Is the Sharemax landmark worth R1.6bn or R616m?

Is the Sharemax landmark worth R1.6bn or R616m?





Published valuation of derelict Villa Retail Park is R1bn more than independent valuation.
Ryk van Niekerk  /  19 January 2017 00:39

The half-built Villa Retail Park, alongside Delmas road in Pretoria, is not only the tombstone of the failed Sharemax property syndication scheme, but also one of biggest eyesores in the city.
Thousands of investors – who invested more than R1.5 billion in the development, once dubbed the ‘jewel of Pretoria’ – now face great uncertainty over whether they will ever see their investments again.
Today the centre belongs to the Nova Property Group – the rescue vehicle set up after the collapse of Sharemax to try to save the R5 billion the 33 000 investors ploughed into the scheme.
There are however a few questions regarding the current value of the Villa – which may have significant implications for the Nova group, as it represents around 40% of the group’s R3.9 billion asset base.
Valuations
In Nova’s 2016 financial statements, which were audited without qualification, the Villa is valued at R1.668 billion. This valuation is R56 million higher than the 2015 valuation of R1.612 billion.
The 2016 valuation was performed by an independent property valuer, Amanda de Wet of Amanda de Wet Consultants and Investors CC, a registered property valuer that conducts independent valuations for a range of JSE-listed companies.
The four directors, Connie Myburgh (chairman), Dominique Haese (CEO), Rudi Badenhorst (FD) and Dirk Koekemoer (property director) were responsible for the 2015 valuation.

The Nova directors. From the left: Dirk Koekemoer, Rudi Badenhorst, Connie Myburgh and Dominique Haese.
There is however a significant difference in the actual published valuation and the one De Wet signed. De Wet’s official valuation is R770 million – a valuation that never made its way into the financial statements. The R770 million is De Wet’s valuation for 100% of the property, and since Nova only accounts for 80% of the value in its statements, the published fair value of R1.668 billion should be compared with a value of R616 million (80% of R770 million) – a difference of more than R1 billion.
The same apparent discrepancy exists for the Zambezi Mall – the other large Nova property in Pretoria which has not been fully completed. The financial statements list a fair value of R620 million, although De Wet’s official independent valuation is only R307 million.
Critical difference
This difference is not only significant in terms of the asset value of Nova, but if Nova had to impair the difference of R1 billion, it would leave the company technically insolvent.
The apparent discrepancy flows from Nova’s use of the IFRS 13 valuation standard: an international valuation standard used by many property companies. The main premise of this standard is to value properties at the price an independent third party would pay for the property in the open market.
Nova values the properties according to the ‘highest and best use’ principle of the standard which assumes a value of the property if it is used for the best possible purpose and would earn the highest return. For example, if the ‘highest and best use’ of the Villa was to convert it into offices or apartments, the value of such a conversion would be reflected. It is the potential market value of the property.
De Wet’s valuations
De Wet confirmed to Moneyweb that she signed valuations of R770 million for the Villa and R307 million for Zambezi. She valued the properties through the replacement method, which establishes what it would cost to rebuild the centre to its current state. Her valuations are based on the published construction costs of similar shopping centres, as published by the industry body Sapoa and respected valuation group Rode and Associates. The values used were R11 600/m2 for the Villa and R12 500/m2 for Zambezi and were merely multiplied with the gross lettable area (GLA) of each centre. After a few minor adjustments, the values were pegged at R770 million and R307 million respectively.
Valuations in the financial statements
However, the values published in Nova’s financial statements do not reflect these valuations, despite clearly stating that the valuations were performed by an independent valuer. According to the statements, the valuations are based on values of R32 658/m2 for the Villa and R22 500/m2 for Zambezi.
These values were derived from estimations – not valuations – De Wet supplied to the Nova board of the highest and best use of properties which are similar in size, but which did not form part of the official valuation.
De Wet said in response to Moneyweb questions that Koekemoer requested such an estimation after she submitted her official valuation report. To comply with this request, De Wet compared the Villa and Zambezi with the published valuations of similar-size shopping centres, as disclosed by several JSE-listed companies such as Hyprop and Growthpoint. De Wet emphasised that the size of the properties was the only considering factor.
For the Villa she estimated the highest and best use against the values of Growthpoint’s Festival Mall (published at R1.7 billion), Hyprop’s Clearwater Mall (R4 billion), Rosebank Mall (R3 billion), Woodlands (R2.3 billion) and Growthpoint’s highly successful Kolonnade centre (R2.6 billion).
For Zambezi she estimated the highest and best use against the values of smaller centres, such as the La Lucia Mall (R1.1 billion), the East Rand Mall (R1.2 billion), Golden Walk (R900 million) and the N1 City Mall (R844 million).
The average value per square metre of these fully-completed and commercially-successful centres was then calculated as R32 658/m2 and R22 500/m2 respectively – the precise values Nova used to value the Villa and Zambezi.
Valuation methodology
As per the financial statements
Villa
Zambezi
Gross lettable area (GLA) in m2
88 693
31 000
Estimated value m2 
(average value/m2 of similar shopping centres)
R32 658
R22 500
Value of estimated value multiplied by GLA
R2 896 535 994,
rounded to 
R2.9 billion
R697 500 000,
rounded to 
R700 million
Estimated cost to complete the centre
(as per fin statements)
(R814 million)
(R80 million)
Total
R2.086 billion
R620 million
80% of the value is accounted
R1.668 billion

Published valuation in 2016 financial statements
R1.668 billion
R620 million
Amanda de Wet’s official valuation
R770 million
(80% = R616 million)
R307 million

Disclosure in the financial statements
Nova’s financial statements do not disclose or qualify this significant disparity. In a note to the financial statements the company states:
“These valuations for 2016 were based on a combination of the comparable sales and replacement method. These methods entail investigating recently sold properties that are similar in important respects to the properties being valued. The sales price and the physical, functional, and locational characteristics of each of the properties are compared to the properties being valued in order to arrive at an estimate of value. In conjunction with the above the costs of replacing the existing structure are also considered.”
Despite the fact that the published valuation seems to have ignored De Wet’s official replacement method valuation, this statement also contradicts the basis used for De Wet’s estimation, namely the published valuations of listed companies’ property assets, and not on ‘recently sold properties’.
De Wet’s response
De Wet was surprised when she saw the published valuations, as they did not mirror her signed valuations. “I emphasised that the highest and best use estimates were not valuations, but utopian estimates. I looked at the valuations of these properties in the context that they are not involved in litigation, nor have construction or zoning constraints; they are at least 95% let, have a good and comparable tenant mix and have a similar foot count. There must also be no issue for the centre to attract tenants.”
De Wet also qualified these estimates in her report.
This is relevant as both the Villa and Zambezi have not been completed and have been involved in ongoing litigation with the developer.
The well-known property developer Louis van der Watt of Atterbury Property (the group that recently built the Mall of Africa), has also stated on several occasions that the Villa’s location is not ideal and that the centre would struggle to find tenants.
BDO
Moneyweb submitted a range of questions regarding the Nova financial statements to its auditors BDO in November last year, including questions regarding the valuation of the Villa. BDO has not responded formally to these questions.
At the time, BDO released a holding statement and launched an investigation into the financial affairs of the Nova group since the Sharemax collapse and said it would only comment after the completion of the investigation. BDO confirmed this position on Wednesday when asked to respond to this article.
Impairment would mean insolvency
This difference between the valuations is not only significant in terms of Nova’s asset value, but also as to whether it can properly be regarded as a going concern.
This increase in value, or fair value adjustment, is accounted for in the group’s income statement as revenue. Although the increase in the 2016 statements is only R56 million, the company has since 2012 accounted for fair value adjustments of the Villa of nearly R1.2 billion. (Remember, this is a half-built and derelict building.)
Although it is only a book entry, it is the major reason why the group has recorded profits over the past few years and may be the basis on which – in my view – excessive salaries and bonuses are paid to the directors.

Villa
Zambezi
Value in 2012
R498 million
R234 million
Value in 2016
R1.668 billion
R620 million
Increase in value
R1.17 billion
R386 million
Value as percentage of Nova assets in 2012
26%
12%
Value as percentage of Nova assets in 2016
43%
16%
A draft version of this article was sent to Dominique Haese (CEO) and Connie Myburgh (chairman) for comment. They did not respond to the email. Haese also did not respond to an SMS.
Nova has previously suspended correspondence with Moneyweb. The response below was sent to Moneyweb in November last year.
Dear Mr van Niekerk,
It is regrettable that our efforts in engaging Moneyweb openly, constructively and in a bona vide fashion has not been reciprocated. In response Moneyweb has chosen to publish articles without prior reference to us, and in breach of your undertaking to allow us to see and comment on the articles first, which articles twist the facts, articulate a number of inaccuracies and untruths and seek to slander and defame the Nova Group and its directorate. We are considering our position and our rights in this regard are reserved.
It has become clear to us that any information that is provided by us to Moneyweb, will be twisted and used out of context for the purpose of further negative reporting of and concerning the Nova Group and its directorate and given that no further productive purpose would be served in engaging with Moneyweb, the Nova Group has decided to break off all forms of communication with Moneyweb. We will accordingly no longer respond to questions Moneyweb pose to us, requests for commentary on proposed articles or for that matter to any articles that Moneyweb might publish, subject of course to a reservation of the right to deal with any matter Moneyweb might publish, in a court of law.
Please ensure, should you elect to publish anything further regarding the Nova Group and any of its functionaries, that you include in such publication our above position, verbatim.
Yours faithfully,
Dominique Haese
CEO Nova Property Group
Read also:
Part: ‘Corporate capture’ of Sharemax rescue vehicle
Part 2: Shareholder structure hides how directors acquired 87.1% of Nova shares
“I don’t think it’s fair to be required to adhere to King III’ – Nova CEO
24 facts Nova directors cannot deny
Nova suspends interest payments to debenture holders

Top terror bomber bust on his way to South Africa

SUNDAY TIMES NEWS BY MZILIKAZI WA AFRIKA AND STEPHAN HOFSTATTER, 2017-01-15
Top terror bomber bust on his way to SA





Saad Kindeel, the Iraqi ambassador to South Africa.

Image: Moeletsi Mabe

A bomb maker working for the Islamic State terrorist group was arrested at a Turkish airport last month as he was about to board a flight to Johannesburg.

The suspect, an Iraqi named Abu Osama, was allegedly planning an attack in South Africa.

"Our intelligence officials believe Abu wasn't coming to South Africa to recruit for IS, but to identify a specific target that would later be attacked," Iraqi ambassador Saad Kindeel told the Sunday Times.

Osama's arrest took place shortly after immigration officials at OR Tambo flagged another suspected terrorist entering South Africa from Turkey. He was originally from the US.

The two incidents have sparked concern that South Africa might be facing an increased risk of terror attacks, specifically on US-based businesses and buildings.


Mosque desecrations like terrorism‚ says Muslim group
Speaking on behalf of acting police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane yesterday, Hangwani Mulaudzi said: "We are aware of the two incidents. One was dealt with by immigration officials at OR Tambo, where a person coming from the US via Turkey was flagged and sent back to Turkey."

Mulaudzi said the incident happened on December 16.

"We are also aware of the later incident in Turkey where a person was arrested as he was about to take a flight to South Africa. Interpol confirmed the incident and we are still waiting for their full briefing," Mulaudzi said.

The incident in Turkey was confirmed this week by Kindeel.

He said Iraq had more information on the planned attack in South Africa by Osama, but he could not share this with the South African government until it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Iraq in which both countries agreed to share security information.

"I am surprised the South African government is taking its time to sign this memorandum. We are providing the information for free, which can be used to protect its citizens," the ambassador said.

State Security Minister David Mahlobo confirmed the incident at OR Tambo airport and said Kindeel had notified him about the arrest in Turkey.

"I am not delaying the signing of this memorandum of understanding. We take any terror threat very seriously. I am in the process of setting up a task team that will deal with these terror threats and interrogate the information from the Iraqi ambassador."

Mahlobo said his men had always been on high alert.

He said the man who was identified at OR Tambo airport had flown in from a country in the Middle East.

"He wasn't arrested as he didn't commit any crime in South Africa and was not wanted for any criminal activities elsewhere."

I had orders to move to South Africa through Khartoum in Sudan. I was then arrested at Ataturk airport at the end of last year.
Mahlobo said extremist groups were recruiting people with clean records so they were not easily identified.

"They are clean with no dodgy past," he said.

IS is known for extreme brutality, including the beheadings and crucifixions of prisoners.

In an interview with Sunday Times this week, Kindeel said Osama had been arrested at Ataturk airport in Turkey as he was about to board a flight to South Africa. The arrest took place late last month and Osama is being held by Iraqi officials in Baghdad.

A source in the South African security services with direct access to anti-terror investigations said: "South Africa will not be the victim of any attack, but I believe there is a risk against foreign assets in South Africa."

He said there were many IS-linked foreigners receiving training in South Africa and recruiting here for the organisation.

US embassy spokeswoman Cynthia Harvey would not comment on whether the US was aware of the arrest in Turkey or on Osama's alleged plans to launch an attack in South Africa.

"As in all cases related to intelligence matters, we are not able to provide comment on this case," she said.

She confirmed that a terror alert regarding South Africa issued last year was still in force. She said it was based on information that terrorist groups were planning to carry out "near-term attacks against places where US citizens congregate in South Africa".


Turkey arrests soldiers for 'helping terror group'
Osama's arrest was widely reported in Middle Eastern newspapers, which quoted the Iraqi federal judiciary authority.

Kindeel said Iraqi intelligence officials had told him that during interrogation, Osama had confessed to planning an attack on the US air base at Incirlik in Turkey.

He had recruited a suicide bomber for the mission. He said his next target would be in South Africa.

The Incirlik air base is also used by Nato forces and the Turkish air force. Nato has used the base for airstrikes against IS.

"Our intelligence officials believe Abu wasn't coming to South Africa to recruit for IS, but to identify a specific target that would later be attacked," Kindeel said.

He said Osama, who is an engineer, had been planning to flee Turkey after being tipped off that his cover was blown.

According to Middle Eastern news sites quoting the Iraqi federal judiciary authority, Osama told his captors that he had attended Mosul University, graduating as a civil engineer and worked with a German company that built roads and bridges in the northern Iraqi city.

He moved to Germany for a short time to continue his studies.

Following his return to Mosul, he was unemployed for a year and a half.

"Most of the companies left Mosul because they were concerned that IS extremists would occupy the city," he reportedly said in his confession.

"After IS occupied Mosul, I heard that [IS leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had called for people with expertise to join the Islamic State and I decided to join the group in one of the famous mosques in Mosul. Then we were divided to different groups."

The Arabic news site almasalah.com quoted the federal judiciary authority as saying that Osama told officials: "I had orders to move to South Africa through Khartoum in Sudan.

"I was then arrested at Ataturk airport at the end of last year."

The concern is, do we have to have a terror attack before we realise how vulnerable South Africa is to a terror attack from IS?"
Security analyst Jasmine Opperman, a director of the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium who previously worked for the State Security Agency, said the threat of an IS attack in South Africa was real.

"The call is to stay wherever you are and use whatever means available to execute an attack where you are, and that this will be seen as equally important as going to the caliphate in terms of showing your loyalty," she said. "South Africa is entering this phase."

While she had no specific knowledge of Osama's alleged plot to attack South Africa, it "sounds definitely plausible".

Information from foreign intelligence agencies, including Iraq, about terror threats to South Africa "must always be verified for credibility and reliability", she cautioned.

"But this shouldn't make us complacent. The concern is, do we have to have a terror attack before we realise how vulnerable South Africa is to a terror attack from IS?"

The Muslim Judicial Council's Ihsaan Hendricks said he could not comment "on this particular incident", but added that South Africa could not be "naive".

"I believe it [an attack in South Africa] is highly possible," he said.

If proved that Osama was planning to come to South Africa to organise an attack "we can no longer live in denial".

THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS IS NOT 105 YEARS OLD

No Fear No Favour No BULLSHIT...............

The Land Act of 1913 and its alternatives

with 12 comments

This year is the centennial commemoration of what many now believe was the one Act that irrevocably put South Africa on the road to Apartheid. Few have been more outspoken about its impact than South Africa’s leader of the opposition, Helen Zille:

 The 1913 Land Act was apartheid’s ‘original sin’ because it reserved 87% of South Africa’s land exclusively for white ownership, as the basis of the ‘Bantustan’ policy. It not only dispossessed many black South Africans of the land they owned, but also sought to prohibit black people from ever acquiring land in so-called ‘white’ South Africa.

Unfortunately, history is never that simple. There is no doubt that most white South Africans, English and Afrikaners, at the start of the twentieth century believed that the majority of South Africa’s land – and perhaps even the lands of neighbouring countries – should be proclaimed as ‘white man’s land’. The demand for produce in the rapidly-expanding urban areas combined with low input costs, notably the low cost of black wages, made large-scale agriculture a lucrative enterprise. White farmers were also keen to expand and thus enter the traditional black areas with its highly fertile land. This steady expansion had only one consequence: that, eventually, all black land would have been claimed by white farmers. This didn’t happen though. Instead, a group of white officials in the Department of Native Affairs after unification noted the rapid decline in black land and realised that without statutory intervention blacks may soon own no land at all. The result: the Land Act of 1913. Here’s Hermann Giliomee in The Afrikaners (p. 326):

 They saw merit in the idea that a settlement, even if not equitable to blacks, would at least prevent further white encroachment in the reserves. In 1915 the Secretary for Native Affairs referred to a district where fewer than half of the farms formerly owned by ‘natives’ were still in their possession. As the liberal historian W.M. Macmillan pointed out at the time: ‘[Open] competition in land is fatal to the weaker race … Given free right of entry of white into native lands, the natives will presently be landless indeed.

Looking back from our current vintage point, it is easy to assume that the counterfactual to the Land Act of 1913 was a larger share of land for black South Africans; i.e. that instead of the 13%, black South Africans should have received 30%, or 50% or 80%. But what Giliomee suggests here is that that would be a wrong conclusion: instead, in the absence of the Land Act, the land that black South Africans were living on would have been systematically claimed by white settlers, leaving blacks destitute with few alternatives other than to provide their labour to the mines and as farmhands. The Land Act thus protected instead of pilfered land belonging to blacks.

SANNC delegation that went to England to convey African people’s objections to the 1913 Land Act, 1914. L-R: Rev W. Rubusana, T. Mapike, Rev J. Dube, S. Plaatjie and S. Msane. Courtesy of South Africa History Online.

(So here’s a thought experiment: there was no Land Act in 1713 for the Khoi of the southwestern Cape. What if the Dutch East India Company had proclaimed 13% of the Western Cape as Khoi-land. Would Khoi-descendants living in these hypothetical areas today celebrate or abhor the 1713 Land Act? That is an open question. Instead, what happened in the absence of a Land Act was that many Khoi died in the smallpox epidemic of 1713 and those that remained had little choice but to work on settler farms, where many of their descendants still work today.)

The late Lawrence Schlemmer once said that he knows of no former colony – other than South Africa –  where the indigenous population continued to live on 30% of the region’s most fertile land after colonisation (I thank Hermann Giliomee for this reference). This is not to suggest that colonisation – or the Land Act – was morally just or defensible, or that it did not contribute to a highly unequal South African society. But before we denigrate the Land Act, we should think about the alternatives. Maybe missionary societies would have acquired some land for black farmers to till. Perhaps white farmers would not have infiltrated black areas to any great extent. But probably not. In all likelihood, black South Africans would have owned considerably less land than what the Land Act of 1913 sanctioned.

Johan Fourie's Blog

Preface Aninka Claassens, Ben Cousins and Cherryl Walker THIS VOLUME encompasses an extraordinary collection of historical and contemporary photographs that singly and collectively speak to the power of land, not only in the turbulent history of this country but also as a significant material and symbolic resource in the day-to-day lives of individuals and communities. The curators and editors have drawn together a compelling set of images of people, land and place that spans more than 100 years in the history of this region, with a focus on the century since the passage of the notorious Natives Land Act in June 1913. The title of this book – Umhlaba (Land) – is direct yet open-ended, allowing for different entry points and multiple forms of engagement with the collection’s overall themes. The history reflected here is, inescapably, one of often brutal conflict and exclusion that has left the present generation with many daunting challenges in the political, economic, social and ecological spheres. However, threaded through this familiar overarching narrative in complex, even challenging ways, are other more affirming accounts of how people have related to or been present on the land. Solidarity, productivity, creativity, spirituality, a sense of place: these experiences of land and landscape that inform the larger history also find expression in the pages that follow. The material presented here comes from many different archives. The wide range of photographers and photographic genres is, in itself, an important achievement of the curators and the team that assisted them. One of the strengths of this collection is the different genres of photography it includes, for example posed studio portraits to commemorate significant milestones in life, alongside photographs taken by activist photographers during the era of forced removals. Not only do the photographs document key events and changes over a century, they do this through different ‘eyes’, some intimate, others seemingly dispassionate. The collection embodies the ever-present tension 10 Umhlaba 1913–2013 between time passing and the immediacy of images captured in the then-present. Many of the images are deeply moving in their powerful evocation of the personal significance of land in the lives of so many South Africans, past and present. The photographic exhibition on which this edited collection is based formed part of the programme of an inter-disciplinary conference, ‘Land Divided: Land and South African Society in 2013 in Comparative Perspective’, held at the University of Cape Town in March 2013 to commemorate the centenary of the passage of the Natives Land Act. This Act, passed by an all-white, all-male Parliament just three years after the Union of South African was established, is widely recognised as foundational for the system of spatial, political and economic marginalisation that was progressively forced on black South Africans after 1910 and which found its apogee under the apartheid regime. The March 2013 conference was a joint initiative of three centres of teaching and research on land and agrarian studies in the Western Cape: the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town, the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology and the LESA research programme at Stellenbosch University, and the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape. The aim of the conference was to use the occasion of the centenary of the Natives Land Act to provide a platform for critical reflection on not only the uneven manifestations of its legacy across space and time, but also contemporary and future challenges around land and the environment, not all of which can be attributed to this legacy. The conference was, accordingly, organised around four themes: the legacy of the 1913 Natives Land Act; land reform and agrarian policy in southern Africa; the multiple meanings of land (identity, rights, belonging), and ecological challenges. It drew together some 300 delegates – academics, community leaders, policy-makers and officials – in four days of intense debate and discussion. Delegations of rural people attended and spoke at the conference, in addition to academics, public intellectuals, parliamentarians and the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform. They spoke about their direct experiences of landlessness and their struggles for change. Many of the key challenges facing land reform emerged clearly within their testimonies, for example, Preface Umhlaba 1913–2013 11 the way in which the Traditional Courts Bill of 2012 re-entrenched the ‘Bantustan’ boundaries that are a particularly potent and intractable legacy of the Land Act, the state’s reluctance to transfer restitution land to elected Communal Property Associations, and the absence of effective postsettlement support. The photographic exhibition on which this book is based, which opened at the Iziko National Gallery in Cape Town on 25 March 2013, was a high point of the proceedings. It gave powerful visual expression to the conference themes while challenging viewers, then and in the months to follow in Cape Town and later in Johannesburg, with previously unseen archival material and the unexpected framing of issues and juxtapositioning of images. The exhibition managed, in a way that is more difficult for academic conferences, to convey its meanings directly and personally to a wide range of differently situated people. Photography can, perhaps, be a more direct and democratic medium than words, especially those deployed at academic conferences, with all their complications of language and separate disciplines and bodies of knowledge. We were proud, as members of the Conference Steering Committee, to have collaborated with the curators of the exhibition in this way. The centenary year of the Natives Land Act presented us with a major opportunity to reflect on the significance of land, historically and in contemporary society. The legacy of this Act is still etched in South Africa’s deeply divided countryside and racialised inequalities. Yet what is also becoming increasingly apparent at the start of the third decade of political democracy in this country is that the complex intersection of social, economic and environmental issues which shape relationships to land cry out for fresh analysis and revitalised understandings. This book makes a significant contribution to this task of reflection and review. Dr Aninka Claassens is chief researcher and director of the Rural Women’s Action Research Programme of the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town; Ben Cousins is Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation Chair in Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies and senior professor at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) of the University of the Western Cape; Cherryl Walker is professor of sociolocy and social anthropology at Stellenbosch University. Aninka Claassens, Ben Cousins and Cherryl Walker 12 Umhlaba 1913–2013 PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN: Sol Plaatje, far right, with other members of the South African Natives National Congress (SANNC) delegation which travelled to London in 1914 to convey their objections to the 1913 Natives Land Act to the British government. Others are, from left to right, Thomas Mapike, Reverend Walter Rubusana, Reverend John Dube and Saul Msane. Plaatjie remained in England to fight for their cause until 1917. Courtesy of Silas T Molema and Solomon T Plaatje Collection, Historical Papers Research Archive, The Library, University of the Witwatersrand.

Wits  Umhlaba


COMMENTS BY SONNY

WE ARE NOT SHEEP AND DO NOT BELIEVE WHAT JACOB ZUMA SAYS................

ZUMA HAS COMMITTED HIGH TREASON AGAINST HIS OATH OF OFFICE!