News24

VUWANI IN FLAMES: REVISITING THE MALAMULELE DEBACLE

By Akani Mathebula

Friday, May 6, 2016

Fallen Libyan leader Gaddafi had a peculiar form of “democracy” as expressed through the organisation of the Libyan democratic state called a Jamahiriya, which means a “state of the masses”. Central to this was the Basic People’s Congress- the smallest administrative sub-division of government where ordinary people supposedly had a direct say in the running of  affairs in their communities. It was supposed to be a consultative space where the government could listen to the man on the street and use his inputs in determining how the country was run. Supposedly.

Over the last few weeks we have seen the breaking down of our own form of basic local governance: the local municipality. Schools and clinics have been torched, streets have been blocked and both private and public property has been set alight by the residents of Vuwani and it’s surrounding villages in the Limpopo Province. Ethnic tensions are running high in the predominantly Venda-speaking area with some people producing disparaging posters and slogans deriding VaTsonga.

Tensions have spilled over into neighbouring villages, like the Tsonga dominated Bungeni area. The residents of Vuwani are embarking on a form of protest called “Total Shutdown”. All commercial and governmental activity has been brought to a halt barring essential services and schooling has been disrupted. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? It should. The nearby town of Malamulele fought a battle for more than ten years to have their town and 82 surrounding villages separated from the administration of the Thohoyandou-based Thulamela Municipality. Malamulele residents complained of atrociously shoddy and sometimes non-existent service delivery from Thulamela who focused most development on Thohoyandou and its’ surrounding areas. This was especially egregious given that more than half of the 500 000plus people in Thulamela Municipality were in the Greater Malamulele area and the minority in Thohoyandou (Thohoyandou is a mainly Venda-dominated area, whereas Malamulele is predominantly Tsonga).  Although the government repeatedly denied it at the time: the root cause of this disparate distribution of services isn’t “inefficiency ” or “weak systems”, it is Tribalism.

Protests in Malamulele reached their zenith when the residents embarked on a total shutdown of all activities. The town was turned into a no-go zone and shops were closed. Some criminal elements took the chance to loot schools of their computers and other equipment, before setting the schools alight. The then minister of Co-operative Governance Pravin Gordhan visited the area and held talks with the local communities. These talks had to be held at a church building since there was no government facility in the town which could accommodate the large crowd which was gathered. This underscored the gripes of the community about the municipality.

The protests came to a jubilant end when the Municipal Demarcation Board announced the de-establishment of four local municipalities, mainly within the Vhembe District to form new municipalities with new boundaries. The new “Malamulele” municipality, still code-named LIM-345 was thus born. Some have suggested that it be named after the late Minister Collins Chabane since he was from the area. To the surprise of many, the new municipal boundaries included parts of Vuwani which were previously administered by the Makhado Local Municipality. This, unsurprisingly didn’t go down well with some people in the Vuwani area who feared a backlash from the Tsonga speaking people who would now be in the majority in the new municipality and be tempted to neglect Vuwani when administering services and development projects. There are also interest groups like some”tenderpreneurs” who will have the power bases in the old set-up being compromised who are exploiting the situation and mood to protect the flow of tenders. The communities consulted together and sent a delegation to meet with Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and present their case. When this intervention failed, they took the fight to court where the judge subsequently dismissed their application, sparking the violence we now see.

At the funeral of Minister Collins Chabane in Xikundu Village near Malamulele , Chief Xilungwa Mhinga, speaking on behalf of the Tribal Authority made an impassioned plea for President Zuma and his government to hear the cries of the people of Greater Malamulele and grant them their own municipality. The president responded by saying “hi mi twile”, meaning “we have heard you” /”we are listening”. Now that we’re here again, one really wonders, if they were really listening?

The people of Malamulele didn’t ask for Vuwani to be included in the new Municipality and the people of Vuwani didn’t ask to be included in the municipality either. They are refusing to be used as pawns to silence or ignore the complaints about tribal tension which have long been bubbling under the surface in the Vhembe region. The feeling is that the only reason parts of Vuwani are being included in municipal area LIM-345 is for the government and ruling party to be able to say “look! We have both vaTsonga and vhaVenda, there is no tribalism here”.

ANC provincial secretary Nocks Seabi has called for calm in Vuwani “While we explore ways and means of strengthening our engagement …”.  His voice has not been heeded and it appears that the engagement should have been “strengthened aeons ago. Now the new Co-Operative Governance Minister Des “Weekend-Special” Van Rooyen has been sent in to quell the literal and figurative fires and “listen” to the communities.  While we continue to wonder what this latest round of “listening” will entail, the government still downplays the issue of tribalism, government services have stopped, schooling has been severely affected and Vuwani burns…

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Posted in Current Events, Politics | Tagged 2016 Local Government Elections, ANC,Makhado, Malamulele, Vuwani | 2 Responses

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Akani Mathebula

Akani Mathebula is a Geologist by training and an Investment Banker by profession. He has a keen interest in politics, music and current affairs. Akani is a social and environmental activist as well as being a contributing writer at African Hadithi (www.africandhadithi.com ), a Pan-African news and opinion blog.
He is active on Twitter with the Twitter handle @Akanirelo

SAnews.gov.za

Government's social assistance reaches 17 million

Cape Town – Government’s Social Assistance Programme now reaches almost 17 million South Africans, says Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini.

Delivering the department’s Budget Vote Speech in Parliament, on Wednesday, Minister Dlamini said more than two thirds of all social grant recipients are children who receive the Child Support Grant (CSG). 

“Over three million older persons receive the Old Age Grant while a million people receive the disability grant,” the Minister said.

She said the investment that the government is making in the lives of the poor and vulnerable learners is showing positive results. 

She further said children in the department’s Isibindi Programme and the CSG were performing well in schools.

Last year, out of 455 922 learners who passed their matric examinations, 304 913 learners, received a social grant.     

She said social assistance has proven to be an important tool for human capital investment and the biggest contributor to reducing poverty and inequality.

“In order to ensure that the education of these learners continues without interruption, the department is in negotiation with the National Student Financial Aid Scheme to ensure that learners that had qualified for grants are not subjected to a means test to qualify for financial support to further their studies,” the Minister said. 

Illegal deductions on social grants under the microscope

The Minister said the department was faced with huge challenges emanating from illegal deductions on social grants.

She said the deductions were eroding the value and impact of social grants in addressing the deep levels of poverty and inequality in the society.

“We have witnessed high levels of unacceptable practice of illegal, immoral and unauthorised deductions of money from all grant types for services ranging from airtime, water, loans and funeral policies.

“We published revised Regulations to the Social Assistance Act for public comment in February this year, which will deal with this practice.

“The department has considered all the comments and made some revisions to the Regulations,” she said.

The Minister said these revisions to the Act will be published this week.

She said the Ministerial Task Team on Deductions will continue to monitor these practices and ensure that deductions are ultimately brought to an end. 

“The absence of a funeral benefit has opened our social grant beneficiaries to exploitation by private insurance companies. The lack of government action to protect them has led very loud outcry by our beneficiaries and various civil society organisations

“We intend to introduce legislation into Parliament during this current financial year, for the establishment of a funeral benefits fund.” – SAnews.gov.za

SAnews.gov.za

SA joins Africa Month celebrations

Pretoria – Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa has encouraged South Africans to participate in Africa Month activities to build a better Africa.

Speaking on Tuesday during the launch of the Africa Month programme for May, Minister Mthethwa said the month is aimed at pursuing an Africa that will occupy its rightful place in the world through achieving the objectives of Agenda 2063.

“We are on track as we continue a continental journey begun by our ancestors… As representatives of business and industry leaders, heritage institutions, local communities and the development sector in Africa, your task is to create the conditions for Africa to extend its freedom,” Minister Mthethwa said.

This month also marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the African World Heritage Fund, which strives to conserve and protect Africa's natural and cultural heritage. A seminar is being held on Tuesday and Wednesday under the theme ‘African World Heritage - Thinking Ahead’ at the Cradle of Humankind in Gauteng.

Minister Mthethwa has welcomed the seminar.

“In a world in which increasingly people and places are in danger of imminent death and wanton destruction, where valuable African heritage has been defaced and destroyed by those who do not understand their worth to humanity, we welcome this seminar,” Minister Mthethwa said.

The seminar focuses on heritage conservation and development initiatives, enhancing the role of communities in heritage preservation and addressing matters of world heritage in post conflict regions.

Some of the activities for Africa Month include the 5th International Marimba and Steelpan Festival, a reggae festival, an anti-racism music festival and film festival, which will be held in Limpopo as well as the iKauru Contemporary Art from Africa exhibition.

The Gcwala Ngamasiko International Cultural Festival, a Pan African Culinary Festival in Durban and the Bureau of the 4th Pan African Cultural Congress will also be included in the programme. – SAnews.gov.za

News24

Mbeki, Yacoob take jibe at Zuma during Constitution anniversary celebrations

2016-05-08 14:05

Jeff Wicks, News24

Former President Thabo Mbeki sits with other panellists ahead of an event to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution. (Jeff Wicks, News24)

Pretoria – Former president, Thabo Mbeki, and retired Constitutional Court justice, Zak Yacoob, on Sunday took a thinly veiled swipe at President Jacob Zuma and his administration during a panel discussion at an event to celebrate the adoption of the Constitution.

The panel was convened to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution in Parliament in 1996, and was hosted at Pretoria’s Freedom Park.

The park itself is a monument to South African conflict, opening in 2004. 

Mbeki and Yacoob have both been vocal critics of Zuma and his current administration.

“As South Africans we signed a common contract to say this is the South Africa we want to build. It is an important day because it brought to an end a struggle that lasted centuries,” Mbeki said.

Flouted the Constitution

He said that large portions of society remained unfamiliar with the Constitution, to the detriment of the country.

This was in an apparent veiled reference to the adverse finding of the Constitutional Court against President Jacob Zuma and the National Assembly. 

The Constitutional Court ruled that Zuma flouted the Constitution when he ignored Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's remedial action on the non-security upgrades done at his private home in Nkandla.

"A lot of our people are not familiar with what this Constitution says. The consequence is that we sit in government and do something that is wrong and even unconstitutional, Mmusi [Maimane] will say it’s incorrect and so will the judges [of the Constitutional Court], but where is the rest of society?” he questioned. 

“If there was more familiarity with it, there would be a larger social intervention,” Mbeki added.

Mbeki, asked directly to comment on his evaluation of the current political leadership, was restrained in his response. "What is clear to all of us is there is a lot of restlessness in the country and a lot of disaffection about the current situation," he said.

Equal before the law

Yacoob emphasised that all were equal before the law, and he called for the hallmarks of the Constitution be realised.

“Everyone is equal before the law… our Constitution says that neither the state nor anyone else shall discriminate on any grounds.

“We have a leader of political party, not Mmusi [Maimane], that he goes to a white lawyer because he thinks white lawyers are better and everyone laughs. We discriminate against ourselves and we must not do this,” he said. 

Yacoob also seized his opportunity at the podium to make an apparent jibe at Zuma.

He referenced the rules of the African National Congress in making his point.

“All members of the ANC are called to behave honestly and fundamentally, we need to have courage and behave honestly and ensure that others do so,” he said.

Read more on:    anc  |  thabo mbeki  |  zak yacoob  |  pretoria  |  politics

EyeWitness News

LIMPOPO GOVT MAKES 'POWERFUL BREAKTHROUGH' IN VUWANI

The provincial government says it hopes talks with traditional leaders will see an end to a week of violence.

One of the schools targeted in ongoing protests in the Vuwani area. Picture: Kgothatso Mogale/EWN.

• Vuwani
 
• Malamulele Limpopo protests
 
• Vuwani protests
 
• Malamulele

•  Email
•  Print

Mia Lindeque | about 12 hours ago

JOHANNESBURG – The Limpopo government says it has made what it calls a “powerful breakthrough” in negotiations with the majority of traditional leaders in the areas surrounding Vuwani.

The provincial government says it hopes these successful talks will see an end to a week of violence, with more than 20 schools being either torched or vandalised by protesters.

Residents in and around Vuwani are refusing to have their area fall under the Malamulele municipality.

Limpopo government spokesperson Phuti Seloba said traditional leaders have given a strong message that they too will be helping authorities to bring stability to Vuwani and other villages this week.

“They’re very committed, they also shared the same sentiment with us as government about the delay and the violation of the rights of other people in the area and they’ve committed themselves to support and work together with the police and government.”

Seloba said he believes the violence will now come to an end and children will be able to go back to school.

Co-operative governance minister Des van Rooyen and his state security counterpart David Mahlobo visited the troubled area over the weekend.

MBEKI ADDS HIS VOICE

Former president Thabo Mbeki has added his voice to the condemnation of the burning of schools in Vuwani, saying the law needs to be enforced.

Mbeki was asked whether the supreme law of the land protects children from their rights being infringed on through the arson attacks on education facilities, during a panel discussion in Pretoria today.

He said the attacks formed a part of a larger complex societal problem.

“It’s illegal to go and burn libraries, trains and all of this infrastructure. The law needs to be enforced.” 

VHAVENDA KING CALLS FOR AN END TO VIOLENCE, VANDALISM

The Vhavenda king has called on protesting residents of Vuwani to end the violence and vandalism of schools in the area, but added he fully supported their opposition to joining a new municipality based in Malamulele.

Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga met with the king at the Vhavenda royal house in Dzanani to discuss the protests and continued arson attacks on schools.

MORE SUSPECTS ARRESTED FOR VUWANI ARSON ATTACKS

Limpopo police say 23 people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the recent spate of arson attacks in the town of Vuwani.

The police’s Malesela Ledwaba said, “Eight more suspects have been arrested, meaning that the total number is now 23 suspects arrested in connection with the protests at Vuwani.”

(Edited by Leeto M Khoza)

EyeWitness News

AT LEAST 13 SCHOOLS TORCHED IN LIMPOPO PROTESTS

The schools were allegedly targeted by protesters who are displeased with a court ruling on their area.

Picture: Freeimages.

• Limpopo schools
 
• Vuwani
 
• School torched

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Mia Lindeque | a day ago

JOHANNESBURG - Limpopo police say nine schools were set alight in Vuwani and Levubu last night, allegedly by angry protesters, bringing the total number of schools torched this week to 13.

On Monday, four schools were also vandalised after being informed that a high court dismissed their application to exclude their area from a new municipality.

Residents want to stay under the Makhado Municipality instead of being incorporated into the Malamulele Municipality.

Police spokesperson Malesela Ledwaba says arson cases have been opened. 

"We have not yet arrested anybody and we're still looking for suspects. The schools I'm talking about are completely burned down. One was partially burnt but two others were just damaged." 

(Edited by Shimoney Regter)

DAILY MAVERICK NEWS

SOUTH AFRICA

In Pictures: The EFF manifesto launch

• GREG NICOLSON
 
• SOUTH AFRICA
 
• 01 MAY 2016 11:04 (SOUTH AFRICA)

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) on Saturday launched its local government election manifesto at Orlando Stadium, Soweto. While the different party proposals will now be analysed, the Fighters won the battle for festivities and filling up a stadium. By GREG NICOLSON.

Party leader Julius Malema arrived at Orlando Stadium to a rousing reception from the packed crowd. Supporters joined him and other EFF leaders, pushing their hands to the sky as if they were raising the roof as security struggled to ensure media gave Malema space. (Greg Nicolson)

Malema speaks on the phone from the Orlando Stadium stage before delivering the key address of the party’s manifesto launch. The EFF wasted little time in getting to the main event, with most artistic performances coming after Malema’s speech. (Greg Nicolson)

EFF Treasurer-General Magdalene Moonsamy sings along toNkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika at the party’s manifesto launch. As usual, the party sang the anthem without the extracts from Die Stem. (Greg Nicolson)

Orlando Stadium was packed to capacity at the EFF’s manifesto launch, with many supporters enthusiastically cheering Malema’s speech. (Greg Nicolson)

With seats full at the EFF’s manifesto launch, some people decided to stand on the stairs. (Greg Nicolson)

EFF leader Julius Malema was fiery throughout his speech at the party’s manifesto launch, drawing inspiration from prominent African leaders to demand that black South Africans deserve equality, dignity and quality services. (Greg Nicolson)

While Julius Malema speaks on violence at the EFF manifesto launch, the sign language interpreter makes the signal of a gun. Malema said the EFF was not violent but after the ANC charged him last week with treason, he said his party was not scared of violence and would defend itself if intimidated. (Greg Nicolson)

“This is your weapon,” said Julius Malema, ending his speech and holding up the EFF’s election manifesto. “This is the gun I’m talking about.” The manifesto emphasised ideas to improve government services, boost employment, and provide a better standard of living for the poor. (Greg Nicolson)

EFF leader Julius Malema and party spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi at the EFF’s gala dinner after the party’s manifesto launch. Malema delivered another lengthy address, a sort of footnotes on his speech at Orlando Stadium. (Greg Nicolson)

EFF security officials at the party’s manifesto launch at Orlando Stadium. (Greg Nicolson)

A magician set to perform at the EFF manifesto launch waits in the tunnels at Orlando Stadium. (Greg Nicolson)

In the top tier of Orlando Stadium, a man selling cigarettes holds a placard condemning President Zuma’s relationship with the Gupta family. The stands, particularly those out of the sun in the top tier of the stadium, were packed on Saturday. (Greg Nicolson)

EFF supporters hold a coffin with President Zuma’s face on it as Julius Malema walks around the stadium on Saturday. (Greg Nicolson)

EFF Deputy President Floyd Shivambu, Commander-in-Chief Julius Malema, and National Chairman Dali Mpofu walk around Orlando Stadium at the party’s manifesto launch. (Greg Nicolson)

Supporters run onto the pitch after Julius Malema’s manifesto launch address. (Greg Nicolson)

Main photo:  Hovering over Orlando Stadium and Soweto on Saturday, an enormous EFF flag was being dragged by a helicopter. Some supporters were angered when a plane carrying a DA banner circled the stadium, but they pointed out that the EFF flag was much larger. (Greg Nicolson)

• GREG NICOLSON
 
• SOUTH AFRICA