Mmakau Mining owned by Bridgette Radebe, wife of South Africa’s cabinet minister Jeff Radebe, has agreed to cede 51% of its shares in Zimbabwe based Eureka Gold Mine to locals.
Radebe’s Mmakau was previously a 75% shareholder after buying out Placer Dome while South African firm Shaft Sinkers owning the 25% balance.
Indigenisation minister Saviour Kasukuwere said the mining concern had now fully complied with the country’s empowerment laws.
“Radebe’s mine in Guruve has agreed to the 51% and that is now done,” Kasukuwere said in the capital.
The gold mine is a 65,000 oz per annum producer previously owned by Delta Gold Zimbabwe.
Kasukuwere added that his ministry was in the process of finalising community trust for Metallon Gold Zimbabwe, Unki Platinum Mine, while Mimosa Platinum Mine’s community scheme would be launched early next month.
“We are done with the Mimosa issue, we are just finalising on the date to launch the community trust,” he said.
Source: BusinessOnline
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
No hope for 'crashed' Blackberry users
A LEGAL expert believes that BlackBerry users are unlikely to find consumer protection as underlined by national consumer commissioner Mamodupi Mohlala last week. The crash of the phone's e-mail and messenger services began last Monday, affecting users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina, and spreading to North America by Tuesday. Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind BlackBerry smartphones said the problem was sorted on Thursday.
Commissioner Mohlala said consumers would find protection under sections 55, 56 and 61 of the Consumer Protection Act, which provides rights on the quality of goods, and liability for damage caused by goods.
However, Albert Aukema, associate in the competition practice at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr underlined the difference between goods and services, saying the outage was a services issue. "Although the scope of these sections have yet to be interpreted by the courts, it is unlikely that such a challenge would be in line with the provisions of the CPA. "If anything, the interruptions should accurately be categorised as impacting on the quality of the service being rendered to consumers," said Aukema. "The interruption appears to have been unrelated to defects in the handsets supplied to consumers as part of the service offering."
Meanwhile, a number of SA-based mobile operators (MTN R10 to each customer and Vodacom 20 minutes of calls and 20 SMS's on Vodacom to Vodacom service) moved to provide some form of compensation to BlackBerry customers, "as a token of goodwill".
Source: Mail & Guardian
Notes:
In the article above, it is mentioned that "Commissioner Mohlala said consumers would find protection under sections 55, 56 and 61 of the Consumer Protection Act ("the act"), which provides rights on the quality of goods, and liability for damage caused by goods." It is also mentioned that "it is unlikely that ... a challenge would be in line with the provisions of the CPA. ... If anything, the interruptions should accurately be categorised as impacting on the quality of the service being rendered to consumers."
Legislation must be interpreted to promote the spirit, purport and objects of the Bill of Rights. Interpretation and application of the law under the Constitution is never a mechanical application of rules; it always involves a value judgment. Our Constitution and law are infused with moral values. The days of denying the value-laden content of law are long gone. See Maphango and Others v Aengus Lifestyle Properties (Pty) Ltd (CCT 57/11) [2012] ZACC 2 (13 March 2012) at 151.
In our view, it is important to read the provisions in Part H (fair value, quality and safety) of the act as a whole to intepret any provision contained in that part.
It is similarly important to apply a purposive interpretation to the provisions. By applying such an interpretation, it is important to read Chapter 1 of the act, which deals with the interpretation, purpose and application of the act. It is thus incorrect to apply a mechanical application of traditional (un-transformed) rules of interpretation.
Chapter 2 of the act deals with fundamental consumer rights. The chapter is divided into parts, each part dealing with an aspect of as the consumer's right as follows:
Part A: The right of equality in the consumer market
Part B: The right to privacy
Part C: The right to choose
Part D: The right to disclose and information
Part E: The right to fair and responsible marketing
Part F: The right to fair and honest dealings
Part G: The right to fair, just and reasonable terms and conditions
Part H: The right to fair value, quality and safety
Part I: The right to accountability
Section 55 of the the act deals with the consumer's right to safe, good quality goods. Section 56 deals with the implied warranty of quality of goods supplied.
Section 61 of the the act deals with liability for damage caused by goods. The section provides that "the producer or importer, distributor or retailer of any goods is liable for any harm ... caused wholly or partly as a consequence of -
(a) supplying any unsafe goods;
(b) a product failure, defect or hazard in any goods; or
(c) inadequate instructions or warnings provided to the consumer pertaining to any hazard arising from or associated with the use of any goods,irrespective of whether the harm resulted from any negligence on the part of the producer, importer, distributor or retailer, as the case may be."
Section 61(2) of the act provides that "a supplier of services who, in conjunction with the performance of those services, applies, supplies, installs or provides access to any goods, must be regarded as a supplier of those goods to the consumer, for the purposes of this section."
Section 61(5) of the act provides that "[h]arm for which a person may be held liable in terms of this section includes -
(a) the death of, or injury to, any natural person;
(b) an illness of any natural person;
(c) any loss of, or physical damage to any property, irrespective of whether it is movable or immovable; and
(d) any economic loss that results from harm contemplated in paragraph (a), (b) or (c).
It is important to note that the article above ommits a reference to section 54 of the act, which deals with the consumer's right to demand quality service. The section reads as follows:
"(1) When a supplier undertakes to perform any services for or on behalf of a consumer, the consumer has a right to-
(a) the timely performance and completion of those services, and timely notice of any unavoidable delay in the performance of the services;
(b) the performance of the services in a manner and quality that persons are generally entitled to expect;
(c) the use, delivery or installation of goods that are free of defects and of a quality that persons are generally entitled to expect, if any such goods are required for performance of the services; and
(d) the return of any property or control over any property of the consumer in at least as good a condition as it was when the consumer made it available to the supplier for the purpose of performing such services, having regard to the circumstances of the supply, and any specific criteria or conditions agreed between the supplier and the consumer before or during the performance of the services.
(2) If a supplier fails to perform a service to the standards contemplated in subsection (1), the consumer may require the supplier to either-
(a) remedy any defect in the quality of the services performed or goods supplied; or
(b) refund to the consumer a reasonable portion of the price paid for the services performed and goods supplied, having regard to the extent of the failure."
We therefore do not agree with Albert Aukema, associate in the competition practice at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, that "it is unlikely that ... a challenge would be in line with the provisions of the [act]." It is apparent that Aukema has applied on outdated rule of interpretation in his analysis of the act.
Whilst the interpretation of the act by Aukema may favour the service provider, at the prejudice of the consumer, it is unlikely to find favour with a transformed court that promotes the spirit, purport and objects of the Bill of Rights, contained within the Consititution of South Africa.
Commissioner Mohlala said consumers would find protection under sections 55, 56 and 61 of the Consumer Protection Act, which provides rights on the quality of goods, and liability for damage caused by goods.
However, Albert Aukema, associate in the competition practice at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr underlined the difference between goods and services, saying the outage was a services issue. "Although the scope of these sections have yet to be interpreted by the courts, it is unlikely that such a challenge would be in line with the provisions of the CPA. "If anything, the interruptions should accurately be categorised as impacting on the quality of the service being rendered to consumers," said Aukema. "The interruption appears to have been unrelated to defects in the handsets supplied to consumers as part of the service offering."
Meanwhile, a number of SA-based mobile operators (MTN R10 to each customer and Vodacom 20 minutes of calls and 20 SMS's on Vodacom to Vodacom service) moved to provide some form of compensation to BlackBerry customers, "as a token of goodwill".
Source: Mail & Guardian
Notes:
In the article above, it is mentioned that "Commissioner Mohlala said consumers would find protection under sections 55, 56 and 61 of the Consumer Protection Act ("the act"), which provides rights on the quality of goods, and liability for damage caused by goods." It is also mentioned that "it is unlikely that ... a challenge would be in line with the provisions of the CPA. ... If anything, the interruptions should accurately be categorised as impacting on the quality of the service being rendered to consumers."
Legislation must be interpreted to promote the spirit, purport and objects of the Bill of Rights. Interpretation and application of the law under the Constitution is never a mechanical application of rules; it always involves a value judgment. Our Constitution and law are infused with moral values. The days of denying the value-laden content of law are long gone. See Maphango and Others v Aengus Lifestyle Properties (Pty) Ltd (CCT 57/11) [2012] ZACC 2 (13 March 2012) at 151.
In our view, it is important to read the provisions in Part H (fair value, quality and safety) of the act as a whole to intepret any provision contained in that part.
It is similarly important to apply a purposive interpretation to the provisions. By applying such an interpretation, it is important to read Chapter 1 of the act, which deals with the interpretation, purpose and application of the act. It is thus incorrect to apply a mechanical application of traditional (un-transformed) rules of interpretation.
Chapter 2 of the act deals with fundamental consumer rights. The chapter is divided into parts, each part dealing with an aspect of as the consumer's right as follows:
Part A: The right of equality in the consumer market
Part B: The right to privacy
Part C: The right to choose
Part D: The right to disclose and information
Part E: The right to fair and responsible marketing
Part F: The right to fair and honest dealings
Part G: The right to fair, just and reasonable terms and conditions
Part H: The right to fair value, quality and safety
Part I: The right to accountability
Section 55 of the the act deals with the consumer's right to safe, good quality goods. Section 56 deals with the implied warranty of quality of goods supplied.
Section 61 of the the act deals with liability for damage caused by goods. The section provides that "the producer or importer, distributor or retailer of any goods is liable for any harm ... caused wholly or partly as a consequence of -
(a) supplying any unsafe goods;
(b) a product failure, defect or hazard in any goods; or
(c) inadequate instructions or warnings provided to the consumer pertaining to any hazard arising from or associated with the use of any goods,irrespective of whether the harm resulted from any negligence on the part of the producer, importer, distributor or retailer, as the case may be."
Section 61(2) of the act provides that "a supplier of services who, in conjunction with the performance of those services, applies, supplies, installs or provides access to any goods, must be regarded as a supplier of those goods to the consumer, for the purposes of this section."
Section 61(5) of the act provides that "[h]arm for which a person may be held liable in terms of this section includes -
(a) the death of, or injury to, any natural person;
(b) an illness of any natural person;
(c) any loss of, or physical damage to any property, irrespective of whether it is movable or immovable; and
(d) any economic loss that results from harm contemplated in paragraph (a), (b) or (c).
It is important to note that the article above ommits a reference to section 54 of the act, which deals with the consumer's right to demand quality service. The section reads as follows:
"(1) When a supplier undertakes to perform any services for or on behalf of a consumer, the consumer has a right to-
(a) the timely performance and completion of those services, and timely notice of any unavoidable delay in the performance of the services;
(b) the performance of the services in a manner and quality that persons are generally entitled to expect;
(c) the use, delivery or installation of goods that are free of defects and of a quality that persons are generally entitled to expect, if any such goods are required for performance of the services; and
(d) the return of any property or control over any property of the consumer in at least as good a condition as it was when the consumer made it available to the supplier for the purpose of performing such services, having regard to the circumstances of the supply, and any specific criteria or conditions agreed between the supplier and the consumer before or during the performance of the services.
(2) If a supplier fails to perform a service to the standards contemplated in subsection (1), the consumer may require the supplier to either-
(a) remedy any defect in the quality of the services performed or goods supplied; or
(b) refund to the consumer a reasonable portion of the price paid for the services performed and goods supplied, having regard to the extent of the failure."
We therefore do not agree with Albert Aukema, associate in the competition practice at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, that "it is unlikely that ... a challenge would be in line with the provisions of the [act]." It is apparent that Aukema has applied on outdated rule of interpretation in his analysis of the act.
Whilst the interpretation of the act by Aukema may favour the service provider, at the prejudice of the consumer, it is unlikely to find favour with a transformed court that promotes the spirit, purport and objects of the Bill of Rights, contained within the Consititution of South Africa.
Friday, October 14, 2011
MTN & Vodacom to refund customers
After days of frustrations, BlackBerry users will be reimbursed for the internet time lost during the network break down. Cellphone operators under their own discretion will give customers free airtime. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) blamed a core switch failure inside its network for the black out. The three day long failure affected four continents including Africa and Asia.
MTN's Mike Fairon said their customers will receive R10 each.
While Vodacom’s Richard Borman said their clients will also be reimbursed. “We’re going to give people 20 minutes of calls Vodacom to Vodacom next week and 20 SMSes,” Borman added.
Source: Eye Withness News
MTN's Mike Fairon said their customers will receive R10 each.
While Vodacom’s Richard Borman said their clients will also be reimbursed. “We’re going to give people 20 minutes of calls Vodacom to Vodacom next week and 20 SMSes,” Borman added.
Source: Eye Withness News
South Africa Slips From the Moral High Ground
Whether under its erstwhile white rulers or since then, South Africa has never liked to see itself in any way as run-of-the-mill, preferring to cast itself as aloof from the corruption, strife and misrule so often associated with the continent to its north. And, after the country’s fully democratic election in 1994, the towering presence of Nelson Mandela shed a glow of moral superiority: not only had Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his beliefs, but, finally, the continent could now look forward to what Thabo Mbeki, his successor, called an African Renaissance.
In more recent times, South Africans have come to a different, almost heretical conclusion: under its newest coterie of the powerful around President Jacob Zuma, their land has lost its claim to the moral high ground. Rarely has that conclusion been expressed more forcefully than in recent days when Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate once at the forefront of the fight against apartheid, issued his sharpest yet denunciation of the government, comparing it pejoratively with its apartheid predecessor.
“Mr. Zuma, you and your government don’t represent me,” he told a news conference, protesting the authorities’ failure to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan religious leader, whom the archbishop had invited to his 80th birthday party. “You represent your own interests. I am warning you out of love, one day we will start praying for the defeat of the A.N.C. government,” he said, referring by its initials to the governing African National Congress, which casts itself as the custodian of the nation’s moral aspirations as much as the core its political legitimacy.
The archbishop’s remarks provoked some sharp reactions. “In the scheme of things, who is Bishop Tutu? A prelate who was won honors because he raised his voice against apartheid? Who did not?” said Thula Bopela, a veteran of the A.N.C.’s military struggle against apartheid. But the exchange reflected a more insidious malaise. The authorities’ delay in issuing a visa for the Dalai Lama, which forced him to cancel the birthday visit, was broadly interpreted as a genuflection to the power of China, South Africa’s biggest trading partner, with whom it struck a $2.5 billion investment deal even as the Dalai Lama’s visa application was — in theory at least — under consideration.
South Africa, moreover, has joined the relatively new economic and political grouping Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and now South Africa), preferring to align itself with emergent powers rather what are seen as declining established powers in the West.
“Let me state categorically that our foreign policy is independent and decisions are informed by the national interest,” Mr. Zuma said Thursday in a foreign policy address. “We look at what is of benefit to the South African people, and what will advance our domestic priorities at that given time. We are not dictated to by other countries, individuals or lobby group interests within our own country.”
But, for a land that cast itself as moral beacon against tyranny, South Africa has adopted a particular prism for its foreign policy, blending its debts to those who supported it in the liberation struggle, a suspicion of Western influence and a hard-nosed pragmatism. “It must be noted that there is a way that the way in which the A.N.C. regime resembles the one it succeeded, by deciding to take sides with the oppressor, in this case China,” Dr. R. Simangaliso Kumalo, the head of the School of Religion and Theology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, listing a catalog of occasions when Pretoria seemed to side with dictators like President Robert G. Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya.
As Libyans rose up against Colonel Qaddafi, for instance, South Africa initially supported a U.N. resolution authorizing NATO intervention, but Mr. Zuma later promoted a parallel and unsuccessful African effort to create some kind of compromise, shielding the Libyan strongman in what, to some, looked like payback for generous financial support in the past from Tripoli.
On Thursday, Mr. Zuma complained that the initiative “was not given space to implement its road map and to ensure an African solution to the Libyan question.” South Africa’s foreign policy, he insisted, “is an extension of our domestic policy and our value system.” But others had already come to a different conclusion. “It is clear to me that we do not have a moral foreign policy,” the political analyst Eusebius McKaiser said in a lecture in August, discussing South Africa’s role in the Libya conflict. “There is little indication that our foreign policy is consistently and genuinely informed by a thorough commitment to project our domestic constitutional principles onto the international arena.”
Indeed, those principles — or the threats to them — lie at the center of the debate. Two years after their first free election in 1994, South Africans created a new constitution guaranteeing rights that much of Africa had shunned, ignored or undermined and seeming to lock the land onto the moral coordinates of its struggle for democracy. But the ground has shifted. Corruption and patronage have replaced principle and promised transparency. “Nothing anybody says or does can be taken at face value any longer, because we suspect this can only be explained if one understands what the doer or speaker wants to achieve in terms of his or her factional interest,” said Max du Preez, a journalist and author.
South Africa’s revolution, wrote the author Njabulo S. Ndebele, “may itself have become corrupted by the attractions of instant wealth,” reflecting “a potentially catastrophic collapse in the once cohesive understanding of the post-apartheid project as embodied in our constitution.” The A.N.C., he said, “functions as a state within the state, and it thinks it is the state” — hardly the stuff of an exception, let alone a renaissance.
Source: New York Times
In more recent times, South Africans have come to a different, almost heretical conclusion: under its newest coterie of the powerful around President Jacob Zuma, their land has lost its claim to the moral high ground. Rarely has that conclusion been expressed more forcefully than in recent days when Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate once at the forefront of the fight against apartheid, issued his sharpest yet denunciation of the government, comparing it pejoratively with its apartheid predecessor.
“Mr. Zuma, you and your government don’t represent me,” he told a news conference, protesting the authorities’ failure to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan religious leader, whom the archbishop had invited to his 80th birthday party. “You represent your own interests. I am warning you out of love, one day we will start praying for the defeat of the A.N.C. government,” he said, referring by its initials to the governing African National Congress, which casts itself as the custodian of the nation’s moral aspirations as much as the core its political legitimacy.
The archbishop’s remarks provoked some sharp reactions. “In the scheme of things, who is Bishop Tutu? A prelate who was won honors because he raised his voice against apartheid? Who did not?” said Thula Bopela, a veteran of the A.N.C.’s military struggle against apartheid. But the exchange reflected a more insidious malaise. The authorities’ delay in issuing a visa for the Dalai Lama, which forced him to cancel the birthday visit, was broadly interpreted as a genuflection to the power of China, South Africa’s biggest trading partner, with whom it struck a $2.5 billion investment deal even as the Dalai Lama’s visa application was — in theory at least — under consideration.
South Africa, moreover, has joined the relatively new economic and political grouping Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and now South Africa), preferring to align itself with emergent powers rather what are seen as declining established powers in the West.
“Let me state categorically that our foreign policy is independent and decisions are informed by the national interest,” Mr. Zuma said Thursday in a foreign policy address. “We look at what is of benefit to the South African people, and what will advance our domestic priorities at that given time. We are not dictated to by other countries, individuals or lobby group interests within our own country.”
But, for a land that cast itself as moral beacon against tyranny, South Africa has adopted a particular prism for its foreign policy, blending its debts to those who supported it in the liberation struggle, a suspicion of Western influence and a hard-nosed pragmatism. “It must be noted that there is a way that the way in which the A.N.C. regime resembles the one it succeeded, by deciding to take sides with the oppressor, in this case China,” Dr. R. Simangaliso Kumalo, the head of the School of Religion and Theology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, listing a catalog of occasions when Pretoria seemed to side with dictators like President Robert G. Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya.
As Libyans rose up against Colonel Qaddafi, for instance, South Africa initially supported a U.N. resolution authorizing NATO intervention, but Mr. Zuma later promoted a parallel and unsuccessful African effort to create some kind of compromise, shielding the Libyan strongman in what, to some, looked like payback for generous financial support in the past from Tripoli.
On Thursday, Mr. Zuma complained that the initiative “was not given space to implement its road map and to ensure an African solution to the Libyan question.” South Africa’s foreign policy, he insisted, “is an extension of our domestic policy and our value system.” But others had already come to a different conclusion. “It is clear to me that we do not have a moral foreign policy,” the political analyst Eusebius McKaiser said in a lecture in August, discussing South Africa’s role in the Libya conflict. “There is little indication that our foreign policy is consistently and genuinely informed by a thorough commitment to project our domestic constitutional principles onto the international arena.”
Indeed, those principles — or the threats to them — lie at the center of the debate. Two years after their first free election in 1994, South Africans created a new constitution guaranteeing rights that much of Africa had shunned, ignored or undermined and seeming to lock the land onto the moral coordinates of its struggle for democracy. But the ground has shifted. Corruption and patronage have replaced principle and promised transparency. “Nothing anybody says or does can be taken at face value any longer, because we suspect this can only be explained if one understands what the doer or speaker wants to achieve in terms of his or her factional interest,” said Max du Preez, a journalist and author.
South Africa’s revolution, wrote the author Njabulo S. Ndebele, “may itself have become corrupted by the attractions of instant wealth,” reflecting “a potentially catastrophic collapse in the once cohesive understanding of the post-apartheid project as embodied in our constitution.” The A.N.C., he said, “functions as a state within the state, and it thinks it is the state” — hardly the stuff of an exception, let alone a renaissance.
Source: New York Times
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Scouring of Limpopo: 40 corrupt officials axed
The Limpopo government has dismissed 40 officials it says are involved in criminal and corrupt activities, and blacklisted 44 companies for shoddy tender work, amid claims of that a national anti-corruption team is probing widespread graft in the province. "We have laid off ... 40 officials who were embroiled in allegations of crime and corruption," provincial government spokesperson Tebatso Mabitsela told SABC radio news on Monday. "We've subjected them to disciplinary hearings and we found that they were indeed guilty of crime and corruption and they have been laid off from the administration."
He was responding to weekend newspaper reports that the Limpopo government was being investigated for fraud and corruption worth millions of rands. "We are not aware of any investigations whatsoever but we are saying, as a provincial government, in case this [report of an investigation] ... is true, we would want the Hawks to conduct the investigation without fear or favour." Mabitsela said the provincial government had blacklisted 44 companies for "contravening contractual obligations" and "building shoddy houses to our people in the province".
The Sunday Times reported at the weekend that an anti-corruption task team was investigating the province. Hawks spokesperson Mcintosh Polela said the matter was being "looked into". The Sunday Times said one of the companies under investigation belonged to a cousin of African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema. -- Sapa
Source: Mail & Guardian
He was responding to weekend newspaper reports that the Limpopo government was being investigated for fraud and corruption worth millions of rands. "We are not aware of any investigations whatsoever but we are saying, as a provincial government, in case this [report of an investigation] ... is true, we would want the Hawks to conduct the investigation without fear or favour." Mabitsela said the provincial government had blacklisted 44 companies for "contravening contractual obligations" and "building shoddy houses to our people in the province".
The Sunday Times reported at the weekend that an anti-corruption task team was investigating the province. Hawks spokesperson Mcintosh Polela said the matter was being "looked into". The Sunday Times said one of the companies under investigation belonged to a cousin of African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema. -- Sapa
Source: Mail & Guardian
South Africa: Environment Included in Consumer Protection Act
The Consumer Protection Act (CPA), which came into effect on 1 April 2011 includes the regulation of goods and services with actual or potential environmental and/or health impacts. The obligation to provide information in respect of potential or actual environmental or health impacts of goods or services is covered by CPA regulation. "The CPA requires that the information which is accurate and not misleading or deceptive must be disclosed in plain language on product labels and in descriptions of goods (trade descriptions) and in the course of marketing goods and services, where appropriate," says Helen Dagut, a senior associate at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr business law firm.
The CPA also imposes the obligation to provide customers with safe, good quality goods. "Suppliers are required to alert consumers to potential risks associated with goods or services, which may include environmental or health risks. Where not labelled in terms of the requirements of other legislation, hazardous or "unsafe" goods (defined to include those which potentially present hazards or may be unsafe to persons or property) are required to meet specified packing standards. Suppliers or installers of hazardous or unsafe goods such as batteries or aerosols which have a risk of explosion, must supply information in respect of the hazards to the consumer," explains Dagut.
The CPA regulations also include the obligation on suppliers to not knowingly take advantage of the fact that a consumer is unable to protect his or her own interests because of, among other things, ignorance of the true facts relating to a product. "If a supplier behaves in this way it is considered "unconscionable" as that term is defined in the CPA. Relying on this provision, a group of South African consumers has laid a complaint with the Consumer Commissioner in respect of the treatment of pigs and chickens in factory farms, about which, they allege, the South African public is given insufficient information."
Dagut says that obligations are also imposed in respect of the recovery and safe disposal of goods (for example electronic goods) which cannot be disposed of along with other wastes, which are likely to include those with the potential to harm the environment, for the example through leaching of toxic substances. "Specifically, suppliers must accept their return (including of their parts/remnants) from the consumer, without charging the consumer, irrespective of whether the supplier supplied the particular returned object to that particular consumer. Producers, importers and distributors of such goods must accept their return from the suppliers.
These provisions are consistent with those requiring extended producer responsibility under the National Environmental Management: Waste Act," she explains. The producer, importer, distributor or retailer of goods is liable for harm, including damage to property, caused by the supply of unsafe goods, hazards in any goods or inadequate instructions or warnings provided to the consumer in respect of hazards arising from the goods, irrespective of whether the harm resulted from any negligence on the producer, importer, distributor or retailer. Claims for damages under this section prescribe after three years in specified circumstances. "The promulgation of the CPA therefore results in an additional layer of obligations in respect of goods or services with potential or actual hazards or risks to consumers and/or the environment being imposed, which are required to be complied with in addition to other obligations for environmental protection prescribed under environmental laws.
Consumers may enforce their rights, and have begun to do so, where producers and suppliers are failing to do so," Dagut adds.
Source: All Africa
The CPA also imposes the obligation to provide customers with safe, good quality goods. "Suppliers are required to alert consumers to potential risks associated with goods or services, which may include environmental or health risks. Where not labelled in terms of the requirements of other legislation, hazardous or "unsafe" goods (defined to include those which potentially present hazards or may be unsafe to persons or property) are required to meet specified packing standards. Suppliers or installers of hazardous or unsafe goods such as batteries or aerosols which have a risk of explosion, must supply information in respect of the hazards to the consumer," explains Dagut.
The CPA regulations also include the obligation on suppliers to not knowingly take advantage of the fact that a consumer is unable to protect his or her own interests because of, among other things, ignorance of the true facts relating to a product. "If a supplier behaves in this way it is considered "unconscionable" as that term is defined in the CPA. Relying on this provision, a group of South African consumers has laid a complaint with the Consumer Commissioner in respect of the treatment of pigs and chickens in factory farms, about which, they allege, the South African public is given insufficient information."
Dagut says that obligations are also imposed in respect of the recovery and safe disposal of goods (for example electronic goods) which cannot be disposed of along with other wastes, which are likely to include those with the potential to harm the environment, for the example through leaching of toxic substances. "Specifically, suppliers must accept their return (including of their parts/remnants) from the consumer, without charging the consumer, irrespective of whether the supplier supplied the particular returned object to that particular consumer. Producers, importers and distributors of such goods must accept their return from the suppliers.
These provisions are consistent with those requiring extended producer responsibility under the National Environmental Management: Waste Act," she explains. The producer, importer, distributor or retailer of goods is liable for harm, including damage to property, caused by the supply of unsafe goods, hazards in any goods or inadequate instructions or warnings provided to the consumer in respect of hazards arising from the goods, irrespective of whether the harm resulted from any negligence on the producer, importer, distributor or retailer. Claims for damages under this section prescribe after three years in specified circumstances. "The promulgation of the CPA therefore results in an additional layer of obligations in respect of goods or services with potential or actual hazards or risks to consumers and/or the environment being imposed, which are required to be complied with in addition to other obligations for environmental protection prescribed under environmental laws.
Consumers may enforce their rights, and have begun to do so, where producers and suppliers are failing to do so," Dagut adds.
Source: All Africa
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
South Africa: Conflict in Provisions of the Advertising Standards Authority Code and Advertising Practice?
The advent of the Consumer Protection Act, 2008 (CPA) heralds an era of legislated advertising standards. This stands in contrast to the position that had been in place up to 1 April 2011, when the CPA took full force and effect. Up to this date, consumer complaints in respect of advertising had to be directed to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which is the adjudicative body tasked with ensuring compliance with a voluntary code of self-regulation put in place by marketers and advertisers, the Code of Advertising Practice (the code).
There are several areas of overlap between the provisions of the CPA that deal with advertising in marketing standards and the code. Both, for example, deal with issues such as dishonesty in advertising, misleading consumers, harmful exaggeration in advertising, failures to correct consumer misapprehensions created by advertisements, particularly with regard to the substantiation of claims made about performance characteristics and ingredients and properties of advertised products. Other areas of overlap include references to the running of promotional competitions, discriminatory marketing as well as work from home schemes, but these are by no means the only similarities.
The circumstance now exists whereby a consumer that is aggrieved by an advertisement has an election as to whether to refer the complaint arising to the ASA or to the Consumer Commission (the regulatory body established in terms of the CPA in order to enforce its provisions). This is highly undesirable, not least because an advertiser (who may well be innocent of any charge levelled against it) may have to fight the same claim on two fronts. This may, in turn, lead to the ultimately undesirable outcome of two different decisions being handed down by the statutory regulator and the self-regulatory body, the ASA. For all the similarities between provisions of the advertising code and the provisions of the CPA insofar as they relate to advertising, there are also areas of dissimilarity and disparity when advertisers and marketers may find themselves in an ultimately undesirable position whereby they are torn between strict compliance with the law and a self-regulatory code to which they have pledged allegiance.
This duality of regulation leads one to the conclusion that one or other regulatory regime should give way to the other. Clearly, the CPA, as a statute of Parliament, trumps the voluntary Code. At the same time, the ASA is a body of considerable experience and expertise which should not go to waste. The answer, we suggest, lies in the ASA taking advantage of provisions of the CPA which permit suppliers within an industry to agree upon an industry code of conduct, which can be certified by the National Consumer Commission as an acceptable code of compliance with the CPA. At the same time, an industry code of conduct may make provision for the certification of an ombud to hear and resolve disputes within that industry, applying the accepted industry code. Clearly, the ASA is ideally placed to step in the role of accredited industry ombudsman for consumer advertising complaints under the CPA.
The future of the ASA and the code, at least where it relates to consumers, surely lies within the willingness of the advertising and marketing industry to seek to bring the code into alignment with the provisions of the CPA, have it accredited as an industry code of conduct and to have the ASA designated as the industry ombud for determination of consumer advertising complaints. Doubtless, the Consumer Commission would be grateful to have an experienced regulatory in place to deal with the many consumer advertising complaints that are raised each year rather than having to deal with them itself and this move will also solve the problem of a duplicity of regulatory regimens being in place.
Source: all Africa
There are several areas of overlap between the provisions of the CPA that deal with advertising in marketing standards and the code. Both, for example, deal with issues such as dishonesty in advertising, misleading consumers, harmful exaggeration in advertising, failures to correct consumer misapprehensions created by advertisements, particularly with regard to the substantiation of claims made about performance characteristics and ingredients and properties of advertised products. Other areas of overlap include references to the running of promotional competitions, discriminatory marketing as well as work from home schemes, but these are by no means the only similarities.
The circumstance now exists whereby a consumer that is aggrieved by an advertisement has an election as to whether to refer the complaint arising to the ASA or to the Consumer Commission (the regulatory body established in terms of the CPA in order to enforce its provisions). This is highly undesirable, not least because an advertiser (who may well be innocent of any charge levelled against it) may have to fight the same claim on two fronts. This may, in turn, lead to the ultimately undesirable outcome of two different decisions being handed down by the statutory regulator and the self-regulatory body, the ASA. For all the similarities between provisions of the advertising code and the provisions of the CPA insofar as they relate to advertising, there are also areas of dissimilarity and disparity when advertisers and marketers may find themselves in an ultimately undesirable position whereby they are torn between strict compliance with the law and a self-regulatory code to which they have pledged allegiance.
This duality of regulation leads one to the conclusion that one or other regulatory regime should give way to the other. Clearly, the CPA, as a statute of Parliament, trumps the voluntary Code. At the same time, the ASA is a body of considerable experience and expertise which should not go to waste. The answer, we suggest, lies in the ASA taking advantage of provisions of the CPA which permit suppliers within an industry to agree upon an industry code of conduct, which can be certified by the National Consumer Commission as an acceptable code of compliance with the CPA. At the same time, an industry code of conduct may make provision for the certification of an ombud to hear and resolve disputes within that industry, applying the accepted industry code. Clearly, the ASA is ideally placed to step in the role of accredited industry ombudsman for consumer advertising complaints under the CPA.
The future of the ASA and the code, at least where it relates to consumers, surely lies within the willingness of the advertising and marketing industry to seek to bring the code into alignment with the provisions of the CPA, have it accredited as an industry code of conduct and to have the ASA designated as the industry ombud for determination of consumer advertising complaints. Doubtless, the Consumer Commission would be grateful to have an experienced regulatory in place to deal with the many consumer advertising complaints that are raised each year rather than having to deal with them itself and this move will also solve the problem of a duplicity of regulatory regimens being in place.
Source: all Africa
Sunday, October 9, 2011
ANC's China visit falls on back of Dalai Lama debacle
High-ranking officials of the African National Congress (ANC) visited China this week, local media reported on Sunday, in what could be seen as the party's unreserved support for Beijing. ANC officials were not immediately available to confirm reports in two newspapers -- the City Press and Sunday Independent -- that party representatives went to China.
The visit came after South Africa delayed a visa application for the Dalai Lama, who was to visit the country to celebrate Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu's birthday. ANC supporters, leading newspapers and Tutu said the move was symbolic of the failings of the party that helped end apartheid but was now failing to live up to the ideals of the liberation movement it had once been.
China has labelled the Dalai Lama a dangerous separatist and analysts said Pretoria bowed to pressure from its largest trading partner to bar the Tibetan spiritual leader from visiting, damaging its reputation in the process. Two weeks ago, China pledged to invest $2.5-billion in South Africa during a visit to Beijing by Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. The City Press said ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe, high-ranking official Jessie Duarte, deputy economic development minister Enoch Godongwana and other party officials had spent the week in China on an exchange programme with the Chinese Communist Party. ANC Gauteng Chairperson Paul Mashatile was quoted in the City Press as saying the Chinese governing party had offered to "teach the ANC about politics".
In a video link with Cape Town, the Dalai Lama on Saturday said China's officials were hypocrites whose regime was built on lies.
Source: Mail & Guardian
The visit came after South Africa delayed a visa application for the Dalai Lama, who was to visit the country to celebrate Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu's birthday. ANC supporters, leading newspapers and Tutu said the move was symbolic of the failings of the party that helped end apartheid but was now failing to live up to the ideals of the liberation movement it had once been.
China has labelled the Dalai Lama a dangerous separatist and analysts said Pretoria bowed to pressure from its largest trading partner to bar the Tibetan spiritual leader from visiting, damaging its reputation in the process. Two weeks ago, China pledged to invest $2.5-billion in South Africa during a visit to Beijing by Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. The City Press said ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe, high-ranking official Jessie Duarte, deputy economic development minister Enoch Godongwana and other party officials had spent the week in China on an exchange programme with the Chinese Communist Party. ANC Gauteng Chairperson Paul Mashatile was quoted in the City Press as saying the Chinese governing party had offered to "teach the ANC about politics".
In a video link with Cape Town, the Dalai Lama on Saturday said China's officials were hypocrites whose regime was built on lies.
Source: Mail & Guardian
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Three Activist Women
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| Left, Leymah Gbowee; center: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; right: Tawakkol Karman. |
They were the first women to win the prize since Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who died last month, was named as the laureate in 2004. Most of the recipients in the award’s 110-year history have been men, and Friday’s decision seemed designed to give impetus to the fight for women’s rights around the world. “We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” said the citation read by Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Oslo-based Nobel committee that chooses the winner of the $1.5 million prize. In a subsequent interview, he described the prize as “a very important signal to women all over the world.”
Sitting inside her blue tent at the antigovernment sit-in where she has lived since late February, Ms. Karman, the Yemeni human rights activist, said “I didn’t expect it,” her eyes growing wide, a red flowered veil around her head. “It came as a total surprise.”
Ms. Karman, 32, a mother of three, took to the streets of the capital along with about 50 other university students in January, demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. “This is a victory for Arabs around the world,” she said of the prize, adding “and a victory for Arab women.”
In Liberia, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf said that she and Ms. Gbowee accepted “this honor on behalf of the Liberian people, and the credit goes to them. For we are now going into our ninth year of peace, and every Liberian has contributed to it,” she said. “We particularly give this credit to Liberian women, who have consistently led the struggle for peace, even under conditions of neglect.” Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf is nearing the end of a heated re-election campaign, and as the world absorbed the news of her prize, her nation’s capital, Monrovia, was virtually shut down by a previously scheduled rally intended to energize the opposition before the vote on Tuesday. Mr. Jagland said the election had not influenced the committee’s decision, calling the ballot there a “domestic consideration.” Analysts in Liberia have described the president’s re-election prospects as uncertain, though the Nobel announcement could change that. The Nobel committee’s decision underscored the gap between local perceptions of her — it is not hard to find critics of the president in Liberia — and the view from abroad. Indeed, while Liberians widely acknowledge that peace and security have improved markedly during her tenure, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf’s success in securing forgiveness for billions of dollars worth of Liberian debt and the change she has effected in the nation’s once brutal international image are often less appreciated in Monrovia than among outsiders. Unemployment is daunting, and the country is still mired in poverty. But some residents took obvious pride in the decision. As the prize was announced, Bushuben Keita, a spokesman for Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf’s Unity Party, declared: “We are dancing. This is the thing that we have been saying: progress has been made in Liberia. We’ve come through 14 years of war, and we have come to sustained peace. “This is proof that she has been doing well; there’s no cheating in this, this comes from other people. She’s doing very, very well. Her progress has been confirmed by the international community.”
In Yemen, Ms. Karman called the prize “the victory of our peaceful revolution. I am so happy, and I give this award to all of the youth and all of the women across the Arab world, in Egypt, in Tunisia.” “We cannot build our country or any country in the world without peace,” she said. In an op-ed piece published in The New York Times on June 18, Ms. Karman, whose first name in Arabic has been spelled as both Tawakkol and Tawakul, characterized President Saleh’s regime as a corrupt failure, and she urged the United States to quit supporting him even though he has portrayed himself as indispensable to the American effort to eliminate Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. American officials have been pressing Mr. Saleh to relinquish power in a peaceful transition.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of the world’s most powerful women, praised the award recipients. “The unflinching courage, strength and leadership of these women to build peace, advance reconciliation and defend the rights of fellow citizens in their own countries provide inspiration for women’s rights and human progress everywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement.
In Egypt, several activists who had been rumored to be in contention for the prize for their roles in the Egyptian revolution — the Google executive Wael Ghonim, the online organizer Esraa Abdel Fatah and the members of the April 6 Youth Movement — expressed pride that a young Arab had won the Nobel. They declared that the true prize they sought was the fruition of the Egyptian revolution in the development of democracy in Egypt and the region. “We will work hard even if we didn’t get the Nobel prize,” Waleed Rashed, a spokesman for the April 6 group, said in an Internet posting.
More than 250 people were nominated for the prize this year, and there had been speculation that the committee would reward bloggers or other activists from the Middle East who used social networking sites and other Internet platforms as they challenged entrenched dictatorships, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt. But if the committee had singled out the Arab Spring, it could have courted criticism that, far from rewarding efforts toward peace, it had chosen a phenomenon whose final outcome in Egypt and Tunisia is far from clear, and which has provoked bloodletting and strife in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Mr. Jagland said the 2011 prize recognized those “who were there long before the world’s media was there reporting.” The announcement in the Norwegian capital followed intense speculation that the prize would be awarded variously to a figure from the Arab Spring, the European Union or exclusively to Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf, 72, a Harvard-educated economist, who has often been cast as a pioneer in African politics.
In a recent interview with the Paris-based monthly magazine The Africa Report, Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf said she did not “want Africa to return to the men’s club” and forecast that women would take over in more African countries. “It will definitely happen in other countries because many women are now vying for the presidency, which didn’t happen much in the past,” said Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf, who was inaugurated in January 2006. She was broadly perceived as a reformer and peacemaker when she took office after several years in exile, during which she worked as a World Bank economist.
In Yemen, Ms. Karman has been widely known as a vocal opponent of the pro-American regime of Mr. Saleh since 2007, leading a human rights advocacy group called Women Journalists Without Chains. But it was only earlier this year — before the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt had gained momentum — that her readiness to take to the streets inspired thousands more in Yemen to do the same. Her brief arrest by the authorities in January incensed many people and is credited by some analysts in Yemen with starting the widespread protests that have convulsed the impoverished land since. Some of her supporters have labeled her “the Mother of Revolution.” Since then, however, she has become a contentious figure, criticized even by some in the anti-Saleh opposition, and her share in the prize could stir further debate among antigovernment activists. Among women of Yemen’s Arab neighbors, however, the choice of Ms. Karman was cause for celebration, both for women and Islam. Nadia Mostafa, a professor of international relations at Cairo University, said the prize was endowed with “political significance.” “Islam has always been associated with radical terrorism, intolerance and more,” she said. “Giving it to a woman and an Islamist? That means a sort of re-evaluation. It means Islam is not against peace, it’s not against women, and Islamists can be women activists, and they can fight for human rights, freedom and democracy.”
Ms. Gbowee, 39, was cited by the Nobel committee for uniting Christian and Muslim women against her country’s warlords. As head of the Women for Peace movement, she was praised for mobilizing women “across ethic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war” that had raged for years in Liberia until its end in 2003 and for ensuring “women’s participation in elections.” Her organization was founded in 2002 when Ms. Gbowee rallied women to sing and pray to protest fighting in a fish market. “This whole process of three women receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is really overwhelming,” Ms. Gbowee said in a telephone interview in New York, where she had just arrived on the last stop of an eight-city tour in the United States to promote “Mighty Be Our Powers,” her new memoir describing her life in war-torn Liberia. “It’s finally a recognition that we can’t ignore the other half of the world’s population. We cannot ignore their unique skills.” Asked whom she was going to vote for when she returned to Liberia for the election on Tuesday, Ms. Gbowee said: “President Johnson Sirleaf.”
Vaiba Flomo, a women’s right activists who has worked with Ms. Gbowee since 1998, said: “What motivated Leymah was the children she saw dying from starvation; women are getting raped, receiving multiple traumas. People shared with her, made her to come to know these things.” Without such commitment, she said, “half the Liberian youth population will be amputated. It’s good news for the Liberian people,” said Emmanuel Ogbodu, a teacher, standing by the side of the road in the ramshackle seaside capital, referring to Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf. “It’s a good way for peace in Liberia. Since she got in the chair, for me, we are experiencing peace. So I think she deserved it. Through her, peace came.”
Immediate reaction in Monrovia was muted as the news was slow to spread. But some who had heard expressed satisfaction. “I appreciate her highly, very well,” said Kona Ndoma, a civil servant. “She has done very much for developmental purposes. So now, we go for the second term, please,” said Mr. Ndoma. “She stabilized peace. There is no gunfire at all.” A woman selling fritters by the side of the road, Christiana Sami, said: “She deserves it, because she has developed the area. She’s done some important things.” A student, Grace Kollie, 18, walking to school, said: “She increased the education system in Liberia. She also carried on good development in the country.”
Forecasts of the winner are rarely accurate. In 2009, the committee stunned Nobel watchers by awarding the prize to President Obama. Last year’s winner was the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo — a choice that infuriated the Chinese authorities and led them to take reprisals against Norway. Mr. Liu was not allowed to leave China to receive the prize and was represented on stage at the award ceremony in December by an empty chair.
In the past the prize has not infrequently been split among several recipients, including the 1994 prize shared by the Palestinian Yasser Arafat and the Israelis Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin; the 1978 award to Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel; and the 1973 prize to Henry A. Kissinger of the United States and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam.
Source: New York Times
Friday, October 7, 2011
Intelligence officer fired under cloud of Krejcir links
Senior crime intelligence officer Major General Joey Mabasa, who has been linked to Czech fugitive from justice Radovan Krejcir, has been sacked from the police service with immediate effect.
Hawks spokesperson McIntosh Polela said that Mabasa was discharged under section 35 of the South African Police Service Act "because his services were no longer needed and because it is in the interest of the service to discontinue his job".
According to a police source, Mabasa's contract was terminated last Friday. The decision to sack him was made, the source said, after "publicity around Mabasa made it difficult for him to stay with the service". The source said that Mabasa would receive "some sort of a payout".
Mabasa was transferred last year from his position as head of crime intelligence for Gauteng back to head office in Pretoria, after questions were raised about his relationship with Krejcir. Krejcir's wife, Katarina, and Mabasa's wife, Dorcas, started a company together in 2009 and became co-directors of that company, called Radlochron. At the time, Mabasa claimed that he and his wife were separated, a claim not supported by circumstantial evidence. Krejcir said that the link with Mabasa's wife was innocent and the company never traded.
Krejcir also said that he was introduced to Mabasa through his attorney, Ian Small-Smith, when he (Krejcir) feared being kidnapped. When the Mail & Guardian exposed the business relationship between the wives of Krejcir and Mabasa last year, Krejcir's former business associate, Juan Meyer, accused Mabasa of holding meetings with the Czech at the Michelangelo Hotel in Sandton. The two men denied this. Meyer has alleged that he was present on two occasions when Mabasa was given bags that Meyer believed contained cash.
Krejcir also denied this last year and claimed that Meyer had not attended any meetings with Mabasa. After Mabasa's transfer to head office, more allegations surfaced, including allegations that crime intelligence was engaged in extensive phone tapping of Hawks members and others involved in the Krejcir investigation.
Questions were raised about who motivated this surveillance, who approved it and whether the information was passed on to Krejcir. It is alleged that in at least one case intercepted conversations found their way to targets of the Hawks' investigation, which includes not only Krejcir but a number of his associates. Mabasa's phone was off when the M&G tried to contact him.
Meanwhile, the M&G understands that crime intelligence boss Lieutenant General Richard Mdluli, who was suspended earlier this year after he was arrested for murder, has refused an offer similar to Mabasa's to leave.
Mdluli was allegedly given a week to explain to national police commissioner General Bheki Cele why he should not be fired.
Source: Mail & Guardian
Hawks spokesperson McIntosh Polela said that Mabasa was discharged under section 35 of the South African Police Service Act "because his services were no longer needed and because it is in the interest of the service to discontinue his job".
According to a police source, Mabasa's contract was terminated last Friday. The decision to sack him was made, the source said, after "publicity around Mabasa made it difficult for him to stay with the service". The source said that Mabasa would receive "some sort of a payout".
Mabasa was transferred last year from his position as head of crime intelligence for Gauteng back to head office in Pretoria, after questions were raised about his relationship with Krejcir. Krejcir's wife, Katarina, and Mabasa's wife, Dorcas, started a company together in 2009 and became co-directors of that company, called Radlochron. At the time, Mabasa claimed that he and his wife were separated, a claim not supported by circumstantial evidence. Krejcir said that the link with Mabasa's wife was innocent and the company never traded.
Krejcir also said that he was introduced to Mabasa through his attorney, Ian Small-Smith, when he (Krejcir) feared being kidnapped. When the Mail & Guardian exposed the business relationship between the wives of Krejcir and Mabasa last year, Krejcir's former business associate, Juan Meyer, accused Mabasa of holding meetings with the Czech at the Michelangelo Hotel in Sandton. The two men denied this. Meyer has alleged that he was present on two occasions when Mabasa was given bags that Meyer believed contained cash.
Krejcir also denied this last year and claimed that Meyer had not attended any meetings with Mabasa. After Mabasa's transfer to head office, more allegations surfaced, including allegations that crime intelligence was engaged in extensive phone tapping of Hawks members and others involved in the Krejcir investigation.
Questions were raised about who motivated this surveillance, who approved it and whether the information was passed on to Krejcir. It is alleged that in at least one case intercepted conversations found their way to targets of the Hawks' investigation, which includes not only Krejcir but a number of his associates. Mabasa's phone was off when the M&G tried to contact him.
Meanwhile, the M&G understands that crime intelligence boss Lieutenant General Richard Mdluli, who was suspended earlier this year after he was arrested for murder, has refused an offer similar to Mabasa's to leave.
Mdluli was allegedly given a week to explain to national police commissioner General Bheki Cele why he should not be fired.
Source: Mail & Guardian
Home affairs resumes Zim deportations
The moratorium on deporting illegal Zimbabweans has quietly been lifted by the department of home affairs, leading to an outcry from refugee rights groups. No deportations of Zimbabweans have taken place for almost two years while home affairs have been running the Zimbabwe documentation project (ZDP) to offer legal status to Zimbabweans living illegally in South Africa. Organisations working with migrants are angry that the department has not been open about a memo that was circulated among the police, army and refugee offices on September 27 explaining that deportations would resume.
The Mail & Guardian has a copy of the directive issued by director general of home affairs Mkuseli Apleni to the defence force, police offices and department of home affairs branches. The directive says "it aims to give clarity on Zimbabwean nationals who are not presently detected", and outlines the procedure that officers must follow when deporting immigrants. Home affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa would not answer questions about the directive but did issue a press release this week saying that illegal immigrants could not claim protection under South Africa's laws. "No country in the world will allow illegal immigration within its borders. This is international practice," he said. Mamoepa told the M&G that the government had shown goodwill in attempting to regularise the status of Zimbabweans in the country and had given them a window of opportunity to hand in their fraudulent documents in return for amnesty.
People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty's (PASSOP) Braam Hanekom said the "deportations are in direct contradiction to the recent undertakings made by home affairs director general, Mr Apleni, to Parliament not to embark on deportations of Zimbabweans until the Zimbabwean documentation project has been completed, appeals reviewed and the minister has approved deportations."
But the ZDP project is not complete. According to a research report compiled by the African Centre for Migration Studies (ACMS), "as of October 4, 145 000 permits were dispatched of 275 762 that were received, though processing was still taking place".
Human Rights Watch estimates that there are 1.5-million Zimbabweans in the country, although fewer than 300 000 applied for legal paperwork during the amnesty period. ACMS senior researcher Roni Amit said the resumption of deportations was "going to create problems". She said refugee rights groups were angry because home affairs had not been transparent about resuming deportations and that media reports this week had included denials of such a directive.
Amit said police who arrested Zimbabweans and sent them to deportation centres generally did not verify whether the individuals were still waiting for permits. The directive instructs officers to check if "the suspect has a pending application" for legal status and to conduct an interview with the suspect. But Amit was not convinced by this, saying: "The verification system does not work." Amit said public health groups had not been given advance warning that deportations were about to start. ACMS researcher Jo Vearey said Zimbabweans on chronic medicine for tuberculosis or HIV/Aids needed to continue taking their medication after deportation or run the risk of developing resistance to the diseases or catching multidrug resistant TB.
"Detention facilities are the perfect space for onward transmission of TB, and this poses a health risk to police officers and public immigration officials."
Source: Mail & Guardian
The Mail & Guardian has a copy of the directive issued by director general of home affairs Mkuseli Apleni to the defence force, police offices and department of home affairs branches. The directive says "it aims to give clarity on Zimbabwean nationals who are not presently detected", and outlines the procedure that officers must follow when deporting immigrants. Home affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa would not answer questions about the directive but did issue a press release this week saying that illegal immigrants could not claim protection under South Africa's laws. "No country in the world will allow illegal immigration within its borders. This is international practice," he said. Mamoepa told the M&G that the government had shown goodwill in attempting to regularise the status of Zimbabweans in the country and had given them a window of opportunity to hand in their fraudulent documents in return for amnesty.
People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty's (PASSOP) Braam Hanekom said the "deportations are in direct contradiction to the recent undertakings made by home affairs director general, Mr Apleni, to Parliament not to embark on deportations of Zimbabweans until the Zimbabwean documentation project has been completed, appeals reviewed and the minister has approved deportations."
But the ZDP project is not complete. According to a research report compiled by the African Centre for Migration Studies (ACMS), "as of October 4, 145 000 permits were dispatched of 275 762 that were received, though processing was still taking place".
Human Rights Watch estimates that there are 1.5-million Zimbabweans in the country, although fewer than 300 000 applied for legal paperwork during the amnesty period. ACMS senior researcher Roni Amit said the resumption of deportations was "going to create problems". She said refugee rights groups were angry because home affairs had not been transparent about resuming deportations and that media reports this week had included denials of such a directive.
Amit said police who arrested Zimbabweans and sent them to deportation centres generally did not verify whether the individuals were still waiting for permits. The directive instructs officers to check if "the suspect has a pending application" for legal status and to conduct an interview with the suspect. But Amit was not convinced by this, saying: "The verification system does not work." Amit said public health groups had not been given advance warning that deportations were about to start. ACMS researcher Jo Vearey said Zimbabweans on chronic medicine for tuberculosis or HIV/Aids needed to continue taking their medication after deportation or run the risk of developing resistance to the diseases or catching multidrug resistant TB.
"Detention facilities are the perfect space for onward transmission of TB, and this poses a health risk to police officers and public immigration officials."
Source: Mail & Guardian
Thursday, October 6, 2011
'Justice system overhaul would mean no more meddling'
A proposed overhaul of South Africa's justice system will prevent "meddling" with case files, says the high court's Judge Eberhard Bertelsmann. A proposed overhaul of South Africa's justice system will prevent "meddling" with case files, North Gauteng High Court Judge Eberhard Bertelsmann said on Thursday. "With this system, judges will be given §an electronic case file the moment a case is opened. The electronic files will be saved in a server and will have certain features to prevent meddling," he said.
Bertelsmann was talking at the opening of the Consumer Goods Council of SA annual conference in Johannesburg. He said the new system was decided on at a national judiciary meeting in 2009, and was being initiated this year. "Previous chief justice Sandile Ngcobo endorsed this model, and his enthusiasm has been carried over with new chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng." He said the system would speed up trials. "Delays are simply not good enough. Our criminal justice system is creaky in its joints. We have 40 000 people awaiting trial in prisons. Some are granted bail, and others can't even raise R300 needed for bail. "It is unfair that we punish people, at a cost to ourselves that is greater than R300, because these people are poor. That does not sit well with a Constitution that demands equality and dignity."
He said an efficient, and technologically advanced justice system would benefit the consumer goods council as well. "How would we deal with crime, protect brands and patents, guard against unfair competition and protect labourers from being exploited if we never had courts? ... We are embarking on a very exciting trek ... that has filled us with optimism. This new process demands a new culture, and we need the support of all members of civil society, including consumer organisations."
Source: Mail & Guardian
Bertelsmann was talking at the opening of the Consumer Goods Council of SA annual conference in Johannesburg. He said the new system was decided on at a national judiciary meeting in 2009, and was being initiated this year. "Previous chief justice Sandile Ngcobo endorsed this model, and his enthusiasm has been carried over with new chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng." He said the system would speed up trials. "Delays are simply not good enough. Our criminal justice system is creaky in its joints. We have 40 000 people awaiting trial in prisons. Some are granted bail, and others can't even raise R300 needed for bail. "It is unfair that we punish people, at a cost to ourselves that is greater than R300, because these people are poor. That does not sit well with a Constitution that demands equality and dignity."
He said an efficient, and technologically advanced justice system would benefit the consumer goods council as well. "How would we deal with crime, protect brands and patents, guard against unfair competition and protect labourers from being exploited if we never had courts? ... We are embarking on a very exciting trek ... that has filled us with optimism. This new process demands a new culture, and we need the support of all members of civil society, including consumer organisations."
Source: Mail & Guardian
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