A farm attack took place on the night of 17 November 2019, in Carolina near Ermelo, in Mpumalanga province, South Africa. The man was assisting his father working on a vehicle on their farm when they were attacked by an unknown number of attackers. The man suffered serious injuries during the assault.
The man was admitted to hospital for urgent attention. There is no other information available at this stage. Police are investigating. There have been no arrests.
JOHANNESBURG – Talks between South African Airways (SAA) management and striking workers have collapsed.
Union leaders briefed the media and workers after the parties met on Saturday in an attempt to resolve the strike which began on Friday.
Workers are demanding an 8%wage increase while SAA is offering 5.9%.
According to the National Union for Metalworkers of South Africa’s (Numsa) Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, unions and the national carrier have failed to find each other.
Numsa and the South African Cabin Crew Association (Sacca) have warned they will intensify the strike across all SAA departments.
“If you have workers at the Civil Aviation Authority on strike, it means that none of the planes are going to fly. It’s not just SAA, its all planes”, said Hlubi-Majola.
The struggling state owned airline says its working around the clock to introduce additional capacity on the domestic network.
NUMSA T
Continue reading…
“Oh no, not again!” This was the reaction of University of SA (Unisa) students on social media after the university sent out an email on Friday afternoon to students announcing that exam question papers for the second semester – October and November – had been leaked.
The outrage was swift on social media after the university sent the email to its 400 000 students about the compromised exams.
Unisa also informed the students that an investigation was underway to establish what had happened.
Some students panicked online, speculating which modules were affected.
Others speculated that it could have been the Taxation and Business Activities and Economics papers and the Foundations in English Literacy Studies exam.
Questions were emailed to Martin Ramotshela, the university spokesperson, and to Professor Mandla Makhanya, Unisa’s principal and vice-chancellor, on Friday afternoon.
Ramotshela said yesterday he wou
Continue reading…
The months-long speculation has now been confirmed by Telkom that it is investigating the possibility of taking over the struggling Cell C.
However, Telkom later confirmed that it had made an offer to the mobile phone company, which was widely regarded as an attempt to replenish its lost customer base.
Although Cell C is the third largest mobile phone company in South Africa, the entity struggles to stay afloat while the other two mobile phone companies operate profitably.
One of the main reasons cited by financial experts is that Cell C, with various rates that are too low, has tried to increase its market share, which is not a successful endeavor.
The large workload of a large top post incumbent is also seen as a reason why the industry has struggled for years to improve its financial standing.
Like almost all other state entities, Prasa seems to be tumbling as well, with the possibility that 3,000 security workers will be retrenched to balance their financial situation.
Prasa had to cancel numerous security contracts, which was trailed by the cancellation of various maintenance and repairs contracts.
With the large number of cancellations, it’s evident that the good times of lavish spending are over for now, economists say.
Serious concerns now exist about the safety of Prasa’s services, with far less security, trains and vehicles not serviced or repaired as the country begins to approach the economic precipice.
Revenue service Sars said on Friday it had terminated the services of its head of legal, Refiloe Mokoena, with immediate effect.
It said the decision was taken after a disciplinary hearing chaired by a senior counsel from the Johannesburg Bar.
Sars said Mokoena was found guilty of serious misconduct.
“Sars has accepted the chairperson’s recommendation of immediate dismissal and her services have been terminated with effect from today, November 15 2019,” Sars said.
BusinessLIVE reported in October that Mokoena, who was allegedly at the centre of granting the controversial Gupta family a reported R420m VAT refund, had been suspended.
It said Mokoena was asked by Sars in September to supply reasons why she should not be suspended by the tax agency over the Gupta refunds. Mokoena was one of five executives who were placed on precautionary suspension in recent months pending the conclusion of their disciplinary processes.
The number – and size – of insurance claims filed with state-owned political risk insurer Sasria (the South African Special Risks Insurance Association) show just how much violent protests are costing South Africa.
In 2007, after nearly four years of economic growth of over 5%, Sasria received 540 claims worth R14 million for damage as a result of violent protests. Most of those claims were related to labour action.
By 2018 the number of claims had spiked more than 10 times, to 5,543 claims. But the increase in the value of the claims was a hundredfold, to R1.4 billion. Most of those claims were related to service-delivery protests, pointing to a failure of local government.
Protests and road closures have become a daily occurrence across South Africa as marginalised communities take to the street in the belief that they only get noticed when causing damage to public and private property.
There is also a worrying rise in sabotage, wit
Continue reading…
The impending strike at SAA by the SA Cabin Staff Association and Numsa could mean the end of the airline. In the meantime, the Pilot Association announced that they supported the idea and that the state entity’s overall top management should be replaced. Furthermore, they threatened to act if a Chief Executive with no experience aviation experience and knowledge are appointed.
The imminent strike comes after SAA announced that a restructuring will take place to make the entity more cost effective. The SAA’s enormous debt burden means that it has no choice but to lay off about 1,000 staff members, but the unions threaten to call a large-scale strike if retrenchments continue.
Persons who will use SAA’s services on Friday 15 November 2019 were advised to make alternative arrangements as all flights for Friday and Saturday were canceled considering the impending strike.
The SAA is technically bankrupt, and if a strike is now call
Continue reading…
Hundreds of refugees from African countries living in South-Africa say they feel extremely unsafe in the country, especially after being constantly harassed and sabotaged by local residents.
The strangers are currently housed in the “Central Methodist Church of Cape Town and are now looking for ways to get out of the country to a safer place like Canada.
The people previously lived in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but were later taken there when they were attacked by locals.
South Africa once again became the mousetrap of the world when reports of xenophobic attacks on refugees were released.
The refugees demand that the ANC regime should take them to a safer country at state expense, but there is disagreement about where to go.
Many people ask that they be transferred to Canada where there are no such unsafe conditions.