Controversial Royal Family members is not necessarily only a feature of late 20th or 21st century life. Although they were not subjected to the intense media scrutiny that our Royals are today, two Princes of Wales and two namesakes have captured the fevered imaginations of the public in their wilder early days – later to […]The Playboy Princes is a post from: BooknSpire


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The South African Football Association (Safa) has honoured President Jacob Zuma, former Presidents Thabo Mbeki, FW de Klerk and Kgalema Motlanthe for the role they played in uplifting football in the country.

Safa also honoured posthumously the country’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, during a glittering event before its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the Sandton Convention Centre on Saturday morning.

Former President De Klerk used the platform to echo the importance of social cohesion and building a non-racial South Africa.

“The award you presented to me belongs to South Africans because in my opinion, they were the real stars during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. For a magic few weeks in 2010, they showed the successful outcome we can achieve and the goodwill we can generate when we, as South Africans, work together for a common goal.

“I believe we should free ourselves from the divisive approaches that set some South Africans against each other. We should unite once again as we did with the World Cup.

“We should recapture the magic of 2010 by working together to ensure that all South Africans can be winners. Maybe the best starting point will be as we did with the World Cup - identify our strengths, our weaknesses, highlight our strengths and improve where we are weak,” said De Klerk.

He said if the nation can do all that with the economy using the 2010 World Cup approach to attract investment from across the world, South Africa will be a winner again.

Former President Mbeki said: “We continue to face many challenges and I think it indicates the direction in which we need to move. Hopefully, this constitutes a common pledge that as South Africans, we will continue to act together to do better than we have done in the past.

“We need to thank the people of South Africa and the leadership of football for the journey that we have travelled in soccer and other sporting codes so far.

“We really need to thank them for what was done in the past and hopefully what we are going to do in future. Thank you so much for this award.”

Former Deputy President Motlanthe, who served as President between September 2008 and May 2009, said: “Football in particular is a great unifier and international language. That is why all these players play all over the world with no difficulties because when it comes to communicating, everybody understands the language.”

Mandela’s award was received by his first granddaughter Ndileka Mandela, who is continuing his legacy in the field of education and health in rural areas through a foundation named after her father and Madiba’s first born son, Thembekile Mandela.


“His legacy and spirit is continuing through me by making sure that children in rural areas are also enjoying and benefiting from the available education and sporting activities.

“I am appealing to both the Sport Minister and Safa to make sure that they join hands in rolling out programmes and sporting facilities in rural areas. Together let’s give these children in rural areas a chance to benefit from sporting activities,” she said.

Sport and Recreation Minister Fikile Mbalula said players must take great pride in representing the country.

“To play for Bafana Bafana, one needs to be patriotic and committed to deliver the desired results.”

The Minister accepted President Zuma’s award on his behalf as he was unable to attend the event due to other government engagements. – SAnews.gov.za

The Liberian Ambassador to South Africa, Lois Brutus, says various non-governmental organisations and governments from all over the world have been supportive of the continent since Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) broke out in West Africa.

She said African countries have also sent monetary and non-monetary donations to Liberia and other affected countries as a means of showing support.

“The government of the Republic of South Africa has also committed to send a number of medical supplies, medical doctors and NGOs to Western African countries,” she said.

Brutus was speaking at a media briefing on Friday in Kempton Park. She was joined by other ambassadors and South African Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi following a meeting they had on the Ebola Response Fund, which was set up by South Africa to mobilise the business community to make donations to affected countries in West Africa.

Brutus said while support was a bit slow in the beginning, it has since gained momentum.

“The world has recognised that the virus is an epidemic and a threat to global security,” she said.

She said the South African government has been very active in making people aware of the virus.

A military group from America is also in Liberia to help hospitals in that country to contain EVD.

The Guinea Ambassador to South Africa, Mamadi Camara, said his country has also received a lot of support from South Africa and other countries across the globe, including hospital equipment and monetary support.

“People are still dying in our country. What we need is massive and fast support to save lives,” he said.

Minister Motsoaledi said while South Africa has not banned people from travelling to countries in West Africa, they are closely monitoring developments around travelling.

“We have received about 869 applications and only two of them were declined. All the others were allowed to travel to these countries,” he said.

The Minister said there are still no Ebola infections in South Africa. He stressed, however, that health care workers stand ready to deal with any case of infection.

The 2014 Ebola epidemic is the largest in history, affecting a number of countries in West Africa. Just over 4 000 people are reported to have been killed by the virus. – SAnews.gov.za

The second race of the Spur KZN Trail Seriesâ„¢ stuck to the tradition of being a wet affair as the rains came down at the magnificent Kenneth...

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Johannesburg - The City of Ekurhuleni says it wants to transform historically disadvantaged townships into viable commercial business areas through its ambitious Township Economy Programme.

In an exclusive interview with SAnews after his Imbizo with the local business sector in Boksburg on Thursday, City Manager Khaya Ngema said the municipality and stakeholders had engaged on the Township Economy Programme, which aims to support small business.

He said they had also begun engaging the Gauteng Provincial Government on its implementation.

“We are looking at linking retailers to wholesalers. We already had a pilot project in Ekurhuleni with Massmart for more than 20 township shops, where they become part of the supplier development programme for Massmart.

“We want to engage all other big wholesalers to become part of our township economy programme.”

He said one of the reasons South Africans were failing to run ventures such as spaza shops was that they procured goods individually as opposed to buying as a collective.

“We are trying to promote these types of practices in our townships, so that we will have viable and commercial businesses. We want to move townships away from being dormitory towns into multi-use suburbs,” he said.

Ngema said it was vital that the city manage and develop its business properties in these areas well.

“We must support people who are already operating from those properties. We must rehabilitate and modernise those properties so that they become attractive sites for business operators.

“We also want to focus on creating industrial facilities. We want to convert the currently dilapidated township shops into vibrant office, retail and industrial spaces,” he said.

For this to happen, the city needed to have a conversation with those businesses who are, and who aspire to be, operating from those premises through forums such as Izimbizo.

“We realised that there were some specific business concerns that we needed to address with the sector, but we also wanted to use the platform to brief them about the work that we are doing that is significant to their respective businesses,” said Ngema.

He said the city hoped to make Izimbizo a regular feature.

“As a city, we are both a manufacturing and logistics hub and we don’t want to take that responsibility for granted, hence we are vowing to always keep in touch with the sector.”

The representatives of the business sector praised the city for organising an Imbizo where they were able to air their views directly to the municipal leaders.

President of the Greater Boksburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Willi Riedel, said: “We commend the municipality for organising this meeting as it shows us that the municipality doesn’t want to move alone in terms of developing our area, but they want to work with us.”

His sentiments were echoed by local businessman, Howard Mokoena, who said: “Government needs to have more of these discussions and they should take place in the townships, so that they can reach more people.”

He said organising an Imbizo showed that the city wanted to involve the people in its plans. – SAnews.gov.za

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) stands ready to protect the rand’s value, says Deputy Governor Daniel Mminele. “… The bank, in following a...

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Taking place at the picturesque Lievland Wine Estate (Stellenbosch) the weekend of 18 and 19 October 2014, the IMPI Challenge Cape Town #2 has...

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Speed was at the order of the day in race 1 of the 2014 Spur KZN Trail Seriesâ„¢ on Sunday as the KZN runners blitzed the Inanda Dam course in record times. In what is arguably the fastest course in the Series the front runners dipped below the 03:30 min per km mark and left [...]KZN Trail Series kicks off is a post from: Trail Running South Africa


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In democracies across the world today, access to clean drinking water is a basic human right.

In 2010 the United Nations voted to expand the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include the right to clean water.

Governments who supported this, like ours, commit to ensuring that people can enjoy "sufficient, safe, accessible and affordable water, without discrimination".

When something goes wrong, as is inevitable in any country, and water access is interrupted, these governments have a duty to resolve the problem without delay and reconnect people as soon as humanly possible.

Being stuck without water is not simply an inconvenience.

For families to survive without water for days on end is dangerous, even life-threatening.

With this in mind we recall that by last Friday, some parts of Gauteng had gone without water not for just days - they were near the end of their third week of dry taps and empty toilet cisterns.

How this crisis in Gauteng unfolded offers us the most compelling example in recent times of how closely linked good governance is to basic human rights.

The water crisis started on 15 September when an electricity outage caused the Rand Water pump station at Eikenhof to stop pumping water.

This affected the southern and western parts of Johannesburg, Krugersdorp and the south-western parts of Tshwane, including Centurion, Laudium and Erasmia.

A rare electricity outage can occur anywhere for a variety of reasons. But this would normally be where the back-up substation would kick in. Except that the back-up substation for Eikenhof had been “out of service” since November last year because nobody had bothered to fix or replace the faulty equipment.

And just as things at Eikenhof were beginning to recover, Gauteng’s second key pump station – the one at Palmiet – stopped pumping water.

Palmiet supplies water to large parts of Ekurhuleni, including Germiston, Tsakane, Brakpan and Boksburg – an industry-heavy region with high-density residential areas.

Everyone from the Minister to the Mayor told us the collapse of Palmiet, as a second major water supply source in Gauteng, was due to cable theft.

Cable theft in our context is also a foreseeable crisis, and with proper pre-planning should not cause indefinite disruptions.

In this case, again, there was an inadequate back-up plan.

Inadequate is an under-statement. The truth is Rand Water’s back-up capacity covers them for exactly one hour in the event of an outage. Anything longer than that, and the pumps cut out.

To top it off, Rand Water claims they cannot afford back-up generators.

Their “plan” to provide the residents of Gauteng with water, ironically depends on an uninterrupted supply of electricity from Eskom and Joburg City Power -- and we all know what a risky assumption that is! It is impossible to mitigate a risk by taking an even bigger risk.

If something goes wrong with the electricity supply, Gauteng must rely on it being fixed within the hour -- or they will find themselves without either electricity or water.

And when the taps don’t run, then nothing runs – not households, not businesses, not schools, not hospitals.

In Gauteng, the water crisis affected at least three hospitals. Schools also had to shut down. Communities were left to find their own solutions, such as identifying residents with boreholes to help supply their neighbours.

The extraordinary ingenuity of South Africans who always “make a plan” to deal with a crisis, tends to let government off the hook, time and again. But no society can flourish without a competent government.

If a metro like Ekurhuleni wants to live up to its much vaunted promise of a 21st century “Aerotropolis”, someone has to start running it like one.

Because when the water crisis reached them, they started scrambling to find water tankers to dispatch to the problem areas but, of their nine tankers, only two were operational.

The response by the Gauteng ANC and the National Department to this water crisis has been nothing short of disastrous. It reflects a failure of maintenance, a failure of risk management, a failure of planning, and a failure of disaster management.

For a start, no one seemed to do anything until the problem became a full blown crisis. And after dozens of suburbs across three metros had been dry for days, the local government’s first instinct was to deny the severity of the problem.

Then there was also the inevitable blame game with Eskom, Rand Water and the ANC provincial and local governments playing “pass the parcel” and pointing fingers everywhere but themselves.

Rand Water issued its first public statement a full 6 days into the water crisis.

Then 10 days into the crisis, Premier David Makhura – the man in Gauteng who should be most on top of the situation - told SAPA “people are sending me Twitter messages and SMSes”. He said he would get a report on “what the real problem is and what the source of the apparent water supply problem is”.

And then finally, 14 days into the crisis, Minister Nomvula Mokonyane said the reason that thousands of people still had no water at all was just due to a “technical glitch”.

But while this was happening, no one thought to tell the residents in affected areas why they had no water, what was being done to fix this, and when they could expect to turn on their taps again.

It is true that all South African cities are vulnerable to cable theft. And we agree that this should be classified as economic sabotage. But that is why it is so essential to have back-up plans that can be implemented quickly and efficiently.

The Western Cape, like all other regions in the world, experiences occasional supply disruptions. The question is: how are they managed, and do the back-up plans work?

Yesterday, 300 houses and 4 farms outside Vredenburg, on the West Coast suffered a water supply disruption, from 07h00 till 15h00. By the time I became aware of it, the back-up plan was in full swing, and the problem fixed.

Competent governments pay as much attention to maintenance as to building new infrastructure, despite the challenges of urbanization. In Cape Town, for example over R200 million a year is spent on maintaining and replacing aging infrastructure.

And 82% of the City’s water treatment plants are self-powered through water turbines, making them independent of Eskom or the City Electricity Department.

And the first sign of a crisis activates an approved Disaster Risk Management plan in the event of any unexpected supply emergency.

Water security planning is an essential part of development and economic growth, especially in South Africa’s industrial heartland in the metros of Ekurhuleni, Tshwane and Johannesburg.

Our incredible South African capacity to “make a plan” in any crisis must not blind us to the critical importance of competent government, particularly at local level.

We have to get the basics right. That is why the 2016 local government elections will be the moment of truth for our cities and, through them, for the future of South Africa’s economy.

Article by Helen Zille of the DA

President Jacob Zuma says universities must produce graduates who appreciate the country’s history.

“These are students who have full appreciation of the history of our country, which was racially and economically divided, its present socio-economic challenges and its future of common purpose centred on the Constitution of the Republic and the National Development Plan,” President Zuma said.

Responding to written questions in Parliament on Tuesday, President Zuma said academic freedom flourishes by allowing all views and different ideological strands to find expression without fear, favour or prejudice.

The questions were raised by Professor Belinda Bozzoli from the Democratic Alliance (DA), who asked the President to define a patriotic university and academic freedom.

Bozzoli also asked the President if he has found any universities to be unpatriotic, if so, which universities and what steps should be taken by such universities in order for them to be defined as patriotic.

“Our country has emerged from a divided past. We look to the intelligentsia in the free and democratic South Africa, in particular at universities, to contribute to the transformation of society by promoting ideas and producing young graduates and intellectuals who understand this heinous past of class and racial domination and who will ensure that the non-racial and equal society we are working for is fully achieved,” the President said.

President Zuma said a patriotic university should be measured by its contribution to building a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society as directed by the Constitution of the Republic.

“It should also measure itself in terms of progress made in promoting transformation in terms of race, class and gender, as part of reversing the legacy of apartheid colonialism.

“Universities should thus be thriving centres that allow all sorts of ideas and perspectives to flourish. They should not become platforms for a privileged few to propagate their views to students and the country at large and be closed to other opinions,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za