Pietermaritzburg community gripped by fear as witnesses and police are murdered

“These murders are done by people who are known”

A spate of murders, including the killing of witnesses in important cases in Imbali and Greater Edendale, Pietermaritzburg, has put the competency of the Plessislaer police station under scrutiny. Photo: Nompendulo Ngubane

A spate of murders, including the killing of witnesses in important cases, in Imbali and Greater Edendale, Pietermaritzburg, has put the competency of the Plessislaer police station under scrutiny.

Residents complain about the inefficiency of the precinct and the way cases are being handled. The community has called upon Minister of Police Bheki Cele to intervene.

A recent multiple murder has gripped the community with fear. Senior traffic officer Sifiso Gwala, of Imbali Unit 2, was shot and killed along with two of his friends, Nhlanhla Zibula and Nathi Zondi, on 9 March. They died at the scene. A third friend who was also shot, Mfundo Mtshae, is fighting for his life in hospital.

Thandeka Gwala, the daughter of the slain officer, said the family is traumatized. She said her father was watching a soccer match in an outside building with his friends when they were shot.

“It was raining heavily and one could hardly hear … My mother heard many gunshots from the outside room. She took a few minutes before she went to check. When she opened the door … my father and the other two were already dead. One of them was still alive. He was then taken to hospital. That friend is the only one who survived,” she said.

Last month, ANC member in the Moses Mabhida region, Mhlengi Khumalo, was gunned down in KwaPata at night while alone in his house watching TV. His murder followed the murder of an ANC former ward councillor Musawenkosi “Qashana” Mchunu in May 2018. Arrests followed both murders.

Cele has visited the Plessislaer police station twice. In February, while visiting the families of victims, he told GroundUp he is aware that the community is unhappy with the station.
“As I’m visiting these families, they are telling me that the police are aware of things happening in the community areas. Residents are saying police are not doing anything,” said Cele. “I will be coming back for my third visit at the police station. I know what to do in that police station and I’m working on it … The aim is to try and fix things. We want residents to be able to work with the police station.”

He said a task team will work jointly with the Plessislaer police station to find the perpetrators behind Gwala’s murder.

In May 2017 the Pietermaritzburg community marched against crime. Residents said many cases opened at Plessislaer police station are not attended to.

In November 2018, the community marched to Plessislaer police station. A Caluza resident, who asked not to be named, said, “I joined the march in November because my family was saddened with the way my niece’s case was handled. She was raped and left under the bridge. Nothing was done ever since. We reported the case and we were given a case number. My niece knew the people who raped her. She shared the information with the police. Nothing was done. We have told ourselves that they won’t do anything. They are quick to respond on petty cases and ignore the serious ones.”
In 2016 Plessislaer appeared among the 63 precincts countrywide that had the most unresolved serious crimes.

In 2018, there were 104 murder cases opened.

A police officer at the station, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “The whole police station has three police vans … One police officer has to look after so many people. The precinct is short of investigative officers. The computers have aged and not been upgraded. They are very slow. They make the working process a snail’s pace … Some of our members retire or resign but no new police are being employed. The state resources such as cellphones are given to the managers. The police at grassroots level are isolated … the ones dealing with the community – but the managers receive the resources.”

“We need police from the outside to deal with these murders. We are scared for our lives. These murders are done by people who are known murderers. They might also kill us. We need members from Crime Prevention to work 24 hours.

“We are also angered about the conditions we are working under.

“Cele’s task team is only getting promotions. It doesn’t help us at all. They should be visible in our area to prevent crime. We are tired,” said the officer.

Community Police Forum chairperson Sfiso Mavundla said the delays dealing with reported cases is worrying. He said as the community they have lost hope in the police.

“Our witnesses are not protected and therefore the community is scared. We have about seven witnesses who have been killed … As the community we cannot sit back and watch the perpetrators doing as they please. We are requesting that the leadership sits down with the police staff. They must intervene by discussing with them the challenges they face,” said Mavundla.

He also said that the recent killings in Pietermaritzburg are done by people who are known to the community.

“The community knows those people, but they are scared to report them. They fear that they might be killed. We have had witnesses killed in this town. People are scared. The minister should call on Imbizo to hear what the community has to say. He should also give members of SAPS a platform to also share their frustrations,” said Mavundla.

© 2019 GroundUp.
 22 March 2019   By Nompendulo Ngubane

Dutch Reformed Church. Nederlandse Kerk - Same sex marriages

Dutch Reformed Church. Nederlandse Kerk.10 March 2019.

Same sex marriages.

I have noted that the South African Constitutional High Court has ruled that same sex marriages have to be recognized by the Church.

1. The South African Constitutional Court only came into being after 1994.

The Union of South Africa was in 1910.
The Republic of South Africa was in 1961.
The Dutch Reformed Church is much older than any of the above mentioned.
Christianity Stated more than 2000 years ago.

2. It is the Republic of South Africa and the South African Constitutional Court that has sinned, and sinned greatly.

The following needs to be considered.


Jeremiah 7:16-20
"Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them, nor make intercession to Me; for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger. Do they provoke Me to anger?" says the LORD. "Do they not provoke themselves, to the shame of their own faces?" Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: "Behold, My anger and My fury will be poured out on this place?on man and on beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground. And it will burn and not be quenched." 

Jeremiah 44:17-25
But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine." The women also said,"And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make cakes for her, to worship her, and pour out drink offerings to her without our husbands? permission?" Then Jeremiah spoke to all the people?the men, the women, and all the people who had given him that answer?saying: "The incense that you burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers, your kings and your princes, and the people of the land, did not the LORD remember them, and did it not come into His mind? So the LORD could no longer bear it, because of the evil of your doings and because of the abominations which you committed. Therefore your land is a desolation, an astonishment, a curse, and without an inhabitant, as it is this day. Because you have burned incense and because you have sinned against the LORD, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD or walked in His law, in His statutes or in His testimonies, therefore this calamity has happened to you, as at this day." Moreover Jeremiah said to all the people and to all the women, "Hear the word of the LORD, all Judah who are in the land of Egypt! Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying: ?You and your wives have spoken with your mouths and fulfilled with your hands, saying, "We will surely keep our vows that we have made, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her." You will surely keep your vows and perform your vows!? 



Boys will be boys and girls will be girls.

Once a boy always a boy. Once a girl always a girl, and both act differently to each other.

They have different functions. The two together produce children.

A lock and a key are joined together and become one. They perform a function that is right.

Two locks can not become one. Two keys can not become one. Impossible.

There are consequences to force same-sex marriages. It is discriminates against those of opposite sex who marry.

Not even the Constitutional Court can change that. That the opposites is what the Great God created.

The Roman Catholic Church used the Queen of Heaven as the base to Worship Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ.

The Reformed Churches are not far removed from that!

An opinion by Peter, from Natal, South Africa
 

Land alone is not enough

  By Lee-Anne Bruce and Sithuthukile Mkhize

If municipalities fail to supply services, communities cannot properly use their land

Residents in Pietermaritzburg protest against the failure of the municipality to empty communal toilets. The writers argue that municipalities must supply services for people to get proper use of their land. Archive photo: Nompendulo Ngubane

The land and property debate is deeply tied to dignity, a sense of place and security. Land lies at the heart of poverty and inequality. But land alone will not address these issues.

Land ownership has an impact on access to basic services such as housing, water, sanitation, electricity, health and safety. Having land does not necessarily mean all these needs will be met; many people living own land, but are unable to live on it or use it.

In the Zondi area, Soweto, a group of people bought property between 2009 and 2014 through the City of Johannesburg Land Regularisation Programme. But when they tried to build on the land, they found their stands had not been connected to any services. Without water and sanitation they are unable to live on the land they own. They have instead been forced to rent accommodation further away from their workplaces and their children’s schools.

On top of this, the City has started charging them rates and taxes despite them not being connected to basic services and not occupying the land. Worse still, their unpaid accounts appear to have been handed over to debt collectors. This may affect their future credit worthiness.

They have tried many times to negotiate with the City through their lawyers at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS). But the City is adamant that it wants to buy the stands back to use for a community project. The owners don’t want to lose the land. They want to use it and leave it to their children and future generations.

In October 2018, the courts agreed with the owners: the City was ordered to reverse the billing of rates and taxes and to start installing services within 60 days. But the City of Johannesburg has so far failed to comply with the court order. The Zondi community will now have to start contempt of court proceedings.

Households without water

Another example comes from five villages in the Sekhukhune district of Limpopo. About 5,000 households around Elandskraal have not had proper access to water since 2009. Before that they had a working water supply. But when the old water plant infrastructure broke down, it was never replaced by the municipality. Children and the elderly, who make up the majority of the community, are forced to walk long distances to collect water from rivers and springs, which they have to share with animals.

The communities have done what they can to hold the municipality accountable, reaching a settlement that ensures water is trucked into the villages every week and occasionally supplied through the pipes. But despite being back and forth to court, reaching agreement after agreement, they still have no certainty for a long-term solution.

They may have the land, but they haven’t been able to access the basic services to which they are entitled for the last nine years.

Having access to land, owning land, is only the first step. Without basic services tenure remains insecure and people will not have the necessary resources to make the land useful and productive. This goes to the heart of government’s obligations and constitutional mandate.

Lee-Anne Bruce and Sithuthukile Mkhize are based at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, Wits University.

Views expressed are not necessarily GroundUp’s.

© 2019 GroundUp.
 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Unemployment: our biggest problem

  By Aidan Jones

We are taking an in-depth look at the issue South Africans are most concerned about

COSATU protestors march in Cape Town in 2017 as part of a national strike against corruption and the quality and quantity of jobs in South Africa. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks

In survey after survey, South Africans rank unemployment as the country’s biggest problem. Solutions to reduce the high number of people out of work are not easy to find. Over the next weeks, GroundUp will be putting unemployment in the spotlight. Unemployed people will describe the hardships they face, and leading economists will analyse the problem.

The unemployment rate rose from 21.5% in 2008 to 27.1% in 2018. Long-term unemployment — people looking for work, but who have not worked for a year or more — is consistently high: 4.4 million in the fourth quarter of last year.

Professor Vimal Ranchhod, an economist at UCT, says, “Long-term unemployment leads to unfulfilled human potential over a lifetime and can affect people’s sense of self worth and cause depression. Poverty rates are higher and this affects individuals, their families and their communities.”

The long-term unemployment rate includes only people actively looking for work. That it is so high suggests there is real awareness and effort among South Africans to find work, and there is data that substantiates this.

Afrobarometer asked a representative sample of about 1,800 South Africans in August and September 2018 what they think are the most important problems facing South Africa that government should address. Unemployment was by far the most pressing issue. Well over half those asked (62%) said government should make reducing unemployment its main priority. This was ahead of crime, housing, and education.

South Africa is not faring well on a global scale either. According to Haver Analytics (as cited by The Economist), South Africa has the highest unemployment rate amongst the BRICS nations, more than double that of Brazil (11.6%) and considerably higher than that of India (7.1%), Russia (4.8%) and China (3.8%).

The five industries that employed the most people in the fourth quarter of 2018 were community and social services, which includes government employees (3.6 million); trade (3.3 million); finance and other business services, which includes insurance, real estate, auditing and such-like (2.6 million); manufacturing (1.8 million) and construction (1.5 million). Together these five industries employ 76% of the working labour force.

Despite this, millions of South Africans remain poor, unemployed and desperate. Even many people with matric and tertiary qualifications are not spared the hardship. Economists give many reasons for our high unemployment rate: a relatively small manufacturing sector, inadequate education, poor economic policies, and inequality. Over the coming weeks we will delve deeper into these issues.

Useful definitions

Employed: People aged 15 to 64 who, during the week they are surveyed, worked for at least one hour
Unemployed: Peopled aged 15 to 64 years who:

1. Were not employed in the week they were surveyed; and
2. Actively looked for work or tried to start a business in the four weeks preceding the survey interview; and
3. Were available for work, i.e. would have been able to start work or a business in the survey week; or
4. Had not actively looked for work in the past four weeks, but had a job or business to start at a definite date in the future and were available.

Labour force: People aged 15 to 64 who are able to work
Unemployment rate: proportion of the labour force that is unemployed.
Not economically active: People aged 15–64 years who are neither employed nor unemployed in the survey week.
Discouraged work-seeker: A person who was not employed during the survey period, but wanted to work but did not take active steps to find work during the last four weeks.
Informal sector (non-agricultural): The informal sector consists of:

1. Workers in businesses that employ fewer than five employees and that do not deduct income tax from salaries; and
2. Self-employed people (or people doing unpaid housework) who are not registered for either income tax or value-added tax.

Formal sector (non-agricultural): People not employed in the informal sector, agriculture or by private households
Labour force participation rate: Proportion of the working-age population that is actually working.
Source: Statistics South Africa translated into plain English

More about Our biggest problem

• Reconsidering South Africa’s approach to waste pickers 22 February 2019
• Stats SA’s confusing mining employment statistics 21 February 2019
• Unemployed for three years, Thulani Ngwenya believes entrepreneurship is the way to go 20 February 2019

© 2019 GroundUp.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.

Is Zandvliet poisoning Capetonians?

A nearby community is convinced it is, but test results are inconclusive

A sign warns residents of Sandvlei not to come into contact with water coming from the Zandvliet treatment plant.

Are residents of a Cape Town neighbourhood being poisoned by one of the city’s main waste treatment plants? A Carte Blanche exposé in January said yes. Residents of Sandvlei were shown suffering with sores and tummy infections. Scientists too have warned that the plant is “in crisis, discharging sewage into the lower Kuils River and causing horrific health effects for the people who live along the river.” GroundUp investigated.

On Wednesday, Mayor Dan Plato met with the Sandvlei United Community Organization (SUCO). His office reported that “both sides have plotted the way forward amicably”. SUCO vice chairperson Maryam Salie echoed this optimism. The meeting is a breakthrough, following years of distrust and antagonism between the City and the community.

The Carte Blanche exposé accused the City of pumping “raw sewage” into the Kuils River upstream from Sandvlei. The accusation was made some weeks earlier by scientists in a Daily Maverick op-ed. This, Carte Blanche and the experts suggested, may be the cause of E. coli infections and other health problems, such as skin rashes in children, in the community.

GroundUp visited Sandvlei, a rural community in Macassar near Somerset West. We saw a steady stream of dark, murky waste water with floating clumps of foam flowing into the Kuils River upstream from the settlement. It was easy to access both the effluent stream and the Kuils River.

Horses grazed nearby and we heard accounts of children unwittingly playing in the mud and water. The City said it is not possible to fence off the river, but, it has put up a sign warning residents about the “potentially polluted” water.

Salie listed a bunch of health ailments she suspects may be caused by the polluted river: E. coli infections, skin rashes, boils, joint pains, migraines, pneumonia, diarrhoea and upset stomachs, tumours and an increased risk of cancer. SUCO dismisses suggestions that there is no scientific proof of the link between the treatment works and the community’s health.

Salie wants the river to be clean. “We want the Zandvliet plant to stop pumping sewage into it.”

Maryam Salie wants the river running through her neighbourhood to be cleaned.

But, a recent test complicates claims that effluent discharge by the Zandvliet plant is the cause of the Kuils River’s pollution. CSIR researcher Bettina Genthe, who conducted this test, was interviewed for the Carte Blanche segment. In her interview, she confirmed that the adjacent section of the Kuils River was contaminated with chemicals and high levels of E. coli.

But, Genthe said, her attempts to explain the complexity of making a definitive causal link between the treatment works’ effluent discharge, the poor water quality and the health problems in the community was not included in the Carte Blanche segment.

She tested samples taken on four occasions at different locations: from the Kuils River upstream of the treatment works, from the stream of effluent flowing from the treatment works, from the Kuils River at the Zandvlei community, and from further downstream.

The results show that the Kuils River, including the Sandvlei section of the river, is seriously polluted. The levels of nitrogen and phosphate, chemicals that feed the growth of algae and bacteria, in the effluent were high. But the results also show that the Zandvliet plant was not pumping untreated sewage into the river – at least not on the four occasions that the samples were taken – and that it was not the sole, nor perhaps even the primary contaminant of the Kuils River at the Sandvlei section. The results showed that the E. coli level (807.75 per 100 ml) was within the limit (1000 per 100 ml) set by the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs.

Dr Kevin Winter, a water quality expert at the University of Cape Town, looked at the CSIR results and agreed that the E. Coli level was “not alarming” and the treatment works were “doing a pretty good job” on the days that the samples were taken.

The results show that the poor quality of the river at Sandvlei were likely caused by a range of sources upstream from the treatment works. For example, the levels of E. coli in the water sample taken upstream were significantly higher than those in the effluent flowing from the treatment works.
“The results show us that the poor water quality of the river cannot be blamed on a single source. The effluent from Zandvliet is flowing into an already contaminated river,” Genthe said.

Other sources of contamination likely include industry, agriculture, informal settlements and suburban areas.

This is where the Kuils River (left) meets the outflow of the waste treatment plant (right).

But, the fact remains: the Kuils River flowing through the Sandvlei community is polluted and the community is suffering from health problems. Whether the health problems are caused by the river is unclear.

Proving causality, explains physician and infectious diseases specialist Dr Sean Wasserman, is complicated. First, you have to show there’s an outbreak of an infection; this means that the ailment is occurring more than expected.

Once an outbreak is confirmed, government investigators have to test a hypothesis about the cause of the infection. To do this, they must run what is called a case control study. This involves comparing an infected group with a similar group of uninfected people. By trying to find out what the infected group was more exposed to than the uninfected group, the investigators may be able to identify a cause of the infection.

Wasserman took issue with Carte Blanche quoting unqualified people who jumped to a conclusion about the cause of poor health outcomes in the Sandvlei community.

Carte Blanche executive producer Wynand Grobler told GroundUp that the program only reported the Sandvlei community’s claims that the pollution of the river was causing various infections. “At no point did we say that [cyanotoxins] is the cause [of the ailments] and that it is coming directly from the Zandvliet plant,” he said.

The CSIR results and the lack of proof do not exonerate the City or the Zandvliet plant. Xanthea Limberg, Mayoral Committee Member for Water and Waste Services, maintains that the “biological activated sludge processes” used at Zandvliet “are considered best practice for municipal wastewater treatment and the same treatment process is still implemented at new plants and plant upgrades the world over.”

But, experts, such as the ones who wrote the Daily Maverick article, believe the facility is overburdened. Put bluntly: it has too much shit to process.

Zandvliet is one of the city’s largest waste treatment plants.

The treatment works is long overdue for an upgrade. But a tender to upgrade the plant got delayed by a plethora of appeals. Fortunately, the deadlock has been broken, according to the City, and the R1 billion makeover is due to start within months.

Dr Jo Barnes, a retired University of Stellenbosch epidemiologist, told GroundUp that the “pong” of sewage from Zandvliet is proof enough that the plant is not functioning well.

She said that the E. coli count found by the CSIR is not always a reliable indicator. The plant’s chemical treatment may kill E. coli, but it is possible that other dangerous but difficult to test for pathogens in faeces remain.

Also, the results only show E. coli and chemical levels on the days that the samples were gathered. Large variations are possible. The scientists who wrote in the Daily Maverick said that in November Zandvliet “discharged millions of litres of what we observed to be raw, unfiltered sewage into the Kuils River” after storm water overwhelmed the plant.

Professor Leslie Petrik, one of the writers of that article, said that the regulations for effluent discharge are outdated. They do not deal with some contaminants found in pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals and everyday household products. One of her recent studies for the Water Research Council showed that many of these compounds are found in marine life in False Bay. This shows a causal link between Zandvliet and chemical contamination in marine life.

“Water quality guidelines and effluent discharge limits need serious attention,” she said, adding that we can all do our part by shifting to biodegradable products in our homes.

© 2019 GroundUp.1 February 2019   Text by Daneel Knoetze. Photos by Ashraf Hendricks.