South Africa P.I.G.: GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS

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The fate of the nation

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA896MkKsachTwoRfHC0GWMWgBCCc8D5TOFSeTAS4jbAMIpVHW6b3U4CH9swjvCFZnG5gKPuTi7PtZeMl_Sw4hNBDPmvfaPboLseqgNBc7cuDLUMIOFCjUT5E1sJUZ0mrZkN9LN6X7_ts9/s1600-h/anc-terrorists.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447822865991085266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA896MkKsachTwoRfHC0GWMWgBCCc8D5TOFSeTAS4jbAMIpVHW6b3U4CH9swjvCFZnG5gKPuTi7PtZeMl_Sw4hNBDPmvfaPboLseqgNBc7cuDLUMIOFCjUT5E1sJUZ0mrZkN9LN6X7_ts9/s400/anc-terrorists.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 289px" /></a>John Kane-Berman Although many people are unwilling to read it, the writing is on the wall for South Africa. From the thuggishness of the police to moribund public schooling, from the endemic corruption of the ruling party to the chronic incompetence of the civil service, from assaults upon the Judiciary to official cowardice in the face of violent trade unions, from hazardous public hospitals to potholes in the roads, from failed land reform to declining life expectancy, from poisonous rivers to rampant crime and killer drivers, we are in trouble. What makes all of this worse is the contempt with which the government routinely treats the public, even as it filches more money from our pockets. Ministers - even the president - jet in to communities in violent revolt and make promises they have no more intention or ability to fulfil this time round than last. When a president with Jacob Zuma's track record wants to start a public conversation about morality, one can only conclude that he is either a complete and brazen cynic or-worse-that he does not understand that he has done anything wrong. When the Gauteng premier can send the cops to block off half Johannesburg for half the day while she makes a speech, you know we have a mini Mrs Mugabe in the making. We are not a failed state, but that is where we are heading. (The comrades don't notice this because they are forever busy with parties, launches, summits, lekgotlas, conferences, grandiose occasions, overseas trips, etc.) Even if South Africa can pull off a Soccer World Cup where tourists don't get mugged or raped to the extent that South Africans do, or where they don't disappear into potholes or down manholes, we all know that when the party is over the country will resume its downward slide. Bits of the place spruced up for the benefit of World Cup visitors will be nothing better than Potemkin Villages. Fortunately, criticism of the ANC's deployment policy and of poor public service is growing, even within the three-ring circus sometimes known as the tripartite alliance. Unfortunately, we know from the apartheid era how long it takes for failing policies to be reversed, even when the penny has dropped. But we also know from the apartheid era that change is not a function of government alone. The private sector, civil society, non-governmental organisations, and ordinary citizens can bring about change without waiting for the government. This is already happening in the labour field, where regulatory rigidities are being undermined by labour brokers and noncompliant clothing employers. Like apartheid, the ANC's ‘national democratic revolution' will eventually disintegrate.

The fate of the nation

John Kane-Berman Although many people are unwilling to read it, the writing is on the wall for South Africa. From the thuggishness of the po...

10:44 AM

SA up to its eyeballs in sewage

A full 97% of the country's sewage system infrastructure is 'dilapidated' and the overall neglect of the country's water and sanitation systems will cost R56 billion to repair. At the bottom of the cesspit in the findings was Mpumalanga's waste water treatment works scoring a vile 39 (more than 5 times acceptable risk levels), while the North West ranked second – at 33. Barkly East (Eastern Cape) scored 14 on the cumulative risk rating (twice the acceptable risk levels)Hidden Mortality <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-F79421FBg5eX73AoSQiVC_bCF1bQW0TJwtztr0KmQdPMo6UGfgH-7_4RJd_Ymw8y7wSRjfQB1uNpY2FJZz4fCr8nVs4ZyAwqutV2ikTk9YsD2NfglkK5At9bdvADR0uDaa2QbOTvFHc8/s1600-h/water-neglect.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440692811512202562" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-F79421FBg5eX73AoSQiVC_bCF1bQW0TJwtztr0KmQdPMo6UGfgH-7_4RJd_Ymw8y7wSRjfQB1uNpY2FJZz4fCr8nVs4ZyAwqutV2ikTk9YsD2NfglkK5At9bdvADR0uDaa2QbOTvFHc8/s400/water-neglect.jpg" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 295px; CURSOR: hand" /></a> From January to April 2008, more than 80 Barkly East children died of diarrhoeal diseases amid initial official denial, avoidance and obfuscation about a malfunctioning and decaying water reticulation and purification system. An epidemiological report confirmed that the purification process broke down in October 2007, with water tests revealing elevated levels of bacteria and Escherichia coli from then right through until March 2008. The first 15 Barkly East deaths led to a January report recommending the situation be declared an emergency with a wider probe needed. This led to the grim discovery that the baby and child death toll at nearby Sterkspruit was 4 times worse (62 child or baby deaths). Chief among the reasons identified for the current crisis were <ul><li>a lack of planning and budgeting by councillors, </li><li>the awarding of contracts to inexperienced contractors, </li><li>lack of skilled officials to operate facilities, </li><li>inability of officials to budget for and operate infrastructure, </li><li>vacant managerial and operational posts, </li><li>lack of technical ability to plan+manage capital-intensive water services projects, </li><li>mostly unqualified controllers, </li><li>lack of financial skills, </li><li>poor money management.</li></ul>Source: - SAMJ: South African Medical Journal vol.99 no.8 Cape Town Aug. 2009 Only 3% of SA’s sewage works are operational The best and the worst never happens in South Africa, Jan Smuts once remarked. And how right the old man was, when you consider the mind-numbing banality that passes as news of national importance these days. Amazingly, for a country facing the impossible task of bridging the biggest wealth gap in the world, the ongoing personal foibles of its president (which, to be honest, I truly couldn’t care about, as long as he gets the job done), continually hog the headlines, while the shortfall is made up of the rude outbursts of a township tsotsi who has twigged on to the bright idea that nationalising the mines would, after all, be the quickest way of getting really rich. Meanwhile, the startling revelation that only 3% of the country’s sewage works are operational, makes it only onto page 10 of an Afrikaans daily newspaper, while the English press never get around to actually covering it. In the North West, as exasperated farmers in Swartruggens and Sannieshof can attest to, there are apparently no fully functional sewage works. Not a single one. In the Free State, 99% don’t work. In a country as critically water stressed as South Africa, this should amount to nothing less than a national crisis. There should be a flurry of ministerial activity, as departmental heads roll, and anxious engineers are shuttled to and fro across the country, as they frantically try to stem the rising tide of preventable pollution. Instead, the department of water affairs’ official response is that they have, indeed, commissioned a report on the state of sewage works, but are still putting the finishing touches to it. Meanwhile, livestock carcasses, infected with tapeworm, are turned away at abattoirs after animals drink water with faecal counts way off the charts, polluted water kills hundreds of babies in small-town municipalities, and irrigation farmers wait nervously for their export markets to slam unceremoniously shut. The bottom line is that no one of consequence seems to be particularly interested in the art of moving turds from point A to point B in such a way that they don’t end up where they don’t belong, like in a river. An essential engineering pursuit first perfected by the Romans thousands of years ago, but not deemed important here in South Africa, as we pursue some very dubious other priorities. Like replacing the some 7 374 police firearms that have gone missing over the past three years. Arms that almost certainly all end up in the hands of criminals, who definitely don’t take them out to the shooting range. Instead, they end up being thrust into your face as your house gets ransacked. After all, have you ever heard of burglars using hunting rifles? So amazingly, a fair whack of violent crime could simply be avoided if police would just hang on to their weapons. The official response? The minister of police, without the slightest hint of irony, announces that he would like, eventually, to see no-one in the country armed, except the police! Nothing is ever said about how this haemorrhaging of police weapons will be stopped, or what action will be taken against police officers who lose their weapons. Instead, private citizens, punch-drunk by the criminal onslaught, are threatened with lengthy jail sentences if the new firearm legislation isn’t followed to the letter. One can only still hope that Smut’s prediction will hold. Source: - <a href="http://www.farmersweekly.co.za/">http://www.farmersweekly.co.za/</a> See also:- <a href="http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/">http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/</a>

SA up to its eyeballs in sewage

A full 97% of the country's sewage system infrastructure is 'dilapidated' and the overall neglect of the country's water and...

4:20 AM

Officials have criminal records, ministers reveal

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ8EQzOgc_D7Oh6pfY5fB6Zu3tFYZXFaPIwc9Y30Fd9fd2VRLC3cslp2kFZU4EDb8CmNZHDR-seMKDzTtFLMl73wvWVepKcG8lVuMVMqE8zUx2KNCZ4sEB72eN4_mEmvincbvY8nkPW8WX/s1600/Geoff_Doidge.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407318265478265570" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ8EQzOgc_D7Oh6pfY5fB6Zu3tFYZXFaPIwc9Y30Fd9fd2VRLC3cslp2kFZU4EDb8CmNZHDR-seMKDzTtFLMl73wvWVepKcG8lVuMVMqE8zUx2KNCZ4sEB72eN4_mEmvincbvY8nkPW8WX/s400/Geoff_Doidge.jpg" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 199px" /></a>Public Works Minister Geoff Doidge has revealed that his chief operating officer Solly Malebye - who he wants suspended for an unrelated matter - has a criminal record. The latest revelation about Malebye's criminal record emerged in a parliamentary reply from Doidge. DA MP James Masango had asked the minister if his department had policy guidelines for the appointment of people with a criminal record, and if any current staff members had criminal records. Doidge replied that the department had no such guidelines, also revealing that two employees - a "regional manager and the chief operating officer" - had criminal records. Doidge and Malebye have been embroiled in a bitter fight which saw the minister remove Malebye two weeks ago as the acting director-general for the department. This was after Malebye defied an instruction from Doidge to award a R45 million contract to law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr without putting it out to tender. Malebye argued that it was not the responsibility of the minister to award tenders and that it was against Treasury regulations. Doidge wants Malebye suspended for a dispute over a contract that happened 18 months ago - despite appointing him as acting director-general in April this year. When contacted for comment, Malebye refused to answer the question directly and referred questions to acting director-general Sam Vukela. Vukela was not available for comment, but departmental spokesman Koketso Sachane confirmed that the minister was referring to Malebye as "the chief operating officer with a criminal record". But he could not readily indicate what transgression had been committed by Malebye.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4bM12JUIWiFhkjIg3qfaCQWnVYUfV4rdEPSB7RnAh-u7-9-e3RqnhdLzCfrN1t0Hxsr26U7Lt4WGbLP8Y_btNPXcUXHiPAlA7SuSS-uJBGDX6KkqWFmcsY8k2UMFe50b3dBsAcqv10t_B/s1600/Naledi-Pandor.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407318560739072546" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4bM12JUIWiFhkjIg3qfaCQWnVYUfV4rdEPSB7RnAh-u7-9-e3RqnhdLzCfrN1t0Hxsr26U7Lt4WGbLP8Y_btNPXcUXHiPAlA7SuSS-uJBGDX6KkqWFmcsY8k2UMFe50b3dBsAcqv10t_B/s400/Naledi-Pandor.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" /></a> A month ago, Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor also revealed that 12 members of her staff - ranging from senior managers to skilled employees - have criminal records. Pandor also admitted that she did not have a policy on the issue. <a href="http://www.star.co.za/" target="_blank">The Saturday Star</a> 21/11/09

Officials have criminal records, ministers reveal

Public Works Minister Geoff Doidge has revealed that his chief operating officer Solly Malebye - who he wants suspended for an unrelated mat...

7:00 AM

Suspended officials costing taxpayer R1 million a month

SALARIES paid to suspended Department of Correctional Services officials are costing taxpayers R1 million a month. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh7MESSh3KGxY1kC8qUe2VzaJKS-TZV91_aldHTaHm8Qeyjj5pLq1BYocnoYYDJFmk1XiESCzM8U6ENt2mbhdp-dASsj5XZjODkY81HW7OKzI92CrYA8c36oS-wniVl0mgdmY1UDzseAw/s1600-h/corruption-theft.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403721800669347154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh7MESSh3KGxY1kC8qUe2VzaJKS-TZV91_aldHTaHm8Qeyjj5pLq1BYocnoYYDJFmk1XiESCzM8U6ENt2mbhdp-dASsj5XZjODkY81HW7OKzI92CrYA8c36oS-wniVl0mgdmY1UDzseAw/s320/corruption-theft.jpg" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 271px" /></a>Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has told MPs there were 117 officials suspended on full pay - and that some had been on suspension for more than two years. The department's suspended boss, Xoliswa Sibeko, will face a disciplinary hearing at the end of the month, Mapisa-Nqakula told the National Assembly's correctional services committee. But the minister warned of a "long battle" with Sibeko's lawyers, who are defending her against allegations that she rented a luxury home for R35 000 a month while an official residence was available. MPs told the minister and her deputy, Hlengiwe Mkhize, they were concerned that so much was being spent on the salaries of officials who remained on suspension for extended periods. Mapisa-Nqakula said the number had gone down from 142 suspended employees in April to 117 in September. However, in KwaZulu-Natal alone, nine officials had been suspended on full pay for more than two years, Mapisa-Nqakula said. The minister also revealed that there were eight cases that had not been finalised over a period of between a year and two years, while seven disciplinary hearings had not been concluded in a period of between seven and 12 months. The minister said officials found guilty usually appealed, and this caused delays. The department's chief deputy commissioner for corporate services, Alfred Tsetsane, said the responsibility for disciplinary hearings lay with regional commissioners. He said the department was in the process of aligning units in the department so that head office would be able to deal with matters from provinces. "Some of the cases are related to corruption, and some of them have a criminal element. Sometimes you get legal representatives delaying processes, and the unions are not available during the hearings. "Where you get the gaps is mainly in the regions," Tsetsane said. But ANC MP Nozibonelo Phaliso would have none of this, describing Tsetsane's explanation as "a technical answer". "We want to urge you to look at capacity in your legal unit. There's no progress," said Phaliso. She said it was clear the department did not have the capacity to expedite the cases. Nomakhaya Mdaka (ANC) said the duration of the suspensions was disconcerting in view of the amount paid in salaries to suspended officials. Committee chairman Vincent Smith (ANC) said it was evident that the department was flouting its own policy on disciplinary hearings. Sibeko's hearing would start on November 30 and last two days, Mapisa-Nqakula said. <a href="http://www.star.co.za/" target="_blank">The Star</a> 12/11/09

Suspended officials costing taxpayer R1 million a month

SALARIES paid to suspended Department of Correctional Services officials are costing taxpayers R1 million a month. Correctional Services Min...

2:26 AM

South Africa P.I.G.

The fate of the nation

SA up to its eyeballs in sewage

Officials have criminal records, ministers reveal

Suspended officials costing taxpayer R1 million a month

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