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AM Live on SAfm, 23 Jan A 14-year-old boy paralyzed after assault by school principal

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A 14-year-old boy from Mhluzi township in Middelburg in Mpumalanga is now paralyzed after allegedly being assaulted by his school principal for stealing R150. 

 

Siphamandla Choma can't walk or do anything for himself as he is now wheelchair bound. 

 

The Grade 4 learner has not been at school since the incident happened last year. 

 

He told SABC News that Manyano Primary School principal allegedly assaulted him and his friend because he believed they had stolen the money which belonged to a teacher at the school. 

 

Our reporter Abongile Dumako has the details while Mpumalanga department of Education, Jasper Zwane tell us more about why the principal is still in school going about his daily business.

 

Source: SAfm

Mail & Guardian

Arts and Culture

​Thandi Klaasen: Defying tragedy to do it her way

Percy Mabandu 20 Jan 2017 00:00

Back in the day: Thandi Klaasen in 1955 ‘doing a little modelling for Drum’. Photo: Drum photographer © Baileys Archives

As hi-fi sets across the country’s townships began issuing their ritual jazz doses on Sunday, news came fluttering in that the song stylist Thandi Klaasen of Sophiatown fame was gone. The 86-year-old had succumbed to pancreatic cancer and a series of strokes. She had been bedridden and without her voice at an Ekurhuleni hospital for months.

As the government made its official announcement, her daughter, Lorraine Klaasen, had also taken to Facebook to confirm the dreaded news: “Today is the day my Mom left us. She passed away this morning peacefully.”

As news cameras and well-wishers descended on their Alberton home, Lorraine would sum up her mother’s life with a simple but loaded phrase: “She lived a life of tragedies. To be able to die peacefully, she did everything her way.”

Tragedy entered the story of Klaasen’s life very early. Being born in 1931, into a South Africa making its transition from colonialism to apartheid, meant that she was going to deal with an existence of struggle.

Born in Sophiatown, to a father who scratched out a living as a shoemaker and a mother who was a domestic worker, launched the singer into the world as a girl of the lower working class who was black in a racist country.

She discovered her capacity and love of singing in her family church as a young girl. It’s a talent that was made all the more promising by the fact of her beauty and the possibilities provided by the unfolding cultural renaissance taking shape in Sophiatown at the time. The scene was alive.
The Drum writers were articulating a literary equivalent to the music. Stars such as Louisa Emmanuel, Thoko Thomo and her group the Lo Six, as well as “blues queen” Emily Kwenane, were paving the way for young black singers like Klaasen.

Sis Peggy’s shebeen and Back of the Moon, with their tragicomic mix of binge drinkers and police raids, provided perennial drinking holes. This is the era of the Harlem Swingers, the Manhattan Brothers and similar male-led bands.

Klaasen was unimpressed with the almost exclusive dominance enjoyed by these “boy bands”. In a kind of feminist intervention, she formed all-female vocal quartet the Quad Sisters. They were a hit. In 1952 their song Carolina Wam was all the rage. It confirmed her as a legitimate star. In fact, Klaasen’s group paved the way for the young Miriam Makeba and her girl group, the Skylarks.

Klaasen’s rising star saw her work with Alfred Herbert’s African Jazz and Variety on a number of shows. In 1961 she would form part of the London cast of King Kong, the iconic musical theatre production that was a lifeline to many pioneers of South African music.

Devised by Todd Matshikiza and Harry Bloom, the production launched many of the era’s stars as international performers, including Makeba and Dolly Rathebe.

In 1977, tragedy struck. The pretty star was attacked with acid. The popular explanation was that “a rival hired thugs to assault the singer”. The assault put her in hospital for about a year and gave her the lifelong scars on her face.

It was a violent incident that could have ended her public life as an entertainer. It didn’t. Klaasen’s resilient spirit carried her through. She recovered and kept on singing.

This kind of violence would have been part of her life from the start. To be a singer in Sophiatown, for instance, meant that, more often than not, the young Klaasen would perform for gangs and thugs as her primary patrons at shebeens, clubs and halls.

It’s a point that was often made by Klaasen’s late friend, Makeba. She spoke of how the gang leaders often wanted to claim the prettiest girl in the house for themselves. As performing stars, they had to be good-looking and were hence on the gangsters’ radar. So, as young beauties, they had to live with the violence of unwanted male attention, advances that they turned down at the risk of physical harm.

The thug-infested culture is central to understanding Klaasen’s mystique. The fast talking, the performative machismo and the no-nonsense tough-girl bravado are all Sophiatown pantsula grammar. They informed even her styling and treatment of songs. The staccato rolled off her tongue like the rhythm of a tsotsi’s knife stab. She even used the pinkie-finger gesture for emphasis.

The importance of Sophiatown to Klaasen’s artistic and personal identity is legendary. The then government’s decision to pass the Natives Resettlement Act of 1954, which rezoned Sophiatown as a whites-only area, gave rise to a pain she testified to every time she went on stage. She shared the nostalgia with former president Nelson Mandela, who declared her his favourite singer. Klaasen was often called on to perform at his parties.

Her song Sophiatown is perhaps the greatest musical ode to that era and place. The earlier versions of the song find Klaasen in fine form. The velvet-smooth contralto, the easy swing and the finger-snapping syncopation are carried by the real melancholy of the song. The story of broken lives and homes snuffed out by a brutal state is sung with acute sensitivity.

But Klaasen also had a deep capacity for humour, which she deployed with impish licence in her music. In a recent interview, lifelong friend Abigail Kubeka waxed lyrical about Klaasen’s devil-may-care approach to performance. “Thandie would at times not even bother to learn the words to a song. She would just scat and invent her own lyrics.”

But part of the tragedy of Klaasen’s life is that she went on singing even past her capacity to do so. There’s a video clip of her singing at an African Musicians Against HIV/Aids event in Botshabelo, Bloemfontein. She did an a cappella take on My Way, the pop song made popular and jazzed up by Frank Sinatra.

Already in her 80s, Klaasen struggles to carry the song as she would have in her glorious youth. The notes begin with promising intensity and a defiant will to win; however, as her voice lilts with the melody, age and a worn body fail her.

It’s a scene that has played out many times before in the lives of greats in the winter of their years, like Miles Davis’s flopping trumpet lines in his late 80s or latter-day Billie Holiday as she succumbed to drug use and years of hard living.

Klaasen stands with a mic in hand in a visibly hot and humid tent in dusty Botshabelo. Her grey wig blankets a face that is resisting wrinkles thanks to an identity-marking scar. “I did it … and I’ll keep doing it my way,” she sings.

The famous graceful contralto is no more. Her scatting lacks the vitality of the pantsula verve that made her a name. She gasps, throws in some tsotsitaal to survive the song she sang so many times before with ease. The crowd claps in sympathetic cheer, knowing little of her inner struggle.

A few months afterwards, Klaasen would be hospitalised, suffer a stroke and then die.
The music, the memories and the accolades, like the Order of the Baobab in gold that she received in 2006, are all that remains.

IOL

Luthuli’s daughter calls for probe into his death

POLITICS / 27 November 2016, 11:41am

LUNGANI ZUNGU

Picture: BONGANI MBATHA

Durban - Albertina Luthuli, eldest daughter of Chief Albert Luthuli, Africa’s first Nobel Peace Prize laureate has called for a fresh probe of her father’s death.

Luthuli, former ANC president, died in 1967. It was documented that he died when he was struck by a train in Groutville, where he lived.

But his daughter disputes this. On the brink of tears, she, said: “The report of my father’s death is completely misleading because it’s just not factual. It says that my father was hit by a train because he could not hear. This is just not true. It makes no sense of the whole thing that he couldn’t hear the train.”

And while she admitted her father had an eye operation, Luthuli said it was not true that he could not see the train.

She said her father was “extremely” vigilant.

“Ubaba was so careful about safety that he would spend more time attending to safety to the extent that my mother would start complaining.”

She said there was evidence he could hear and see.

“Now we have had some people who have come up with all things which are untrue.”

Luthuli was speaking at the Chief Albert Luthuli Memorial Lecture on Saturday at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville campus.

She said her father died during the “darkness of apartheid” and the investigation was not fair. “The district surgeon who conducted the post-mortem was part of the system so there was no way he could go against them.”

Luthuli, who is also part of the ANC veterans who are calling for President Jacob Zuma to step down, said the family believed there was a conspiracy to get rid of her father, at the time.

“Because he had become a nuisance to the regime. It’s recorded that they tried many ways of putting him out while he was alive so that he should not have a voice in the affairs of the country, but they failed.”

Despite this, Luthuli said high-ranking individuals, including senator Robert Kennedy, were able to visit her father in Groutville.

“Now there was a powerful person and they could not stop him. As far as I’m concerned he (Luthuli) was buried alive because he was not allowed to go anywhere.”

She said there were “intense attempts” by the apartheid government to silence her father while he was alive.

“When they got the opportunity to do that, there was nothing that could stop them.”

Luthuli had previously asked local authorities to reopen investigations into the case.

A mission-educated teacher, Luthuli was one of a few tribal chiefs to be elected by his followers in 1936, parting with hereditary tradition.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960 for his efforts to overthrow apartheid, for which he was repeatedly banned in the 1950s and eventually jailed in 1960.

Among those present on Saturday were Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, Minister in the Presidency, Jeff Radebe and Wally Serote, an ANC stalwart.

Sunday Tribune

Pegg Seeks to End Business Administrative Burden

> Thandisizwe Mgudlwa

Business owners could have their work cut out, at least as far as administration requirements are concerned.

This is thanks to Pegg.

Pegg, is the personal trainer for business owners.

"Pegg will log your expenses and file your receipts for you, with no fuss at all. Pegg can tell you what you’ve spent or earned for the month and remind you instantly who owes you money."

The most remarkable thing about Pegg isn’t the financial skills and super-sharp memory, but the fact that it is a smart bot that lives on your smartphone or computer. The chat bot is the first in the accounting industry and allows you track expenses and manage finances through messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and Slack.

Anton van Heerden, Executive Vice-President, Africa & Middle East at Sage, speaking ahead of Africa’s first ever BotCon , which was held in Johannesburg on 18 November, 2016, said, “The arrival of bots like Pegg, machine learning and ever-more sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence is all about ways to make technology more approachable, fun and powerful for the entrepreneurs and business builders of today and tomorrow.”

Also revealed is that Pegg hides the complexities of accounting and lets entrepreneurs manage finances through conversation, making the process as simple as writing a text. By digitising information at the point of capture, it takes away the pain of filing receipts and expenses, eradicating the need for paper and data entry.

Van Heerden says, “Smart bots, alongside the affordability of cloud-based business applications, is one of the trends that we can expect to dramatically change how business builders work in the future. These bots are not about replacing human beings like accountants or bookkeepers, but rather about making it easier for them to get the most from technology.”

"In South Africa and across the rest of the continent, we can expect to see bots pop up in applications such as education, healthcare, customer support and personal financial management, adds Van Heerden. For example, a mathematics tutor bot could provide schoolchildren with after-hours help when they’re struggling with their homework."

A South African support network for pregnant women, MomConnect, uses Facebook’s Messenger bot to answer specific questions relating to maternal healthcare.

Kriti Sharma, Sage’s 27-year-old VP of Bots and Artificial Intelligence, and the mastermind behind Pegg comments: “Users can say ‘spent R50 on post-it notes at Game’ to enter expenses and can ask questions like ‘how much money did I make last year in October?’ or ‘who is my best customer?’. Some of the most dull, unexciting administrative functions can be the best use cases for bots.”

Van Heerden concludes: “There are more than 50 million active Facebook users in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is an exciting time for entrepreneurs and their accountants. Smart technologies are simplifying business applications and they make it possible for organisations to focus on the things that truly add value to the business.”

SA CEOs Worst Fat Cats

> Thandisizwe Mgudlwa

The rich are getting richer across the globe.

While the world's poor are getting poorer.

But in South Africa, the situation in much more severe. 

South Africa already duped as the most unequal country in the world.

News that South African CEOs topped the list of fastest earners in the world, are highly disturbing and unacceptable, to say the least.

In the latest study released by Quartz this month. It is revealed that South African CEOs not only do they top the rankings of the fastest earners globally, but they are taking just over seven hours to earn the average South African’s annual wage.

Quartz combined British think tank High Pay Center’s data, which monitors pay at the top of the income distribution.

Along this was the Bloomberg’s Global CEO Pay Index and average worker pay in several countries in order to arrive at the result.

Aamna Modin, author of the report noted, “While CEOs in South Africa make far less on average than their American counterparts, their salaries were 541 times more than the average income in their own country." 

“It took CEOs in South Africa just over seven hours to make $13,194, which is the country’s average yearly wage. Assuming Monday, Jan. 2, was a public holiday and they started work at 7:30am on Tuesday, Jan. 3, CEOs in South Africa clocked in the annual average wage by 3pm that day”.

SA was also the only African country to make the list with the rest of the top 5 comprised of economic heavyweights including the UK, Canada, Switzerland and the USA.

WEF's Global Shapers Platform for Youth to Lead

> Thandisizwe Mgudlwa

Zamantungwa Khumalo, a Global Shaper from Tshwane, South Africa, will form part of the 26 Social Entrepreneurs, 50 Global Shapers and more than 100 Young Global Leaders who will participate in the Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters.

Khumalo submitted the winning essay in the 2016 Global Shaper essay competition on this year’s theme Responsive and Responsible Leadership.

The 47th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum will take place on 17-20 January 2017 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.

According to the World Economic Forum(WEF), Global Shapers, is a community of young people under the age of 30.

"Global Shapers will give a voice to 50% of the world’s population that is still under-represented in global affairs, while Social Entrepreneurs and Young Global Leaders highlight the need for social innovation to correct the shortcomings of capitalism." 

The World Economic Forum is bringing more 200 millennials, social entrepreneurs and young leaders under the age of 40 to the Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters to share views on the meeting theme Responsive and Responsible Leadership. 

These are members of three foundations operating under the World Economic Forum’s umbrella: the Young Global Leaders, the Global Shapers and the Schwab Foundations for Social Entrepreneurship. 

 

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship has invited 26 leading social entrepreneurs to Davos-Klosters to highlight the need to better service and support communities that are on the margin of society. Social entrepreneurs are advancing new models of sustainable social innovation. With capitalism in its current form under scrutiny, social entrepreneurs’ use of cutting-edge market analysis and management to achieve social good can provide a much-needed impulse for long-term thinking and business practices.

 

The community will be represented, for example, by Yasmina Filali, whose Fondation Orient- Occident provides job training and social support to refugees in Morocco or Jordan Kassalow of Vision Spring, who has provided 2,750,000 pairs of eyeglasses to the poorest populations in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Katherine Milligan, Head of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship said, “As business and government leaders seek innovative solutions to many of the systemic issues they face, social entrepreneurs are called upon to contribute to these solutions. These entrepreneurs are role models that bring to the Annual Meeting the passion, vision, boldness and experience that are essential in a world that is undergoing a leadership crisis.” 

 

Moreover, the Global Shapers Community is a network of more than 450 city-based Hubs developed and led by young people who are exceptional in their potential, achievements and drive to make a contribution to their communities. Currently, the Global Shapers community has over 6,000 members.

 

Meanwhile, Shaping Davos, a series of sessions that feature local solutions to global issues, connects citizens in 20 cities on every continent to conversations taking place at the Annual Meeting. 

These interactions are led by Global Shapers in Abuja, Baku, Bangalore, Beirut, Belfast, Bhopal, Budapest, Chennai, Gaborone, Kyiv, London, Monterrey, Muscat, Paris, Portland, Quito, Seattle, Tunis, Vancouver and Yaroslavl, thereby enabling youth and others active in their communities to join the conversation with leaders from business, the public sector, international organizations and academia. Discussion topics cover education, unemployment, social inclusion, innovations in cities and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

 

In meet the leader sessions, Global Shapers will discuss pressing issues with heads of state or government, global business and civil society leaders.

 

In the run-up to the Annual Meeting 2017, millennials will share their expectations of the meeting through a social media campaign under the #WorldWeShape.

 Adeyemi Babington Asaye, Head of the Global Shapers Community, noted, “Young people have an essential role to play in shaping the future. Global Shapers in Davos-Klosters bring the voice of youth as well as that of the communities and cities in which they are active,”

 

The Young Global Leaders, a community of more than 800 leaders from over 100 countries, will be represented by 173 members at the Annual Meeting. This group includes human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, the mayor of Quito, Peru Mauricio Rodas and the Pakistani documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, the first artist to serve as Co-Chair of the Annual Meeting.

 

“Young Global Leaders are entrepreneurial and inspiring leaders who arrive in Davos at this pivotal moment to accelerate the impact of their organizations and YGL collaborations, and use the Forum’s platform to join their diverse talents to achieve more together than they could separately,” said John Dutton, Head of Foundations Team and Head of Young Global Leaders. 

With more than 3,000 participants from over 100 countries are to meet and take part in over 400 sessions, during the 47th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, under the theme 'Responsive and Responsible Leadership'. 

City Press

Infants die in droves due to negligence, poor healthcare facilities

Zinhle Mapumulo, City Press2015-05-24 15:00

Thousands of babies could still be alive if hospital workers had followed simple guidelines. Picture: CONRAD BORNMAN/Foto24

Many of the deaths could have been avoided had healthcare workers in public hospitals followed simple guidelines, such as monitoring the heart rate of the foetus and looking after the overall health of the mother.More than 80 000 newborn babies died ­within just two years as a result of negligence and the poor quality of healthcare in public hospitals, a report has concluded.

This shocking revelation is contained in the Saving Babies ­report, compiled by the Medical Research Council, which traced the number of live births, neonatal deaths and causes of deaths of newborn babies at South Africa’s 588 health ­facilities between January 2012 and December 2013.

Out of the 82 453 deaths recorded in the report, about 44% ­occurred at district hospitals and the ­majority of them were stillbirths.

Researchers found that unexplained stillbirths, spontaneous preterm labour – when a woman goes into ­labour before her planned delivery date – and intrapartum ­asphyxia (oxygen deprivation) were the most common causes of deaths in district hospitals and community healthcare centres.

Professor Robert ­Pattinson, co-author of the report and director of maternal and infant healthcare strategies unit at the Medical Research Council, said: “Most of the deaths due to intrapartum asphyxia could have been avoided if the quality of intrapartum care was improved.”

He explained: “Improving the quality of intrapartum care has to do with improving the knowledge and skills of healthcare providers; ensuring that facilities have the appropriate equipment and human resources; and that there is an ­efficient, reliable emergency transport system.”

A number of initiatives aimed at improving newborn infant, child and maternal healthcare at district level have been introduced by the national department of health in the past five years, including the introduction of district clinical specialist teams – obstetricians and gynaecologists, paediatricians, family physicians, anaesthetists, midwives and paediatric nurses.

The highly specialised teams that mostly began work in 2012 were tasked with reducing the maternal, infant and child death rates in all of South Africa’s 52 districts as soon as possible. However, their impact, based on the latest official statistics of newborn deaths, has not been that great.

There was no significant difference in terms of the number of babies who died during late stages of pregnancy, birth or in the first four weeks of life in 2010 to 2011 and 2012 to 2013.

The causes of death were also generally the same and, in fact, most of the deaths could have been avoided if proper prevention measures were followed.

However, department of health spokesperson Joe Maila said some efforts had been made to reduce early neonatal mortalities in South Africa.

At the district level, he said, government has implemented Essential Steps to Manage Obstetric Emergencies training.

“We have already seen a 35% reduction in early neonatal deaths. We will expand this training to all districts,” Maila said.

Pattinson agreed with Maila, adding that, at face value, it may seem like nothing has changed, but there have been some ­improvements at different levels of healthcare.

However, he stressed that a lot of work still needs to be done, not just at district level, but at academic hospitals as well. “The key aspect is to improve the quality of care – this ­applies to all levels of care,” he said.

Although only 10% of neonatal deaths occurred at tertiary and central hospitals, researchers raised concerns about the unprofessional behaviour of doctors who failed to respond to calls of duty