NPA and Hawks under fire for failing to control illegal flow of money

Derek Hanekom asks Hawks if they were under political pressure to drop cases

By Moira Levy
31 August 2017

Informal miners search for diamonds. Parliamentarians blamed Zama-Zama, such as these men, for money illicitly leaving the country, but a lawyer GroundUp spoke to expressed scepticism. Archive photo: Shaun Swingler

The amount of money illegally leaving the country and draining the fiscus was described as “staggering” at a joint parliamentary committee meeting yesterday and Committee Chair Yunus Carrim begged the crime-fighting authorities reporting back to the meeting to tell the committees what they could do to help.

South Africa could not afford the loss of foreign exchange reserves, reduced tax collection, and the stifling of investment and trade resulting from these illegal outflows, he said, especially given the poor performance of the economy and projected low rate of growth.

It is not possible to estimate the amounts that are being lost to the economy through Illicit Financial Flows (IFF), but they run into hundreds of billions of rands of lost tax revenue. The last estimate in 2012 was set at more than $120-billion that had been illegally drained out of the economy.

This problem is not new and four parliamentary committees came together in 2015 to investigate what amendments and regulations were needed to clamp down on illegal financial transactions.

The Standing Committee on Finance and three National Assembly’s Portfolio Committees - Trade and Industry, Mineral Resources, and Police - were left more frustrated than ever after yesterday’s reportback.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the Hawks came under fire for “abysmal” rates of prosecution.

The Hawks reported that of the 121 transactions referred by the South African Reserve Bank, only 54 cases were treated as IFFs, and so far three had been finalised in court. Twenty -five cases were still under investigation.

The ANC’s Derek Hanekom asked outright if the Hawks were under political pressure to drop certain cases. This was denied, but the DA’s David Maynier pushed on, asking what the Hawks were doing about the funds allegedly diverted from the Estina dairy farm project in the Free state to fund the controversial Gupta wedding held at Sun City.

“We need to do more,” Carrim said, “There are staggering amounts of money leaving the country illegally and there’s a desperate need to raise more revenue, especially with a projected 0.5% growth rate. So it’s just not acceptable that there are so few cases in the court.”

A multi-agency structure was set up in March to bring together all statutory bodies dealing with IFFs and Basic Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) but to date no prosecutions have been reported, which was described by Carrim as “a consummate lack of progress”.

However, the UDM pointed to a breakdown in communication between the various agencies that are supposed to be working together, saying they continue to work in silos. Nqabayomzi Kwankwa (UDM) said, “The right hand does not seem to know what the left hand is doing.”

The multi-agency task team to track down and prosecute IFFs and BEPs includes the South African Revenue Service, the Financial Intelligence Centre, the South African Reserve Bank and National Treasury. The four parliamentary Committees will meet at least four times a year to monitor progress and will come together every six months to pool their information and receive reportbacks from the task team.

All parties in the hearing agreed that the Hawks’ report left more questions than answers, and that the reported prosecutions and convictions were laughable in the face of the actual amounts being drained from the economy.

Acting Hawks head Yolisa Matakata conceded that the Hawks lacked forensic skills, which had to be outsourced, but said on the whole they had the necessary capacity.

The MPs suggested that illegal mining was a major source of illegal financial outflows. They said the Zama Zamas were the first step in a chain of cross-border deals that were growing in scale, functioning openly with large-scale machinery and illegal vehicles, often in cahoots with mine security. Trade in the products of illegal mining reached through a network of dealers throughout the country and beyond its borders. The DA’s James Lorimer estimated that R20 billion left the country from illegal mining. When asked by GroundUp to substantiate the figure he said it could be anywhere between R6 billion and R20 billion (he did not specify over what period or how he came to this estimate).

But Johan Lorenzen, a lawyer assisting artisanal miners to decriminalise their trade, was sceptical when he spoke to GroundUp: “It conflates Zama-Zama with big companies extracting wealth on a large scale. But even so I doubt R20 billion is a plausible number.” Lorenzen said that if artisanal mining was legalised it would significantly contribute to the tax base and help earn foreign revenue.

CORRECTION: The headline was changed after publication, and Lorimer’s comment to GroundUp was added.

Produced for GroundUp by Notes from the House.

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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Parliament hears how PRASA is going off the rails

“The more trains that are burnt and vandalised, the less we can operate.”

By Sune Payne
31 August 2017

A train at Cape Town station burns earlier this year. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks

Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations was briefed by PRASA on Wednesday about the extent of vandalism and violence on public trains and how this affects its service. Members heard that during the 2016-17 financial year 322 carriages were set alight and 3,591 crime incidents were reported on Metrorail. During this period 77% of trains ran on time, the committee was told.

PRASA says it has a total of 88 trains that it could put to use in the Western Cape but currently only 61 are in use due to vandalism and arson attacks.

The Acting Chief Executive Officer, Lindikhaya Zide, warned: “The more trains that are burnt and vandalised, the less we can operate.”

“We are experiencing a high rate of vandalism of our assets,” said Zide. He reported that Metrorail had refurbished 461 coaches nationally in the 2016-17 financial year.

MP Shaik Emam was concerned to know what PRASA was doing about passenger safety. Zide said PRASA was consulting the SA Police Service. On cable theft, he said PRASA was looking at how Eskom and Transnet were dealing with problems related to cable theft and trying to emulate that.
Speaking to GroundUp, Emam said he had doubts that PRASA could manage safety concerns as it only spends 6% on protection services. “We want to see how they manage to do this, when they spend so little on protection.”

The Chairperson of the Committee, Yvonne Phosa, said PRASA and the Department of Transport must ensure that “taxpayers’ money is well spent and not wasted”.

Produced for GroundUp by Notes from the House.

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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You Can Still Be Transgender If You Don’t Feel Physical Dysphoria – Here’s Why

Has anyone ever implied that you’re “faking” being transgender because you don’t feel like you’re “born in the wrong body?”

The narrative of feeling like a person of one gender “trapped” in another gender’s body is true for some, but it doesn’t apply to all trans people. If you don’t experience physical dysphoria, that doesn’t mean you’re “not trans enough.”

But it hurts to be excluded based on this narrative, so here’s a comic to help you get through it. This explains the origins of the myth that trans people must experience physical dysphoria – and exactly what this misconception gets wrong.

With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism

Teacher caught on video beating student

Same teacher accused of sexual harassment

By Ashleigh Furlong
29 August 2017

Thandokhulu students protest on Monday against an alleged sexual assault by one of their teachers. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

A video has emerged of a teacher at Thandokhulu Secondary School in Mowbray hitting a learner. The same teacher has been accused of sexual assault by learners at the school.

In the video a man can be seen using his belt and smacking it in the direction of a learner, while the learner raises an arm for protection.

Video by unknown. GroundUp has blurred the face of the student in the forefront of the video.

Yesterday GroundUp reported on a protest held by learners at the school, where they called for the teacher to be suspended. The learners told GroundUp that in May one of the learners was sexually assaulted by the teacher when a group of choir members slept over at the school because of choir practice.

However, the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has found the teacher not guilty, telling GroundUp that: “The matter was referred to Labour Relations by the school principal. Labour Relations have confirmed that the educator was found not guilty of the allegations and the charges withdrawn.”

Kealeboga Mase Ramaru, the deputy head of Equal Education’s Western Cape Office, told GroundUp that they had a meeting with the principal of Thandokhulu on Tuesday to discuss the teacher’s conduct. She said that the principal told them that when he requested reasons from the Department for the not guilty finding, he was told that there wasn’t a policy to release this information.
Ramaru added that a criminal case had also been opened against the teacher and that he is due to appear again in court on Thursday. She said that he had already appeared once in court but the magistrate apparently didn’t stipulate that he should be suspended from his position, pending the outcome of the case.

Ramaru said that the principal was set to call an emergency meeting today with the learners to discuss the matter.

As for the corporal punishment charge, Ramaru said that they were in the process of preparing evidence that would be presented to the principal.

GroundUp has seen a statement written by the learners where they say they “feel threatened by a teacher’s presence … after his sexual harassment case”.

“We feel that both the school and WCED has failed us as students because the teacher is still teaching at the school and the victim attends his classes,” the statement says. “We now feel vulnerable and that the school should take action and assure us and other students that we are safe.”

Corporal punishment in schools have been banned since 1997 but still remains a problem. According to the 2016 General Household Survey, about 10% of learners reportedly experienced corporal punishment in 2016. These rates were highest in the Eastern Cape where it sits at nearly 18% and lowest in the Western Cape and Gauteng where about 2% of learners said they had experienced corporal punishment.

In Equal Education’s 2016 social audit of schools in the Western Cape, they found that learners were beaten at 83% of the schools sampled and that this was a daily occurrence at 37% of the schools. “At more than 90% of schools with corporal punishment, teachers use some type of weapon,” stated the survey.

“Principals and teachers are the main individuals to whom learners are meant to report violent events. The reporting systems and structures that the WCED has in place are severely undermined by a situation in which learners in such a high proportion of schools can expect to be beaten by the same individuals entrusted with their safety,” said Equal Education.
GroundUp is continuing to investigate this story.

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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For a primer on how to make fun of Nazis, look to Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin’s character Adenoid Hynkel was a not-so-subtle nod to Adolf Hitler.
Wikimedia Commons

White nationalists and neo-Nazis are having their moment. Former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke is back, yet again, in the media spotlight, while newer figures such as white supremacist Richard Spencer and Christopher Cantwell are broadcasting their views via social media feeds and niche internet channels.

Many Americans are wondering if this resurgent movement should be ignored, feared or fought. What, exactly, is the best antidote for neo-Nazism?

What about laughter?

While the August 12 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia was no joke, the images of armor-clad, tiki-torch-wielding white nationalists did give fodder to late-night talk show hosts and editorial cartoonists.

In a different age, another ascendant white supremacist – Adolf Hitler – used a combination of garbled ideas, stagy phrasing and arch gestures to bewitch much of his nation, even as the rest of the world looked on in disbelief and terror.

While many anti-fascists offered serious and potent arguments against Hitler, comedians like Charlie Chaplin responded to the mortal threat that the Nazis posed in a different way: They used humor to highlight the absurdity and hypocrisy of both the message and its notorious messenger.

Chaplin homes in on his target

In late 1940, producer-director-star Charlie Chaplin released “The Great Dictator.” Often considered Chaplin’s last great film, “The Great Dictator” is the tale of a little Jewish barber in the mythical (but obviously German) nation of Tomania. The barber is mistaken for a dictator modeled after Adolf Hitler named Adenoid Hynkel, and the barber is forced to carry out his impersonation of the German warlord to save his own life.

Hitler’s trademark mustache mimicked Chaplin’s.
Insomnia Cured Here, CC BY-SA

The idea of a film satirizing Hitler was one Chaplin had been working on for years. Chaplin was a dedicated antifascist, and was alarmed at Hitler’s ability to captivate the German people. He warned members of the Hollywood community not to underestimate Hitler merely because they found him comical, an effect magnified by Hitler’s unfathomable decision to apparently borrow the most famous mustache in the world – Chaplin’s little black toothbrush – as his own trademark.

Chaplin regarded Hitler as one of the finest actors he had ever seen. (Hitler carefully monitored his public persona, studying photographs and film of his speeches, and taking lessons in public presentation.) Nonetheless, Chaplin, whose international success was based on little people challenging and defeating powerful institutions and individuals, recognized that comedy could be used against Hitler.

“It is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Ridicule, I suppose, is an attitude of defiance.”

Chaplin was warned in 1939 that the film might be refused release in England and face censorship in the United States. Political factions in both nations were anxious to placate the unpredictable, angry Hitler, and “The Great Dictator” could be calculated to enrage the Nazis, who reviled Chaplin as a “Jewish acrobat.”

But Chaplin was a partner in the distribution company United Artists; simply put, he was his own producer, and answerable primarily to himself when it came to risky investments. Due to Chaplin’s perfectionism, all of his films were expensive. “The Great Dictator” was no different: It cost US$2 million to produce, an enormous sum at the time. That perfectionism delayed the film’s distribution until the height of the English Blitz, by which time audiences in the U.S. and England were ready for Chaplin’s humor of defiance. In 1940, the year of its release, “The Great Dictator” was the third highest-grossing film in the U.S.

Exposing a fraud

Much of the comedy of “The Great Dictator” comes from a merciless indictment of those who would follow such a patently idiotic character. The satire mocks Hitler’s absurdity, solipsism and overweening vanity, while also highlighting Germany’s psychological captivity to a political fraud.

All the techniques of the tyrant are on view: the arbitrary demonizing of identity groups, the insistence on mindless loyalty from his followers, the unpredictable behavior toward foreign leaders that ranges from mere abuse to deceit, even the hostility toward science in favor of dogma. (A series of inventors die while demonstrating the patently impossible military technology Hynkel demands, like a bulletproof suit and a parachute hat.) Hynkel is also a casual sexual harasser and grossly overestimates attendance at official functions.

Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Fake German’ speech from ‘The Great Dictator.’

Hynkel bloviates mindlessly and unintelligibly. U.S. and English audiences were already quite familiar with Hitler’s untranslated radio speeches, and Chaplin took advantage of this, making Hynkel’s speeches an amalgamation of gibberish, non sequiturs and vaudeville German dialect humor, as when he shouts, “Der Wienerschnitzel mit da lagerbieren, und das Sauerkraut!” (“The wienerschnitzel with the beer and the sauerkraut!”)

Would Hitler laugh at himself?

The success of “The Great Dictator” spawned a cottage industry of Hitler satire. Some of this work was relentlessly lowbrow, such as the Three Stooges’ short “You Nazty Spy!” (1940), Hal Roach Studios’ short feature “That Nazty Nuisance” (1943), and the Warner Bros.‘ animated shorts “The Duckators” (1942), “Der Fuehrer’s Face” (1942) and “Daffy – The Commando” (1943).

The artistic peak of this cinematic effort was the mordant Ernst Lubitsch comedy “To Be or Not to Be” (1942), in which Hitler is explicitly compared to a ham actor-manager who embarks upon a vanity production of – what else? – “Hamlet.”

Hitler was a huge movie fan, and after the war, novelist and screenwriter Budd Schulberg found proof that Hitler had actually seen “The Great Dictator.” More intriguingly, Hitler ordered the film to be screened for him a second time. (Of course, ordinary Germans weren’t allowed to watch it.)

Interviewed for a 2001 documentary, Reinhard Spitzy, an intimate of Hitler, said he could easily imagine Hitler laughing privately at Chaplin’s burlesque of him.

The image of Hitler watching “The Great Dictator” a second time – admiring the work of the only public figure whose sheer charisma before the cameras could rival his own – is a compelling one.

Chaplin later said that had he known the extent of the Nazis’ barbarity, he would not have burlesqued them; their crimes were simply too immense for comedy, however trenchant. But perhaps “The Great Dictator” still reminds us of political comedy’s golden mean: The more political movements strive to be taken seriously, the more ripe a subject for satire they become.

Kevin Hagopian, Senior Lecturer of Media Studies (Cinema Studies), Pennsylvania State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.