the 1980s and early 1990s, said before his death that "it is possible that people died" in the re-education camps.

The report reads in part:: "The worst conditions were at the Quatro camp in Angola, where guards and medical assistants were universally hostile. The inmates, whether convicted of any offence or not, were denigrated, humiliated and abused, often with staggering brutality. Prisoners were forced to crawl through piles of red ants, thrown down into trenches and then made to crawl out while guards poured dirt into the hole. Others were denied food, water and medical treatment. One prisoner had boiling water poured on his head. His head was then regularly struck against a tree to prevent healing. Prisoners were beaten to force confessions. Some prisoners were executed by firing squads for taking part in mutinies, beaten to death for infractions of military discipline or died of malaria and other illnesses in detention. From the late 1970s until 1991, suspected spies were imprisoned for up to eight years without any hearing, tortured to extract confessions, and beaten with sticks and wires."

Ironically, the ANC accused the White-led South African police of conducting torture of Black cadres in a similar manner. The report continues: "We were left with an overall impression that for the better part of the '80s, there existed a situation of extraordinary abuse of power and lack of accountability at the prisons. Order in the exile camps began to break down after the 1976 Black student uprising in Soweto, which brought a flood of new and younger volunteers into the
guerrilla training centres. Many of the new recruits were poorly educated, impatient to fight, given to drinking and drugs. Some were secret agents sent by the South African police. Thus the ANC gave its security department, called "Mbokodo" [the Xhosa word for "grinding stone"] unchecked power to investigate, judge and punish recruits."

The panel that compiled the report also learned the names of accused torturers, some of whom still hold posts in the ANC's security apparatus. The actual names were withheld from the published report, but are known to the ANC hierarchy. Two ANC leaders were directly named, however: Joe Modise, the former head of the ANC's military wing, and Jacob Zuma, the former ANC secretary general. Neither was accused of torture, however, Modise was cited as being part of a tribunal that in 1981 improperly arrested Dumisani Khosa, a producer for the ANC's underground radio station. Khosa was arrested for "complaining about nepotism and sexual harassment" within the ANC. The report states that Khosa was "beaten until he urinated blood, then shipped to the Quatro camp in Angola where he was held for more than three years." Others implicated in the report are ANC representatives in Zambia and Uganda, as well as one of Mandela's former bodyguards.

- WorldNetDaily report, 2000


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The evidence in the Rivonia trial was shocking. The prosecutor, Dr. Percy Yutar, wrote the following in the prologue of the book Rivonia, The Mask Off by Laurutz Strydom. He said the aim of Rivonia was to create utter chaos in the Republic of South Africa. Thousands of guerilla fighters would afterwards take action. The masterminds of Rivonia planned a coup and military units outside the Republic would at the right moment start to invade the country. Revolutionaries planned to take over the administration of the country. Dr. Yutar said all the accused admitted that the documents were authentic and their case was therefore submitted in court as a classical example of high treason. The country was at the time heavily sabotaged and terrorists such as McBride murdered innocent people at the Magoo Bar in Durban [during which outrage that great British patriot Keith Hulse was seriously injured, his life being saved by another true hero of our times, Alan Mountford]. A group of young Blacks shot people in the St. James's Church and some planted land mines that killed or maimed innocent people. The communistic world honoured the prisoners of Robben Island, and especially Mandela, as "martyrs" and they received tremendous support and sympathy from these corners. They executed immense pressure on the De Klerk-regime to reach a settlement with the ANC and SACP, and ultimately he capitulated. Propaganda after the Rivonia trial made heroes of traitors and oppressors.

- Reality SA, May 21, 2003


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Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first Black president, who is widely admired across the political spectrum more for his performance in office than for his beliefs, is now retired and thus free to express his long standing Marxist and often bizarre beliefs freely. He continually attacks U.S. "imperialism" and "arrogance" while voicing support for the likes of Libya, Iraq, and Cuba. This is not surprising. Mandela did support violence in the past - a fact that is largely forgotten or trivialized. Indeed, in 1961 he was the founder of Umkhonto we Siswe ("Spear of the People"), ANC's terrorist arm, and never during his long years in prison did he condemn that organization's acts of indiscriminate terrorism. Moreover, throughout his career Mandela has remained close to regimes actively supporting terrorism - the former Soviet Union, Libya and Cuba.

There were good reasons for such fears, not the least being the decades old cohabitation of Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) with, and its penetration by, the Communist Party of South Africa (SACP), one of the world's most committed Stalinist parties. There were also the ANC's close links with the militantly leftist (and SACP dominated) trade union federation, COSATU. Importantly, despite the rhetoric about Black economic oppression under apartheid, the fact remains that a Black middle and indeed upper class had developed in South Africa, the interests of which had little to do with the traditional socialism advocated by the ANC throughout its history.

Mandela implemented an aggressive affirmative action policy once he took office - which slowed down the economy. His government established a criminal law code on the European model - abolition of the death penalty, excessive rights for accused criminals, etc., with destructive results. South Africa today competes with civil war-torn Colombia for the dubious distinction of being the world's most crime-ridden country. Interpol's International Crime Statistics say it all: in 1999 South Africa had 121 murders and 119 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants, compared with Colombia's 69 and 6 respectively (and the United States' 5 and 32). The trends are no more encouraging considering that in 1994 the world's average murder rate was 5.5 per 100,000, compared to South Africa's 45. In such circumstances, and with a slow justice system, which only produces a 10 percent conviction rate, South Africa has seen the rise of vigilante groups filling the void left by an incompetent (affirmative action, again - one third of policemen are functionally illiterate) and violent police - who between 1997 and 2000 killed 1,550 people, compared with 2,700 killed by the apartheid regime in 30 years.

The high crime rates, and a decline in educational standards, led to a massive emigration of White professionals to the United States, UK, Canada, and Australia. A 1998 poll of 11,000 skilled professionals suggested that 74 percent wanted to emigrate - with then-president Mandela responding with "Good riddance" to them. The problem is that not just professionals leave South Africa - major corporations also moved out, including mining giant Anglo American Co. and South African Breweries, both of which are now headquartered in London.

When it comes to African opinions at the UN, Pretoria prefers to side with the worst. Libya for chairmanship of the UN Human Rights Commission? Yes, said Pretoria, and so did the rest of the African bloc. Support Mugabe's "right" to be invited to Lisbon for the EU-African Summit? Yes again, at the cost of billions of dollars in aid to Africa. Mandela's ideological legacy seems to be alive in Pretoria's international behavior. None of this should come as a surprise. The once dominant South African National Defense Force (SANDF) is now only a shadow of its past self, largely as a result of budget cuts and affirmative action, which put former ANC terrorist thugs and gang members in charge and led to a massive exodus of White and Coloured officers.

President Mbeki has a problem with his own ANC party, specifically with Nelson Mandela's former wife, Winnie. Mrs. Mandela is the loose cannon of the ANC. A convicted torturer and felon and thoroughly corrupt, she remains a very popular figure with Black South African youths and was repeatedly elected to the ANC leadership. The disturbing thing here is not so much Winnie's criminality, awful as it is, as the general decline of South Africa's judiciary, which is becoming increasingly more "African" and less and less Western.

- Michael Radu, Front Page Magazine, February 6, 2003


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The Rivonia high treason trial, in which Mandela was one of the accused, is in the news again. According to reports Dr Percy Yutar, who was the prosecutor in the case, is going to sell his documents and books in a public auction. Foreign universities are allegedly very interested. The first reaction is alarm that these very valuable and unique Africana could become lost to South Africans. However, after a little reflection one has to admit that the documents will probably be safer in the library of some foreign university than in South Africa, where the ANC/SACP is trying to wipe out the past by neglect and destruction. Mandela and others were found guilty of high treason in the Rivonia trial. The case was a culmination of the firm and effective actions of the security services and the courts in those days, which brought a long era of political stability and economic prosperity to South Africa. Keeping in mind that the people who were prosecuted then, are now ruling South Africa, it could be meaningful totake note of what the courts findings were. Dr Yutar wrote the following in a prologue to Lauritz Strydom�s book "Rivonia - Masker af!", and we quote:"I was deeply shocked and could hardly believe what I read in the documents, which either were in their handwriting, or was found in their possession. These documents clearly indicated that the accused purposefully and maliciously planned and effectuated deeds of violence and destruction throughout the country. This was aimed at creating chaos, disorder, and unrest in the Republic of South Africa, which according to their plans, would be aggravated by the actions of thousands of trained guerilla fighter deployed all over the country...... . The combined actions were planned to lead to confusion, violent insurrection and rebellion and malicious destruction, followed up at a suitable opportunity, by an armed invasion of the country by military units from foreign countries. In the midst of the resultant chaos the accused planned to bring about a revolutionary government.... . The accused admitted to the validity of all these documents as well as that their policy included the eventual violent overthrowing of the Government of South Africa. It is for this reason that I presented the court with the fact that this was pre-eminently a case of high treason. Broadly seen these documents supply us with more than enough evidence for every accusation ..... including, (a) the involvement of Moscow, the Communist parties of Algeria, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany [GDR] and several other countries regarding the provision of monetary help, weapons, ammunition and military personnel. (b) the fact that the African National Congress is totally dominated by the Communist Party and that they consulted altogether less than 1 percent of the total population in South Africa....". So far Dr Yutar. There is much more in the prologue and even more in the book itself, but what we have quoted here depicts a valuable picture of the people to whom the De Klerk government has handed the country in 1994. We hope that Dr Yutar's documents will find a place in a foreign archive where it will be kept safe from malicious destruction. We believe at a suitable time it will be used for research by a postgraduate student and that he will then unmask the ANC/SACP for the whole world to see.

- Report sent by the "Boernews" news service.


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1) Concerning Mandela's jail sentence. The crimes he committed were shamelessly criminal, and included no heroic acts. In fact, it is still a mystery why Percy Yutar (the then state attorney) did not file for murder, but manslaughter instead. Based on the facts it is commonly agreed by legal scholars that Mandela would have been hanged if Yutar filed for murder. You can easily get access to the case and you will find facts that the media, for whatever reason, prefer to ignore. 2) They often show Mandela's cell on Robben Island. That is not where he spent most of his time. He later lived in a house under so-called "arrest". It was comfortable if not luxurious, and most people work every day of their lives for the privilege to live in something not nearly as good as that. Why do they never show photographs of that? 3) What is really mind-boggling is the fact that while he was in the "house jail" he had free access, on account of the S.A. tax-payers, to telephone, fax and other communicating facilities to organize the ANC. That is why he was still the leader when he was "released". 4) You already know of the terrible deeds he ordered for his own people who disappointed him. He has many murders of his own on his hands. 5) He was supposedly in "jail" for 20 or more years. One would expect that he had a negligible income in that time. Yet when he and his wife were divorced about 4 years after his "release" he had to pay her millions in settlement. Where did these millions come from? Who else could earn millions in 4 years from a salaried job after taxes? Obviously something is seriously wrong. You find out where all that money came from and you will discover a lot about Mandela that the press never report. 6) Once he left "jail" (the house the government provided) he moved into a very luxurious home in one of the richest suburbs of Johannesburg. However, he kept a little four-room house in Soweto and pretended to live there. That is where he would interview reporters and where photographs were taken. What a liar and bigot. I cannot believe that the press did not know this. It simply played along to sell this falsehood of a hero and martyr. These are six leads that anyone from S.A. should be able to confirm easily with documentary proof. Mandela is a murderer and a liar. He only lived in "poverty" when it suited him. Just ask where he is presently living. There are very few Whites or other people that can, after a lifetime of working, afford the house he is living in now. Nonetheless, for some reason, I have no reason why, the media are ignoring all of this and misrepresent the actual situation.

- Report sent by South African historical expert living in the United States.


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The ANC is part of an alliance with the SA Communist Party and the Black super-union COSATU, of which the Communists are the numerical minority, but the most influential and dominant partner. Most key positions in the ANC are occupied by SACP and ex-SACP members. Before 1990 the ANC/Communist alliance was a terrorist organisation, which waged a relatively unsuccessful, but nasty and cowardly "war", mostly against civilians and against what was supposed to be "their" people, the Blacks, through the barbaric "necklacing" (torching a helpless victim with a burning tyre around his neck to death), bombs and assassinations. From 1990 to 1994 the last White president of SA, F.W. de Klerk, railroaded the traditional power structure of the country into accepting a staged "democratic election" in 1994, which was manipulated to bring the ANC/Communist alliance to power. By lying and cheating he kept many Whites in the dark about his real intentions. Since 1994 the ANC/Communist regime is dutifully busy destroying everything good and strong in the country in the name of "affirmative action" and "Black empowerment", while step by step suppressing the freedom of the people and nations under its heel. "Nelson R. Mandela", a Xhosa from the Transkei, got involved as a young lawyer with a bunch of White would-be terrorists with large caches of explosives and weapons in Johannesburg, who were found out and tried in a court of law (the old SA courts were still independent). Left to face the music by the White instigators, who had mostly run away overseas, Mandela got a life sentence for his involvement in terrorism, being part of the planning of attacks on installations and non-military targets and the beginning of the terrorist war mentioned above. He sat in prison for 27 years, treated as a political prisoner, regularly visited by all sorts of monitors and others, in clean, efficient prisons of the old SA (not like the new SA's hell-holes). In the early nineties de Klerk let him out to become the "nice" figurehead of the "new SA". This is just a nutshell. Quite tragic really what is happening in SA. But in the end the Whites have only themselves to blame for the gutless way they allowed the treacherous handover to happen - and the even more disgusting way many of them are now helping keep the regime in power by fawning and toadying up to the new rulers.

- Report sent by "Southern Cross Africa".


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Church Street Bomb - 20th May 1983...a blast from the past

Background Information: Church Street Bomb – 20th of May 1983
By Kobus on May 20, 2008

The Police investigation of the bomb explosion in Church Street West, PRETORIA, on the 20th of May 1983 at 16:28, brought the following facts to light:


The bodywork of the vehicle in which the bomb had exploded, had totally disintegrated. The engine number had been scoured off. By means of the chassis number found amongst the rubble, the vehicle could be identified as a cream-coloured 1982 model Colt Galant. It had been stolen on the 19th of June 1982 from the premises of Mr V.A. Sabattier at number 5, Sixth Avenue, Edenvale. Amongst the rubble a piece of the vehicle’s number plate was also discovered. The registration number started with “SD”.

· As a result of the explosion, 19 people died – 17 men (8 black, 9 white) and 2 women.


Considerable damage occurred to buildings and vehicles in Church Street West between Bosman and Schubart Streets. The damage amounted to approximately R4 000 000 in the terms of 1983.


Evidence was obtained that a cream-coloured Colt Galant with a “SD” registration number had been brought to the home of Bakayi Ezekiel Maseko at Block J 2824, Mamelodi on 20 May 1983 at about 11:00 by a certain Freddi Butana Shongwe of Block B388, Mamelodi. Shongwe asked a certain Jerry Shabangu whether the origin of a vehicle could still be ascertained after the engine number had been removed. He showed the cream-coloured Colt Galant to Shabangu where it had been hidden behind Maseko’s home. Shongwe mentioned to Shabangu that the vehicle would be used for a “great undertaking”, without saying what this “undertaking” would entail. Maseko’s wife, Anna, saw Maseko and Shongwe removing the engine number with an electrical sander.


At about 15:50, Shongwe hurriedly left in the Colt Galant, with Maseko following him with the latter’s Kombi. They were in such a rush that they left the electrical sander outside the home where they had been working with it.


From the 20th of May 1983, Shongwe and Maseko did not return home, and their families started looking for them.


On the 28th of May 1983, Maseko’s Kombi was found behind the Poyntons Building in Schubart Street, Pretoria. The vehicle was not locked. Inside the vehicle, a jacket of Shongwe which he had been wearing on the 20th of May 1983 was found, as well as a paper bag, containing a portable radio. After the vehicle and its contents had been removed, the families started suspecting that Maseko and Shongwe might have been amongst the victims of the explosion. Maseko’s body was subsequently identified at the Government Morgue. His body had been found on the northern side of Church Street, right opposite the place where the bomb had exploded.


After the explosion on the 20th of May 1983, several body parts were found scattered all over the scene of the explosion. On the 13th of June 1983 the feet of this person was identified by his mother as being those of Freddie Shongwe. Shongwe’s wife also identified a piece of trousers and a belt found at the scene, as items belonging to Shongwe. From the dispersal and parts found on the wreckage, it could be deduced that Shongwe had been inside the vehicle at the time of the explosion.


According to evidence given by a witness who had been sitting in her car in front of the Nedpark Building in Church Street West, Pretoria, on the 20th of May 1983, a cream-coloured Colt Galant had parked in front of her. Immediately after the vehicle had come to a standstill, the explosion followed.


On the 7th of July 1983, Anna Maseko handed the electrical sander, as well as the portable radio, to the investigators. Upon examination it was found that the portable radio discovered in Maseko’s Kombi, had been fitted with a remote control. Experts found this remote control to be fully functional. It was also able to detonate explosives from a distance. According to the experts, the frequency at which the remote control had been set, is extremely sensitive and could have been activated by other factors coming within the range of the control unit.


In Maseko’s clothes in his home, cash to the value of R3 000 was found. Anna Maseko could not find any explanation for the origin of this money. She had used some of the money for funeral costs.


Shongwe and Maseko had previous convictions for “housebreaking and safe robberies”.


On several occasions, Shongwe and Maseko accompanied each other to Swaziland. Shongwe sometimes visited Swaziland as often as twice per month. Evidence was found that Shongwe had been seen at the homes of well-known members of the African National Congress (ANC) in Swaziland. Shongwe is a cousin of a trained ANC member, Johannes Mnisi. According to information received, Shongwe and Maseko had had contact with Mnisi in Swaziland. It was also established that Shongwe had last visited Swaziland from 16 to 17 May 1983.

During the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), amnesty for the Church Street Bomb was granted to Aboobaker Ismail, former head of Umkhonto we Sizwe’s unit for special operations, and Johannes Mnisi. In spite of the fact that the ANC in the past had already acknowledged that the actions of its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), “at all times had been subject to the political leadership of the ANC”, no member of the ANC’s NEC of that time ever applied for amnesty for the Church Street Bomb.

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Church Street bombing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Church Street bombing was a car bomb attack on 20 May 1983 by Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress, in the South African capital Pretoria. The bombing killed 19 and wounded more than 200,[1][2] and was one of the largest attacks engaged in by the ANC during its armed struggle against apartheid.

The attack consisted of a car bomb set off outside the Nedbank Square building on Church Street at 4:30pm on a Friday. The target was South African Air Force (SAAF) headquarters, but as the bomb was set to go off at the height of rush hour, those killed and wounded included civilians. The bomb went off ten minutes earlier than planned, killing two ANC operatives in the vehicle, Freddie Shangwe and Ezekial Maseko. At least 20 ambulances took the dead and wounded to hospital.
Truth Commission hearingIn submissions to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997 and 1998, the ANC revealed that the attack was orchestrated by a special operations unit of the ANC's Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), commanded by Aboobaker Ismail. Such units had been authorised by Oliver Tambo, the ANC President, in 1979. At the time of the attack, they reported to Joe Slovo as chief of staff, and the Church Street attack was authorised by Tambo.

The ANC's submission said that the bombing was in response to a South African cross-border raid into Lesotho in December 1982 which killed 42 ANC supporters and civilians, and the assassination of Ruth First, an ANC activist and wife of Joe Slovo, in Maputo, Mozambique. It claimed that 11 of the casualties were SAAF personnel and hence a military target. The legal representative of some of the victims argued that as administrative staff including telephonists and typists they could not accept that they were a legitimate military target.[3]

Ten MK operatives including Aboobaker Ismail applied for amnesty for this and other bombings. The applications were opposed on various grounds, including that it was a terrorist attack disproportionate to the political motive. The TRC found that the number of civilians versus military personnel killed was unclear. South African Police statistics indicated that 7 members of the SAAF were killed. The commission found that at least 84 of the injured were SAAF members or employees. Amnesty was granted by the TRC.[4]
References^ "1983: Car bomb in South Africa kills 16". BBC. 1983-05-20. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/20/newsid_4326000/4326975.stm.
^ "ANC Mastermind Campaign Justifies Pretoria Church Street Blast". SAPA. 1998-05-06. http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/media/1998/9805/s980506b.htm.
^ "Tambo ordered Church Street blast: ANC". SAPA. 1997-05-12. http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/media/1997/9705/s970512a.htm.
^ "Truth and Reconciliation Commission Amnesty Committee AC/2001/003". 2003. http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/decisions/2001/ac21003.htm. Retrieved 2007-02-06.

More journos face Mac’s wrath


More journos face Mac’s wrath
November 28 2011 at 07:41am
By Deon de Lange


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INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS

President Jacob Zuma's spokesman Mac Maharaj. Photo: Sizwe Ndingane

Related Stories

Newspaper runs Maharaj's Scorpions transcripts
M&G not budging in Maharaj battle
Presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj is weighing legal action against more journalists after several newspapers published – or republished – information on Sunday from an investigation into allegations that he received secret payments from a company awarded multimillion-rand contracts by the Department of Transport while he headed it.

Maharaj has asked the police to investigate how two Mail & Guardian (M&G) journalists came into possession of confidential testimony he gave to the now-defunct Scorpions during a Section 28 arms deal inquiry in 2003.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Act says it is an offence – punishable by up to 15 years in prison – for information obtained from such a probe to be published without the permission of the national director of public prosecutions.

The Scorpions investigation was halted in 2008 or 2009 and no charges were brought against Maharaj.

The M&G blacked out most of its front page lead story two weeks ago after Maharaj threatened legal action.

Despite this, Maharaj filed a criminal complaint against the paper and its journalists, prompting M&G editor Nick Dawes to publish the information on Friday.

Dawes argued there was an “overwhelming public interest” in the story, that the investigation meant to be protected by confidentiality had long since been abandoned, and that the information was “already in the public domain”.

The M&G also noted that Maharaj had provided his biographer, Padraig O’Malley, with transcripts of his interviews with the Scorpions as far back as 2005.


Maharaj referred enquiries on Sunday to his attorney, Rudi Krause at BDK Attorneys.

Krause said the fact that much of the Maharaj testimony was in the public domain “doesn’t change anything”.

“I have not consulted (Maharaj) yet… but it would seem the publication of excerpts from these records is a violation of (the NPA Act). So we will consult (counsel) and take action.”


The latest clash about state secrets comes after the passage of the “Secrecy Bill” through the National Assembly last week.

Opponents are pressing for the inclusion of a “public interest defence” clause to protect those revealing secrets from legal sanction. - Political Bureau


Anonymous, wrote

08:10am on 28 November 2011
My question is why not Zuma acting on this issue. Zuma only says he is acting against corruption , but when evidence is placed right in front of him , he trys every bit to make sure he can create a scape goat for the criminal. That is why Zuma should have never been president. He should be there by the people for the people , not by the people for criminals.This is state theft.

Eastgate bomb ‘premeditated’

Johannesburg
Eastgate bomb ‘premeditated’ Andrea van Wyk | 2 Hour(s) Ago
Police sources believe that the Eastgate Shopping Centre bomb was a premeditated crime that could have caused major damage.

On Monday afternoon, staff and shoppers were evacuated from the Johannesburg mall when tenants discovered a case and raised the alarm.

Ekurhuleni metro police officers, police and the Bomb Disposal Unit were called to the scene.

The bomb squad confirmed that they conducted a controlled blast on the explosive device.

Eyewitness News understands that the suitcase was found beneath the escalator at the food court of the mall.

The bomb was planted near the only two restaurants that operate on gas.
(EWN)

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Police seize fake degrees, passports


Police seize fake degrees, passports
Harriet Mclea | 28 November, 2011 00:16

Arrest. File photo.
Image by: ANTONIO MUCHAVE / News

Police believe they might have cracked a massive syndicate after confiscating about 1100 counterfeit Unisa degrees, Chinese passports and fake South African residency permits.
OR Tambo International Airport detectives found three Home Affairs stamps and an immigration stamp among piles of fake documents at a house in Edenvale, on the East Rand, last week.

They arrested a Chinese man and woman on Thursday night.
( The Times Live )

7 held for defrauding RAF



7 held for defrauding RAF
November 2011


INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS

Photo: Steve Lawrence

Seven people have been arrested in Pietermaritzburg for allegedly lodging false claims with the Road Accident Fund (RAF), the KwaZulu-Natal police said on Thursday.

“On Wednesday, we arrested seven people aged between 32 and 52 in Northdale, Pietermaritzburg, for claiming to have been travelling in a minibus taxi that was involved in an accident,” Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Mdunge said.

He said investigations revealed that none of the claimants was involved in an accident.

Meanwhile, on Sunday a 47-year-old man was arrested in Chatsworth, Durban, for allegedly defrauding the RAF by convincing people to lodge 1395 false claims against the RAF.

Percy Kali appeared in the Durban Commercial Crimes Court on Monday when he was and was released on bail of R15 000, Mdunge said.

He said more arrests were imminent. – Sapa

Robbers hold up Symcox with own gun



Robbers hold up Symcox with own gun
November 2011 By Tanya Waterworth


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AFP

Pat Symcox

Former Proteas and Natal player Pat Symcox has warned holidaymakers to be on their guard after he had his own firearm pointed at him in a robbery at his South Coast house this week.

Symcox said he and his wife, Liz, were asleep in their home at Mtwalume when he was woken by his dog barking outside his window in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“I got up to go to the toilet and as I came back into the room, I came face to face with the intruder, who was holding my gun,” said Symcox, adding that he normally slept within reach of his firearm and that the intruder must have been in the room when he first awoke.

The intruder fled down the hall and escaped through a window.

“There must have been at least two robbers in the house, as it appears they were passing stuff out through the window,” said Symcox. His laptop and other belongings, including his gun, were taken.

His property has electric fencing and security gates he said crime tended to increase at KwaZulu-Natal holiday spots at this time of year.

“We don’t tend to have violent crime, but there has been an increase in house-breaking over the past few months.

“Holidaymakers tend to become relaxed, leave the windows open and even wear valuable jewellery and watches to the beach,” said Symcox.

Last week a Braamfontein mother and her son were robbed at the Cutty Sark Hotel in Scottburgh at about 10pm on Wednesday.

At around 4am on Thursday a woman was woken up and raped at the Blue Marlin Hotel, which is about a kilometre from the Cutty Sark. Cash, cellphones and bank cards were stolen from her.

In Richards Bay this week, a holidaymaker was raped just after arriving at a self-catering holiday flat with her teenage sons and their friends.

Four men confronted the group and the woman was pistol-whipped and raped, while the four teens were forced to watch.

After robbing the group, the gang hustled the five hostages to another holiday unit, where they held up another couple.

The gang fled in the rape victim’s car, which was recovered by the police the next day.

SAPS spokesperson, Capt Debbie Ferreira, said no arrests had yet been made, but that detectives had been working tirelessly on the case.

“This family arrived looking forward to a relaxing five- day holiday. Richards Bay is always busy with the influx of holidaymakers starting at this time of year, and we ask all visitors to keep alert,” she said.

National police spokesman Colonel Vish Naidoo said the massive deployment of police officers into Durban and immediate surrounds for the COP17 Climate Change Conference would not compromise safety in other areas.

“We are using officers who have given up their rest days and others who are working overtime.

“The high deployment of police is expected to benefit general crime-fighting operations,” said Naidoo. - Independent on Saturday

West Africa: Joint Action Against Piracy


West Africa: Joint Action Against Piracy
Noël Kokou Tadégnon
2011


Lome — There have already been more than thirty pirate attacks on ships along the West African coast so far this year. Regional governments will meet in Cotonou, Benin in October to discuss coordinating efforts to stem piracy.

The figures for attacks come from incidents reported by ships' masters to the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre and underline the growing threat to shipping in this oil-rich region.

Among the most recent attacks was the Sep. 15 seizure of the oil tanker Mattheos I and its 23-person crew off the coast of Togo. Ten days later, the ship's Spanish owners told media that tanker and crew had been released; no ransom was paid, but the company said the pirates stole some of the vessel's cargo of diesel fuel.

Governments along the length of the West African coastline have expressed concern about a surge in the number of attacks on cargo ships, and are seeking to combine limited resources to take concerted actions, such as recent joint patrols in the Gulf of Guinea.

"But we don't want to limit ourselves to joint patrols between Benin and Nigeria; we will very shortly extend this to include the Togolese and Ghanaian navies," Commandant Maxime Ahoyo, Benin's Naval Chief of Staff, told IPS.

"If we take care of problems with piracy in Benin's territorial waters but, for example, Togo doesn't take necessary security precautions, and we don't collaborate with Togo and other countries, this phenomenon - which has such long tentacles - will only spread."

Economic consequences

The president of the Economic Community of West African States Commission, James Victor Gbeho, has called for action against piracy to be widened to include all the states along the coast.

"The navies of all our coastal states should permanently combine their operations," Gbeho told IPS, underlining his belief that the problem of piracy must be addressed comprehensively. "The phenomenon is becoming worrying and could have serious economic consequences for our countries. That is why we will act firmly against it."

Piracy has already led maritime insurers in London to put Benin on a list of high-risk zones for shipping. Maritime insurers represented by the Lloyd's Market Association are demanding higher fees to cover ships which pass through the region.

According to Bénetti Gagalo, Assistant Secretary General of the Togolese Association of Consumers, the situation will certainly have repercussions on income in regional ports as well as on the cost of consumer goods.

External assistance

The urgency of the situation has pushed regional governments to ask for support from France and the United States, who have both deployed naval vessels to the area.

A French frigate, the Germinal, is already carrying out surveillance along the coasts of Benin, Togo and Ghana to try and neutralise the pirates, as well as training naval personnel from all three countries.

"We have hosted these sailors, and they've taken part in all the security exercises and patrols that we have carried out to prevent acts of piracy. And they have helped us with their intimate knowledge of the area of operations," Sébastien Chatelin, captain of the French vessel, told IPS.

Relevant Links
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Nigeria
Togo
Ghana
A U.S. Navy vessel, the HSV Swift, is also in the Gulf of Guinea, supporting the fight against piracy with training for Beninois, Togolese and Ghanaian sailors as part of U.S. military cooperation programme called Africa Partnership Station.

"Our mission is to try and train African partners on safety and security," said the captain of the U.S. vessel, Rhett S. Mann.

"The APS programme will allow us to work together to face the problems which affect our coastal waters," added Sam Nkruma, a Ghanaian naval officer.

His Beninois colleague, Christian Oussa, welcomed the training received on board the two naval ships. "This will allow us to face pirates and various traffickers on the sea. We have learned how to board suspect vessels to inspect them; the training was really appropriate," he told IPS.

Maharaj's 'trail of secrets' - paper



Maharaj's 'trail of secrets' - paper
2011-11-27 12:13


M&G details Maharaj's 'trail of lies'
Jacob Zuma silent on Mac Maharaj
Mac Maharaj denies corruptions claims

Julian Rademeyer and Andrew Trench
Johannesburg - City Press has published details of the controversial transcripts of former transport minister Mac Maharaj being grilled by the Scorpions in 2003.

City Press said on Sunday that it was publishing details Maharaj didn't want the public to know.

It is a matter of public record and has been so for more than four years since edited extracts appeared in this newspaper in April 2007 under the headlines “Mac fights back” and “Inside the Maharaj interrogation”.

At the time, Maharaj – now President Jacob Zuma’s spin doctor – made no attempt to prevent their publication, nor did he seek to initiate a criminal investigation against the reporters who wrote the stories.

But when the Mail & Guardian (M&G) attempted to publish an article based on the transcripts last week – alleging that Maharaj had lied during the interrogation – he first threatened the newspaper with legal action and then filed criminal complaints against two of its reporters.

Maharaj’s attorney, Rudi Krause, on Saturday threatened City Press, saying: “I can give you the assurance that should you even republish the 2007 article, we will lay a criminal charge against you and the newspaper ...

“Should you publish now, it will serve to confirm that you or the newspaper are still in the unlawful possession of the documentation.”

Krause said Maharaj could also lay charges in connection with the 2007 publication.

If Maharaj lied to the Scorpions in his secret interview, he is in trouble. Lying during the interview is a criminal offence punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Foreign bank

His statements contradict details of substantial payments the Maharaj couple received from convicted fraudster and Zuma’s former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, and his companies. The statements also contradict details that they had operated a network of foreign bank accounts through which these payments flowed.

The payments were made when Maharaj was transport minister and when his department was involved in awarding two lucrative tenders. Shaik benefited from the tenders.

City Press reported in 2007 that Maharaj and his wife, Zarina, told the Scorpions during questioning that:

» They had no offshore bank accounts in Switzerland;

» They had received no money from Shaik or his companies;

» All monies received offshore were earned by Zarina Maharaj as part of her work for the Geneva-based International Trade Centre, General Electric and Xerox;

» The family’s Milsek Investment Trust account was “dormant” when it had in fact received two payments of R100 000 – one of them from a company in Shaik’s Nkobi Holdings group; and

» They did not know where the money paid into the Milsek account came from or who used it.

But the details of an investigation published by City Press in 2007 seriously contradicted these statements.

Account

The newspaper detailed a money trail leading to offshore bank accounts in Switzerland, the British Virgin Islands and France.

More than $200 000 was paid from Minderley Investments, an offshore company set up by Shaik, into a Swiss account opened by Zarina Maharaj.

She opened the account just two days before the first payment from Minderley in 1996.

They were the only deposits made into the account until it was closed in April 2000.

These details have subsequently been repeated by the Sunday Times and M&G.

During Maharaj’s tenure, his department awarded two now-controversial tenders.

One was for the upgrade of the N3 toll road between Durban and Johannesburg at a cost of R2.5bn.

Shaik’s Nkobi Holdings was part of the consortium that netted the tender.

The other tender, a R265m contract for credit card driver’s licences, benefited Nkobi Holdings, French arms company Thomson-CSF (now Thales) and South African weapons firm Denel.

Knowledge

The Sunday Times revealed a copy of a “consultancy” agreement between Thomson-CSF and Minderley Investments last week.

According to the newspaper, the agreement shows that secret payments totalling 1.2m French francs went from a Thomson-CSF bank account to a Swiss account held by Zarina just two months before the driver’s licence tender was awarded.

These details corroborate those reported by City Press in 2007.

Maharaj has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, saying last week: “I have not been involved in corruption, bribery or broken any law.”

He has refused to confirm or deny whether he and his wife had lied to the Scorpions.

Maharaj’s 2003 interrogation took place in terms of section 28 of the National Prosecuting Authority Act.

It’s a strict measure that strips a person who has been summoned of the right to silence and one that stipulates that a failure to appear or answer questions truthfully is an offence punishable by a fine, imprisonment or both.

Hawks spokesperson McIntosh Polela said on Saturday the fact that City Press had previously published details of the transcript “will have an impact on our investigation because then the information will already be public knowledge”.

We would like City Press to provide us with the story so that we can see if we are investigating something that is already in the public domain.

"We will then make a decision.”

City Press provided the published reports to Polela on Saturday.




- City Press

Read more on: sunday times | minderley investments | mail&guardian | thomson-csf | mac maharaj | schabir shaik | jacob zuma | johannesburg | corruption | media

Too white to study medicine


Too white to study medicine
PREGA GOVENDER | 27 November, 2011 01:50

A doctor holding a stethoscope.
THE University of Stellenbosch reversed its decision to grant a pupil a place in medical school - after discovering that she was white, not coloured, as she had mistakenly stated in her online application.
18-year-old applicant, who asked that she not be named, achieved six distinctions in her Grade 11 exams and, in September, learnt the university had accepted her application. But, on October 13, Dr Ronel Retief, the head of academic administration, phoned her to verify her race.

The teenager told Retief she was white - and was informed this would affect her chances of being admitted to study medicine.

University spokesman Susan van der Merwe said the pupil's selection was reversed after it came to light that the applicant made "a bona fide mistake" on the application form.

"The decision was taken to safeguard the integrity and fairness of the process in terms of the more than 550 candidates who had not been selected and who, based on merit, were ranked higher."

Van der Merwe said Indian candidates, preferably from the Western and Northern Cape and African and coloured candidates from all provinces were selected first.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Hawks formally launch probe into the Mail & Guardian





Hawks formally launch probe into the Mail & Guardian
NICKOLAUS BAUER - Nov 24 2011 13:15


The Hawks have officially commenced their investigation into the Mail & Guardian, in connection with charges laid by presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj, and denied their probe amounted to an abuse of state resources.

An investigator from within the directorate for priority crime investigation (also known as the Hawks) has been appointed to investigate alleged violations of section 41(6) of the National Prosecuting Authority Act of 1998, Hawks spokesperson McIntosh Polela confirmed on Thursday.

On Saturday Maharaj formally laid charges against the newspaper and senior journalists Sam Sole and Stefaans Brümmer following a report that was due to appear in the M&G's November 18 edition suggesting Maharaj had lied during a section 28 inquiry by the now defunct Scorpions into his involvement in the arms deal.

Following threats of prosecution by Maharaj, and on the advice of the M&G's lawyers, the story was not published in full, but ran with large black blocks covering sections of the article alongside a headline reading: "Censored: We cannot bring you this story in full due to a threat of criminal prosecution."

Once the Hawks' investigation is complete, the case will be presented to the National Prosecuting Authority, which will then decide whether to prosecute the M&G and the two journalists.

Polela insisted there was nothing out of the ordinary in the Hawks deciding to investigate charges laid by a government official as senior as Maharaj, but denied that the Hawks had been directed by the presidency to investigate the charges.

"That's not how we work," said Polela. "We don't take instructions directly from the president, or any other high-ranking officials."

Cases are investigated at the discretion of the national commissioner of the Hawks Anwar Dramat, he said.

The director of the Institute of Security Studies' (ISS) crime and justice programme Johan Burger said on Wednesday an investigation into the M&G by the Hawks could well be an abuse of state resources.


"If you scrutinise the SAPS Amendment Act of 2008, under which the Hawks operate, it does raise question marks over the investigation into the M&G. According to section 17(d) of that Act, it is on the prerogative of the national commissioner or the Hawks's head to investigate cases but it is my understanding that these are for national priority offences only," Burger said.

"We don't only investigate priority crimes," said Polela. "This is a matter of protocol. When you have an issue garnering such widespread public interest, and involving such a high profile person, we would investigate."

Section 28 enquiry
Of the charges levelled by Maharaj, one relates to an alleged infringement of section 41(6) of the National Prosecuting Authority Act of 1998, which governs the dissemination of information garnered in an NPA Act section 28 enquiry.

Police were also asked to investigate a charge of theft, on the suspicion that the information in the possession of Sole and Brümmer was obtained unlawfully.

The Sunday Times followed the M&G's self-censored report with a story claiming Maharaj and his wife Zarina received bribes relating to the controversial arms deal.

In addition to the criminal charges, WDK Attorneys -- Maharaj's legal representatives -- have not ruled out the possibility of a civil suit being launched by the presidential spokesperson in pursuit of damages against the M&G's Sole and Brümmer.

The M&G has since sent a letter to the NPA, formally requesting permission from the director of public prosecutions, Menzi Simelane, to publish the contentious report in its entirety, and requested a response by Friday December 3. The NPA has acknowledged receipt of the letter.

'Waste of time'
Opposition parties have in the meantime slammed the Hawks' investigation, labelling it a "waste of time".

"Why would the Hawks be wasting their time on something like this?" said the Democratic Alliance's spokesperson on police matters, Dianne Kohler Barnard. "A mere detective at a police station could have taken up this investigation to establish how the M&G got their hands on this report and determine how serious the charges are. It would seem that Mac Maharaj is on his own mission and it is very sad the police and Hawks are being used by politicians to fight their own battles -- something that should never happen."

This sentiment was echoed by Inkatha Freedom Party parliamentarian Mario Ambrosini, who cautioned the Hawks against allowing their priorities to become "blurred".

"The Hawks are required to balance all interests involved in their investigations. In no way should they take actions which could have an adverse effect on the freedom of the press -- something that at times should override certain state interests," Ambrosini said.

United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa went as far as to suggest Maharaj had abused state resources before.

"I am afraid to say Maharaj is up to his old tricks again of using state resources to fight his battles," said Holomisa. "He cost the country R12-million through the Hefer commission, when he falsely accused then head of the NPA Bulelani Ngcuka of being an apartheid spy. If the Hawks continue with this investigation, they will be deviating from their mandate -- they should in fact look into the allegations levelled against Maharaj."

Standard procedure
The Hawks's Polela confirmed the instruction to consider an investigation came as a directive from the crime busting unit's head, Anwar Dramat. But he said this was by no means irregular or indicative of political interference.

"It is pretty standard for this to happen," Polela said. "We get involved based on the seriousness of the allegations put forward and take our next step once we determine if it is worth investigating."

"It was decided to [consider looking into the charges against the M&G] because of the high profile of Mac Maharaj and the interest generated in the case," added Polela. "However, there still remains the possibility we won't be investigating the matter further."

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Woman raped in front of sons





Woman raped in front of sons
2011-11-23 08:05




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Jonathan Erasmus, The Witness
Durban - A Gauteng woman has been raped in front of her teenage sons and their friends, just hours after arriving in KwaZulu-Natal for a holiday.

After raping the mother from Vanderbijlpark and ransacking the self-catering unit, the four armed men went to another self-catering unit on the same property and held the resident elderly couple up at gunpoint while they searched the house, threatening them with rape and murder.

The 38-year-old rape victim, her two sons and their two friends arrived in Richards Bay’s upmarket Meerensee for a five-day holiday just after 21:00 on Monday.

According to a victim from the second unit, who wished not be named fearing for her safety, the armed men must have entered the property between 21:30 and 22:00. It is protected by five-metre walls and an electric gate

The woman and her husband, from Johannesburg, are semi-permanent as her husband is doing contract work in Richards Bay.

Boys told to look away

“The other group had just arrived [from Vanderbijlpark] and asked us if there was a shop nearby as they needed a few items. The armed men must have entered the property when they left the premises because when they returned they were waiting for them,” said the woman.

They allegedly forced the people into the home, forced the boys onto the ground and then one suspect raped the mother.

“One of the boys told us the mother just told them to look away while she was raped. He also said the robbers told them they were acting on ‘inside information’,” said the elderly victim.

She said the suspects entered her unit at about 23:30 through the bathroom and kitchen windows.

“We had just gone to bed. However, seconds after I got up to go and check on the dog our bedroom light flicked on and this man entered our room.”

With her husband waking up startled, the suspect pushed them both back onto the bed and immediately demanded jewellery, money, cellphones and laptops and threatened to rape her.

“We sat on the bed and pulled the duvet over us. One of the suspects started pulling the duvet down saying he was going to rape me, but he was distracted by my gold chain and instead took that. He kept saying ‘where is the money, we are going to kill you’.

“They then ordered us to lie on the ground and tied up our hands and feet with my husband’s shoelaces.”

Threatened, tied up

At this point the attackers escorted the four teenagers and the rape victim into the elderly couple’s unit.

“The other woman had a gash to her head and was stumbling. They tied them all up and threatened to kill us.

"They had no masks; they weren’t scared. One suspect said ‘[you holidaymakers] shouldn’t come here [Richards Bay], it’s a shit place; look what we do to you’,” said the elderly woman.

“By 23:50 the suspects took the rape victim’s BMW X5. They kept saying they were going to come back. By 01:45 [on Tuesday] my husband said we had better get out of the house.

“We forced a burglar bar open and climbed out the window, jumped walls into neighbouring premises until we were eventually helped by a drunk man who arranged to have the police called.

“I must say the SAPS in Richards Bay were flawless. We are thankful for their response,” she said.

On Tuesday morning the police recovered the BMW.

Richards Bay police spokesperson Captain Debbie Ferreira said no suspects have yet been arrested.



- The Witness

Read more on: durban | crime