Regeringsoorname, die ate�stiese manier

Deelnemers op ? Australiese webblad vir ate�ste het die afgelope week of wat behoorlik gejuig oor die nuus dat Julia Gillard nie net Australi� se eerste vroulike eerste minister is nie, maar ook die land se eerste ate�stiese eerste minister.
Gillard se woordvoerder het ? vraag oor die nuwe eerste minister se geloofsoortuigings geantwoord deur Gillard […] http://bit.ly/at8yoQ

NUM to go on strike next week

The National Union of Mineworkers notified Eskom on Wednesday of its intention to go on strike next week over wages.

Num rejected the utilitys 8.5% salary increase and R1000 housing subsidy.

Num, Numsa and Solidarity were demanding a nine percent wage hike and a R2500 housing allowance.

Num was the only union that rejected Eskoms offer and opted for industrial action.

The unions Lesiba Seshoka said, We are preparing and finalising the logistics which include the submission of notices to Eskom, as well as application of route and everything, so we hope that by Friday everything will be ready for next week.�

Meanwhile, Solidaritys Dirk Hermann said they have also rejected Eskoms offer but they were willing to negotiate.

�At this stage, we have decided to go for the negotiating route. Thats why we will go for the route of the revision of the revised offer and we have given Eskom until Monday,� he said.

http://bit.ly/9sdYtc

Small and medium business dont feel World Cup gees

Card machine distributor Sureswipe said on Wednesday smaller and medium businesses have not benefited from the tourist boom during the World Cup.

Sureswipe monitors card spending at smaller South African businesses. They said credit and debit card spending per transaction this June is lower than the same month last year and is significantly down from April this year.

Sureswipe MD Paul Kent said South Africans may be spending their money at stadiums and on tickets, rather than at local retailers.

�At independent stores, what weve seen from April to June is a fall in numbers and spending at those particular merchants. What is probably happening is that a lot of the foreign tourists coming into the country are spending more at stores situated at high-end shopping malls,� he said.

Edited by Deshnee Subramany

http://bit.ly/df0jqc

Jabulani ball still under fire from coaches and players

Some players and coaches slated the official 2010 FIFA World Cup ball with some even blaming it for their poor performances at the tournament.

Brazil Coach Carlos Dunga got into a verbal spat with FIFAs top brass over Jabulani before the tournament, challenging the executive to come out onto the pitch and try controlling it.

Scoring was down by 16 goals in this World Cups first round compared to the 2006 tournament in Germany.

Denmark players said the ball made some outfielders look like drunken sailors, while Spain dismissed it as rotten.

Adidas has defended the ball, saying it did not know what the fuss was about because all the qualified teams were given the ball before the tournament to test it.

http://bit.ly/coN8ni

White Poverty, and Little Sympathy, in South Africa

Poverty, and Little Sympathy, in South Africa

By Kerri MacDonald, New York Times
June 25, 2010, 6:00 pm

A woman pushes a cart with a monthly supply of food aid donated to residents of a squatter camp for poor white South Africans at Coronation Park in Krugersdorp. A shift in racial hiring practices and the recent global economic crisis means many white South Africans have fallen on hard times. Researchers now estimate some 450,000 whites, of a total white population of 4.5 million, live below the poverty line and 100,000 are struggling just to survive in places such Coronation Park, a former caravan camp currently home to more than 400 white squatters. Photo: Finbarr OReilly, REUTERS [Vancouver Sun]

If there was one thing Finbarr OReilly sought to emphasize when he began reporting on white poverty in South Africa, it was that color shouldnt have a voice in the conversation.

�It doesnt really matter what color it is,� said Mr. OReilly, a 39-year-old Canadian photographer for Reuters whose touching 2005 photo of a Niger mother and child was named World Press Photo of the Year. �Its an issue that really is quite urgent right now in South Africa.�

The story has rarely been told. But it has been on his radar since a 1994 backpacking trip through Africa, when he noticed a number of poor white South Africans begging for change at traffic lights.

�I started asking around and saying, Whats going on here?� Mr. OReilly said over the phone from Dakar, Senegal, where hes based. �Its not a new phenomenon, but the numbers seem to be more apparent than they were in the past.�

Many people react with surprise when they hear the numbers associated with the poor white population. Mr. OReilly said there are nearly half a million white South Africans living below the poverty line, and at least 80 squatter settlements near the capital city, Pretoria.

�The common perception is that white South Africans enjoy lives of privilege and relative wealth,� Mr. OReilly said. He spent a week in March photographing the mostly-Afrikaner population in Coronation Park, a squatter community of about 400 in Krugersdorp, northwest of Johannesburg.

On the surface, Coronation Park is quaint, with the aura of a verdant holiday resort. On weekends, wealthy Afrikaners picnic there. But a closer look, like the one evoked through Mr. OReillys reportage, reveals scattered garbage, stray animals and children in bare feet. Small generators and open fires stand in for electricity. Alcoholism and violence abound.

Mr. OReillys goal is to refute the kinds of stereotypes typically associated with African imagery; to show not only another side of poverty, but the resilience of those who live it.

The residents of Coronation Park were at first skeptical when Mr. OReilly approached them. In the past, he said, the local press had depicted them very negatively.

Poor white South Africans blame reverse discrimination

�I was less interested in what they were saying than why they were saying it,� Mr. OReilly said. �All of it was aimed at not coming into a place like that with any preconceived judgment, and to try and portray the people for how they are in a dignified way.�

He spent a week in the community and ultimately gained the residents trust. Inside their homes � many of which are one-room shanties � Mr. OReilly found poignant vestiges of formerly-middle-class lives: religious icons, wall hangings, wooden spoons and Afrikaner lace doilies.

�It was little bits and pieces of former lives that no longer were,� he said. �All these individual items added up to trying to recreate in this new environment the comfortable existence that they would have had before.�

The series from Coronation Park is being shown in an Italian exhibition called �After A.� In his wider look at poverty among white South Africans, Mr. OReilly said, it is just the beginning.

� � � � [New York Times]

Hardship deepens for South Africas Poor Whites

Mar 26, 2010 09:18 EDT
Reuters

Children walk through a squatter camp for poor white South Africans at Coronation Park in Krugersdorp, March 6, 2010. REUTERS/Finbarr OReilly

Sitting in a deck chair at a white South African squatter camp, Ann le Roux, 60, holds a yellowing photo from her daughters wedding day.

Taken not long after Nelson Mandela became the countrys first black president in 1994, it shows Le Roux standing with her Afrikaans husband and their daughter outside their home in Melville, an upmarket Johannesburg neighborhood.

Sixteen years later, she lives in a caravan and a tent shared with seven other people, including her daughter and four grandchildren, at a squatter camp for poor white South Africans.

She is one of a growing number of whites living below the poverty line in South Africa who blame affirmative action and the ANC-led elected government for their plight.

Le Roux had to sell her house after her husband died and she lost her job as a secretary at the city planning council � where she had worked for 26 years � after she took time off work to recover from the loss of her husband.

�They wouldnt take me back because of the political situation,� she says, looking down at the fading photo.

�Our color here is not the right color now in South Africa,� Le Roux says, echoing the complaint of many impoverished whites, mostly Afrikaners who are descendants of early Dutch and French settlers.

While most white South Africans still enjoy lives of privilege and relative wealth, the number of poor whites has risen steadily over the past 15 years. White unemployment nearly doubled between 1995 and 2005, according to the countrys Institute for Security Studies.

Music by 20-year-old Ewald Spence, recorded at Coronation Park.

HARD TIMES

Banned Advert by SABC 1 in South Africa where whites have reversed roles with blacks. Set in Soweto South Africa. Music by: Mapaputsi-kas lam ayoooba.

Seeking to reverse decades of racial inequality, the ruling ANC government introduced affirmative action laws that promote employment for blacks and aim to give black South Africans a bigger slice of the economy. This shift in racial hiring practices coupled with the fallout from the global financial crisis means many poor white South Africans have fallen on hard times.

At least 450,000 white South Africans, 10 percent of the total white population, live below the poverty line and 100,000 are struggling just to survive, according to civil organisations and largely white trade union Solidarity. South Africas population is about 50 million.

Many poor whites have ended up in places like Coronation Park, in Krugersdorp west of Johannesburg, a leafy former caravan site beside a water reservoir and a public picnic park frequented by middle-class families at weekends.

Ringed by yellow-brown hills of earth dug up by generations of gold miners, the park was used by the British as a concentration camp for Afrikaners during the Anglo-Boer war at the start of the 20th century. Now its home to some 400 white squatters living in cramped tents and caravans and sharing a single ablution block. Cats and dogs roam noisily through the camp, dodging heaps of rubbish, piles of scrap metal and abandoned car parts.

Water is heated and food cooked on open camp fires. The local council cut electricity to the camp after failing to evict the white squatters. The council wanted to develop the area into a wide screen viewing area for soccer matches ahead of the soccer World Cup, which South Africa hosts in June and July.

Some residents, including three black South Africans, have lived there for years. Others arrived in recent weeks.

�If youre out of work and you havent got money, where must you go to? No one wants to help you � this is the only place to go to,� says Dennis Boshoff, 38.

ZUMA SHOCKED

South African President Jacob Zuma visited a white squatter camp near the capital Pretoria last year ahead of his election, saying he was �shocked and surprised�.

�The vast number in black poverty does not mean we must ignore white poverty, which is becoming an embarrassment to talk about,� Zuma said at the time.

White poverty in South Africa is a politically sensitive subject that gets little attention, but it is not new.

Under apartheid, introduced in 1948, whites enjoyed vast protection and sheltered employment. The weakest and least educated whites were protected by the civil service and state-owned industries operating as job-creation schemes, guaranteeing even the poorest whites a home and livelihood.

But with that economic safety net now gone, South Africas unskilled whites find themselves on the wrong side of history, gaining little sympathy from those who perceive them as having profited unfairly during the brutal apartheid years.

Trade union Solidarity says there are around 430,000 whites who live in squatter camps. Around the capital Pretoria alone there are 80 squatter settlements. There are over 2,000 much larger black squatter camps across South Africa.

Formerly comfortable Afrikaners recently forced to live on the fringes of society see themselves as victims of �reverse-apartheid� that they say puts them at an even greater disadvantage than the millions of poor black South Africans.

�Blacks get more than whites at the moment. Theyre being pulled forward against us. Thats why all of us are here. Its very unfair because they told us it was going to be equal, but its not equal,� said Boshoff.

This feeling of victimisation and abandonment by the state has forged at the camp a collective sense of fatalism, isolation and firm reliance on their Calvinist religion. Each of the camps ramshackle huts and tents is adorned with religious paraphernalia and an Afrikaans language bible.

Many poor white communities also struggle with alcoholism, violence and abuse but at Coronation Park, social problems have declined. �We kicked a lot of the worst ones out and the fighting and violence has gone down,� said Hugo Van Niekerk, who has managed the camp over the past few years.

Van Niekerk, who solicits donations and helps community members find odd jobs, successfully fought an eviction order last year from the local municipality but he expects little help from the council or government on housing.

�We wont get houses from this government. If we were black maybe yes, but we are white.�

� � � � [Reuters]
� � [Malaysian Star: Tough times for white South African squatters]
� � [Vancouver Sun: Tough times for white South African squatters]

Thousands of Afrikaners fall into Poverty

2010-06-25 14:20
News 24

Family at Lunch, 1962; David Goldblatt [Some Afrikaners Photographed, 1975: Gallery]

Gauteng — The well known demographer Prof. Flip Smit estimates that there are 600 000 Afrikaners who have already fallen into poverty.

Thousands of poor all over South Africa have received help from Solidarity Helping Hands Winter Hope Project.

According to a report recently released by the American Research Corporation Gallup, 56% of South Africans reported in a survey that during 2008 did not always have enough money to buy food for themselves or their families.

In 2009 55% again confirmed the same statistic. The results are based upon 1 000 interviews which were conducted face to face with South Africans.

The past two months Helping Hands 91 braches delivered 85 tons of food and other living requirement to poor people countrywide. Since the beginning of the year the organisation has provided poor people with 217 tons of food.

Helping Hand participated in the project with numerous churches and welfare organisations. It is the tenth year that the project has been working to relieve the needs of poor people during the winter months.

At the beginning of the project on 1 June, farmers from Hoopstad in the Free State opened their hearts and donated more than a ton of meat, 30 tons of mieliemeal and vegetables to poor people in the Pretoria area. More than 4 500 poor whites from 45 white informal squatter camps received benefits from the donation.

In the Western Cape Winter Hope also handed out hundreds of jerseys, gloves, blankets and scarves in cities such as George, Bothasig, Mosselbay, Paarl, and Ceres. Helping Hand also handed over a tumble dryer, cash and a baby bed to a Security Home in Capetown, as part of the Winter Hope project.

In the EAstern Cape dozens of blankets, bedding and other items were delivered in Despatch, East London and Port Elizabeth.

In the past three months Helping Hand has delivered food packets worth R 131 000 to former mineworkers of the Grootvlei mine, in Springs. Approxinately 4 000 mineworkers from the Grootvlei and Orkney mines are unemployed as a result of the Aurora managements decision to let them go.

�Allot of these people would not have had any food during the coldest time of the winter, and if it wasnt for Helping Hands generosity for these poor people,� said Dr. Danie Langner, executive director of Helping Hand. According to him the winter is however not yet over and many poor people need urgent help.

�It has become time for Afrikaners to take responsibility for the growing number of poor Afrikaaners� said Dr. Langner.

� � � � [News 24]

White poverty in South Africa with an emphasis on the Tshwane Metropolitan Area

Report compiled by Solidarity Helping Hand for Mr. Jacob Zuma July 2008

July 2008
Solidarity Helping Hand Excerpts

Afriforums Helping Hand clip about the silence of white poverty in South Africa

Speaking about white poverty in South Africa has become politically incorrect. It is probably the only kind of poverty in the world that is not talked about. Three years ago Prof. Lawrence Schlemmer estimated that almost 10% of white South Africans had become too poor to live in traditionally white areas. This is a �silent� problem, with very little said about it. No reliable quantitative data has been compiled in this regard, which
hides the extent of the problem. Government has up to the present almost entirely
ignored the increase of poverty among white people.

The total number of employed white persons according to the October 2001 census is
1 863 607. Of these, 237 502 or 13% earn less than R1 600 per month. This excludes
approximately 430 000 unemployed persons. According to the 2001 Census, the total
annual income of 19% of white households is R38 400 or less. Approximately 87,4% of
white households consist of 1 to 4 members, which mean that these households need at
least R15 480 per year to avoid absolute poverty. Census 2001 found that around 10%
of whites fall in the category that earn this amount or less. Research conducted by the South African Institute of Race Relations showed that white unemployment increased by 74% between 1998 and 2002, while the average for all population groups was 39%.

These are conservative estimates based on the most recent figures those of 7 years
ago. The problem has snowballed since then, although no reliable statistics are
available.

Solidaritys De Wet Potgieter undertook a qualitative study to try and determine the
extent and characteristics of the problem of white poverty. He visited poor communities in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the Free State and the Eastern Cape. In virtually every community the picture was bleak. Poor white people are caught up in a spiral of misery and the little money they might get from meagre pensions or government grants barely keep them from destitution. Poor white children in some areas are lured into a life of prostitution and drug-dealing by Nigerian criminals. People that were laid off by government and private employers after 1994 are being told that they are �too white� according to affirmative action to apply for jobs anywhere else.

While it is imperative to help these people to improve their circumstances, one needs to create some hope for these people. This could be done by instilling the principle of job creation at every shelter and poor community. At the Kosmos Shelter on the old Bela-Bela road, this has been accomplished to some extent. Even though the people there are poor, they all have jobs to earn money with which to improve their lives. Many more people would be able to do this if the immense pressure of simply trying to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs every day could be lifted from their shoulders.

****

3. WHITE POVERTY IN THE TSHWANE METRO

3.1 INTRODUCTION

Solidaritys research shows that the problem of �new� white poverty is the worst in the Tshwane Metro. Although it is a common trend across South Africa, the biggest concentration of poor white people is in Pretoria. This can be mainly ascribed to the
extensive loss in job opportunities in the western industrial area of Pretoria. Large-scale lay-offs at companies like Iscor over the past decade have resulted in thousands of jobs being lost.

The western part of Pretoria has for decades been an area where blue-collar workers
resided and worked. With the extensive loss of job opportunities in this area thousands of families lost their income.

3.2 THE INCREASE IN SHELTERS IN AND AROUND PRETORIA

The phenomenon of white shelters in and around Pretoria has existed for many years.
Since 2004, there has, however, been a sharp increase in the number of these shelters.

Initially, this was caused by affirmative action. People received severance packages,
which were used up very quickly and with which people could not buy houses. Some of
the people in the shelters admit that they had used these severance packages
injudiciously and were gradually left with nothing. These people eventually landed in
shelters.

The second increase in shelters started in 2007 and is mainly the result of the poor
social economic situation that has developed in South Africa. These shelters are now
increasing daily. People can no longer afford to pay school fees for their children, are laid off because of poor profit margins of business enterprises, while jobs are virtually unobtainable. Business enterprises that can no longer expand because of high input costs and leave many people unemployed. Small businesses that were starting to grow are increasingly shutting down or becoming bankrupt, leaving whole families on the street are without an income.

****

Apart from the stories of poor white communities, the details of the lives of individuals also make for grim reading:

• Charmaine Booysen, whose husband committed suicide nine years ago, has to
  care for her four children with the R900 social grant she receives per month. The
  rent for the room they all share is R700 per month.

• Lorraine Strydom of Daspoort is 58 years old and has to share a bed with two of
  her grandchildren, whose school fees she also pays out of what she has left of
  her R900 grant after paying the rent. She is totally dependent on the kindness of
  welfare organisations.

• Hennie Schoeman 64 of Claremont used to be a bus driver for the South
  African Railways, but was laid off because of affirmative action after years of
  loyal service. He and his wife and son 29 now have to live in an old caravan
  and beg to make a living. Hennie is slowly succumbing to asthma they cannot
  afford medicine.

• Koos Mitton has never known a life of luxury. His parents split up when he was
  small and his mother had to raise her five children on her own. At times they lived
  on mouldy bread and rotten meat from garbage cans. Today he is still poor and
  suffering. This man, like so many others in Tshwane, has always been one of the
  disadvantaged both before and after 1994.

These are just some examples of the extent of white poverty in the greater Tshwane
area alone. One social worker Solidarity talked to, told of a little boy who asked her what a rich person was.

� � � � [Excerpt: White poverty in South Africa with an emphasis on the Tshwane Metropolitan Area Report compiled by Solidarity Helping Hand for Mr. Jacob Zuma, July 2008 PDF]

[John Edwin Mason: Rediscovering Poor Whites in South Africa: Deja Vu All Over Again]

http://bit.ly/bKBLyo

Street labour witnesses to be questioned

The Gauteng Health Department said on Wednesday it would question the witnesses involved in an incident at the East Bank Clinic in Alexandra, in which a woman was forced to give birth on the street after she was allegedly refused medical help.

22-year-old Simbarashe Tembanis baby died after she went into labour outside the clinic on a street corner.

A bystander then took her to the nearby Alexandra Health Centre where she was treated for blood loss.

Witnesses, including the babys father, said they were not interviewed.

Speaking on Redi Direkos show, the departments Vusi Masebuko tried to explain why they had released a statement on what had happened, without questioning the witnesses.

He said that he had never met any of the witnesses and anyone involved in the story would have a different version.

http://bit.ly/9EYdps

Airport strike stopped,more protests promised

Striking workers at the OR Tambo International Airport dispersed after holding a protest on Wednesday.

Employees affiliated to the South African Aviation Workers Union downed tools over World Cup bonuses and salary issues.

Police closely monitored the crowd and threatened to arrest them should picketing continue near the main terminal building.

The unions Peter Mlaba said strike action would continue in the coming days unless their demands are met.

�We are willing to reconsider if ACSA comes to the party as a landlord or the government because remember that the government actually own 74% of shareholding,� he said.

http://bit.ly/aaMLvl

2010 06 30 AfriForum s� misdadiger moet nie vir parool oorweeg word nie

NB Pas nadat hierdie verklaring uitgereik is, is ons verwittig dat Mokone se aansoek om parool afgekeur is en dat hy eers weer in 2011 mag aansoek doen.
AfriForum het vandag die Paroolraad by die gevangenis op Polokwane versoek om nie Douglas Mokone vir parool aan te beveel nie. Mokone dien tans ? 15-jaar vonnis […] http://bit.ly/aimIOm

Fans complain about duplicate WC tickets

Some spectators who attended Tuesday nights World Cup game at Cape Town stadium have complained there were scores of duplicate match tickets.

Almost 64 000 fans and supporters gathered at the venue to watch Portugal take on Spain.

Some spent R1400 on category one seats only to find someone else with the same ticket in the seat.

Lansdown resident Tim Wrenn told Eyewitness News he was astounded.

�As I got to my seat already there was somebody in my place. I just said excuse me do you have the right ticket? So we looked at both tickets – same seatings, an exact replica a duplication.�

Wrenn said he wasnt the only one who experienced the problem.

�Just below the same row 19, M1 and 2 were in trouble and also they had duplicates, so there was at least three groups put out last night with regards to duplication.�

FIFA has refused to comment, saying it has to first verify the claims.

Edited by Aletta Gardner
http://bit.ly/9pxAvG

More arrests expected after Nyanga mob death

Police in Cape Town on Wednesday said they expect to make more arrests in connection with a mob killing in Nyanga.

Thobela Teki was bludgeoned to death at the weekend after being accused of breaking into a house.

Tekis attackers also set fire to his shack.

Fourteen people were in police custody on Wednesday.

The polices Elliot Sinyangana said more arrests were likely, but the motive for the attack on the 24-year-old was still unclear.

�We dont know why they decided to assault that person. But all that we do know is that none of those people came forward to report a house break-in.�

Edited by Aletta Gardner http://bit.ly/c9tC49