Under ZUNU PF rule white farmers have been the source of many
misfortunes, evictions, land grabs and killings. The latest forceful
eviction of another white farmer is reminiscent of the brutal, ugly and
often violent removal of white farmers during the 2000 Mugabe land
grabs.
Robert Smart, a farmer outside Rusape town, was forcefully evicted
from his farm. Several workers and villagers stood in solidarity with
the threatened farmer and reports indicate that the police used teargas,
and live ammunition to disperse crowds. There are reports of police
assaulting people, although no serious injuries are reported.
The
police and ZANU-PF youth ransacked the house, and massive looting
occurred. The defiant police also instructed laborers to slaughter a
goat and prepare a meal for them, while they removed goods from the
residence.
At the end of the day, there was nothing left and the life of yet
another white farmer ruined through the actions of the obnoxious and
defiant Mugabe regime.
While in South Africa farm murders are devasting and on the increase,
can the same dreadful and often brutal evictions or land grabs be on
the agenda.
The mere mention of South Africa in a discussion provokes deep images
of institutional racism, discrimination and violence. Stefan Molyneux is
joined by Simon Roche for an in-depth look at the controversial history
of South Africa, the untold story of Apartheid, rising criminality, an
astronomical murder rate, President Jacob Zuma’s reign of terror, the
epidemic slaughter of white farmers, Afrikaner land confiscation and the
growing possibility of civil war.
Simon Roche is Head of the Office of the HQ of the world’s largest
non-state civil defense organization, Suidlanders of South Africa. Once
an ANC activist, Simon Roche now works with Suidlanders to prepare for
impending catastrophe in the Rainbow Nation.
City officials to meet with Joe Slovo Park leaders in a bid to end protests that started after shack demolitions
By Barbara Maregele
27 June 2017 Joe Slovo Community Hall was torched by protesters on Monday night. Photo: Barbara Maregele
Joe Slovo Park community leaders and representatives from the
City of Cape Town are expected to meet today over the recent spate of
protests in the area.
On Sunday afternoon, a group of protesters torched a MyCiTi bus after the City’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit demolished about 20 shacks.
At about 8pm on Monday, protesters burnt the community centre and a
small hall on Democracy Way which was being used as a local clinic and
church. The Joe Slovo community hall was also gutted.
By Tuesday, City officials had cordoned off the community hall to
assess the damage and clear debris. Inside, charred rubble and melted
plastic chairs were scattered across the floor; the kitchen was gutted,
and the bathrooms badly vandalised.
A female firefighter, who asked not to be identified, said she is
traumatised after being caught in a tense standoff between protesters
throwing stones and police firing tear gas.
“I was so scared, because it was the first time I experienced this.
At one point, I was separated from my team and my eyes started burning.
Later, I found out that it was teargas. I’m still coughing,” she said.
Loyiso Nkohla, the City’s community liaison officer, said he could
not comment on the matter until officials had met with community
leaders. He said for safety reasons a closed meeting would be held
at Milnerton police station.
Community leader Cowen Banjatwa said the people whose shacks were
demolished are from Ward 4 and that they cannot afford the rents in the
area.
Banjatwa said he woke to the sound of people shouting and the smell
of teargas. “My eyes and my wife’s eyes were burning in our shack. Now,
people don’t have places to stay and they are angry. I don’t encourage
what happened, but we need to sit down and discuss with the City to find
solutions before this continues.”
“There is a great need for housing here and nothing has been done about it for years,” he said.
Phoenix resident Gavin Williams, whose formal house is directly
behind the torched Democracy Way hall, said he feared for the safety of
his family on the night of the protest. “We heard something happening
outside, people shouting and going on. Then we smelt the smoke and the
teargas. The neighbours all came out and started throwing buckets of
water on the hall because the fire was about to jump over to our
houses.”
“We had to take our four-month-old baby away because of all the
smoke. Even the fire brigade was scared to come … We had to go and fetch
them. The police also only came when everything was done,” he said.
Lorenzo Hutchinson said protesters started to stone them when he and
his neighbours were trying to douse the flames. “We were trying to save
our homes, but they started throwing us with stones. We have nothing to
do with what they are protesting about, but they attacked us. That’s not
right,” he said.
Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security JP Smith said the
City has spent years transforming the hall into “one the community can
be proud of”.
“The hall has been severely damaged and will be closed until further
notice. The fire damage is extensive, resulting in almost all of the
ceiling boards in the main hall being destroyed. This is hard to swallow
when [on Monday] the Recreation and Parks Department finished extensive
repairs to all ceilings boards and doors in this facility after years
of motivating for funding,” he said.
“The nearest community halls are the Summer Greens Hall and the
Milnerton Hall, and the City’s Recreation and Parks Department will
accommodate users of the Joe Slovo Hall,” said Smith.
A small hall used as a local clinic and a church on Democracy Way were completed gutted. Photo: Barbara Maragele
Correction: The headline of this article was
changed. Originally it incorrectly said the newly repaired hall was on
Democracy Way.
Shaun Abrahams, Head of the South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority. Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority has been embroiled in an almost decade-long battle over the prosecution of President Jacob Zuma on 783 charges that include fraud, racketeering and corruption.
The charges are related to controversial post-apartheid arms deal.
Why has the prosecuting authority failed to prosecute? The reason is that the law has struggled to create the independence necessary for prosecutors to pursue charges against prominent members of the executive. South Africa isn’t alone in this. The US has struggled too.
The real problem is that political pressure can get in the way of prosecution. Members of the executive, including the president, can interfere with the head of the prosecuting authority - the National Director of Public Prosecutions. Two examples stand out: the case brought against South Africa’s former police commissioner Jackie Selebi which eventually resulted in a trial and a prison sentence. The second is the Zuma arms deal case.
My suggestion is to establish a separate special prosecuting office that deals only with political cases – that is, those involving members of the executive and the legislature. The usefulness of a special prosecutor was stress tested in 1973 during the US President Richard Nixon debacle. The purpose is to create a greater measure of independence, although the Nixon case also showed that it can be subject to political interference. He had three removed.
Watergate nevertheless illustrated why a separate prosecuting capacity targeting the executive arm of government is important.
But how would a special prosecutor be appointed in South Africa? There are various options. It could, for example, be left to the Chief Justice or Parliament to decide when a matter demands the appointment of a special prosecutor.
A system like this wouldn’t completely remove the potential for interference, but it would ensure it was minimised. It would also free the director from being embroiled in political battles, enabling them to concentrate on their core job which should be to increase the overall effectiveness of the prosecuting authority as well as public confidence in its abilities.
Room for political interference
In South Africa the efficacy of the entire criminal justice system rests on the ability of the prosecuting authority to do its job properly. This is because it enjoys a monopoly over the prosecution of crime. The constitution mandates it to be the gatekeeper – it alone decides which criminal cases go to trial.
Every year the prosecuting authority receives hundreds of thousands of cases prepared by the South African police service. The bulk of them are ordinary offences, like murder, robbery and assault committed by ordinary people against other ordinary people. Very few involve prominent state officials.
The prosecuting authority does receive cases against members of the executive. But the number of political cases are a drop in the ocean compared to ordinary cases. They nevertheless risk derailing the proper and effective functioning of the prosecuting authority.
In reality, the prosecuting authority is only quasi-independent. This is for two reasons.
The first is that the language describing the independence of the prosecuting authority in the Constitution isn’t very clear.
In terms of the constitution, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development has final responsibility over the prosecuting authority. Case law has held that the minister can’t instruct the prosecuting authority to prosecute or not, but is entitled to be kept informed about cases that the public might be interested in or that involve important aspects of legal authority.
Despite this innocuous clarification, ministerial oversight leaves open a gap for interference.
The other major flaw in South Africa’s system is that there’s room for political interference in the way in which the director is appointed. The director is appointed by the president. The president can make the decision without any consultation.
The director is the embodiment of the institutional independence of the prosecuting authority and the incumbent is meant to play an executive role rather than a political one. The director is responsible for determining prosecution directives and prosecution policy. He or she may intervene in decisions to prosecute and may review decisions to prosecute – or not to prosecute – after consulting with provincial directors of public prosecutions.
But given that the president appoints the director, the prosecuting authority is in a difficult position. To perform its functions effectively, it must assert an independence it doesn’t enjoy.
Interference with the director
The office of the director has been the subject of controversy over the past 18 years, with the appointment and subsequent removal of four directors. Some of this controversy has centred on whether the prosecuting authority would, or wouldn’t, prosecute certain political cases. Vusi Pikoli was removed by then President Thabo Mbeki for prosecuting Jackie Selebi.
The fact that these types of cases are within the purview of the director provides grounds for political interference over the office. This interferes with its overall performance.
So far the debate about increasing the independence of the director has centred on how the appointment is made, and how an incumbent can be removed. One suggestion has been that a properly constituted committee made up of different stakeholders does the interviews and shortlists candidates. On the removal of an incumbent, there’s been a suggestion that the president’s right to suspend a director without consultation is removed.
Bolstering the appointment and removal procedures are important and should be done. But it’s not enough to focus on the individual director. South Africa needs to remove the incentive for political interference over the director. That’s the only way the efficacy of the prosecuting authority can be enhanced.
Sometime around 2011 or 2012, it suddenly became very easy to predict what people would be doing in public places: Most would be looking down at their phones.
For years, mobile phones weren’t much to look at. The screens were small, and users needed to press the same key several times to type a single letter in a text. Then, 10 years ago – on June 29, 2007 – Apple released the first iPhone.
“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” former Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said during the iPhone’s introductory news conference.
Today, smartphones seem indispensable. They connect us to the internet, give us directions, allow us to quickly fire off texts and – as I discovered one day in spring 2009 – can even help you find the last hotel room in Phoenix when your plane is grounded by a dust storm.
Yet research has shown that this convenience may be coming at a cost. We seem to be addicted to our phones; as a psychology researcher, I have read study after study concluding that our mental health and relationships may be suffering. Meanwhile, the first generation of kids to grow up with smartphones is now reaching adulthood, and we’re only beginning to see the adverse effects.
Sucked in
In the beginning, sociologist Sherry Turkle explained, smartphone users would huddle together, sharing what was on their phones.
“As time has gone on, there’s been less of that and more of what I call the alone together phenomenon. It has turned out to be an isolating technology,” she said in the 2015 documentary “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.” “It’s a dream machine and you become fascinated by the world you can find on these screens.”
This is the new normal: Instead of calling someone, you text them. Instead of getting together for dinner with friends to tell them about your recent vacation, you post the pictures to Facebook. It’s convenient, but it cuts out some of the face-to-face interactions that, as social animals, we crave.
A 2007 ABC News segment on the iPhone.
More and more studies suggest that electronic communication – unlike the face-to-face interaction it may replace – has negative consequences for mental health. One study asked college students to report on their mood five times a day. The more they had used Facebook, the less happy they were. However, feeling unhappy didn’t lead to more Facebook use, which suggests that Facebook was causing unhappiness, not vice versa.
Another study examined the impact of smartphones on relationships. People whose partners were more frequently distracted by their phones were less satisfied with their relationships, and – perhaps as a result – were more likely to feel depressed.
Nevertheless, we can’t stop staring at our phones. In his book “Irresistible,” marketing professor Adam Alter makes a convincing case that social media and electronic communication are addictive, involving the same brain pathways as drug addiction. In one study, frequent smartphone users asked to put their phones face down on the table grew increasingly anxious the more time passed. They couldn’t stand not looking at their phones for just a few minutes.
iGen: The smartphone generation
The rapid market saturation of smartphones produced a noticeable generational break between those born in the 1980s and early 1990s (called millennials) and those born in 1995 and later (called iGen or GenZ). iGen is the first generation to spend their entire adolescence with smartphones.
Although iGen displays many positive characteristics such as lower alcohol use and more limited teen sexuality, the trends in their mental health are more concerning. In the American Freshman Survey, the percentage of entering college students who said they “felt depressed” in the last year doubled between 2009 and 2016. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a sharp increase in the teen suicide rate over the same time period when smartphones became common. The pattern is certainly suspicious, but at the moment it’s difficult to tell whether these trends are caused by smartphones or something else. (It’s a question I’m trying to answer with my current research.)
Many also wonder if staring at screens will negatively impact adolescents’ budding social skills. At least one study suggests it will. Sixth graders who attended a screen-free camp for just five days improved their skills at reading emotions on others’ faces significantly more than those who spent those five days with their normal high level of screen use. Like anything else, social skills get better with practice. If iGen gets less practice, their social skills may suffer.
Smartphones are a tool, and like most tools, they can be used in positive ways or negative ones. In moderation, smartphones are a convenient – even crucial – technology.
Yet a different picture has also emerged over the past decade: Interacting with people face to face usually makes us happy. Electronic communication often doesn’t.
Bolstering the appointment and removal procedures are important and should be done. But it’s not enough to focus on the individual director. South Africa needs to remove the incentive for political interference over the director. That’s the only way the efficacy of the prosecuting authority can be enhanced.
Yet a different picture has also emerged over the past decade: Interacting with people face to face usually makes us happy. Electronic communication