Innholdsfortegnelse for SW-2021-04-19 i Star

Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za Dividend retention policies among SA’s real estate investment trusts (Reits)may be undermining their equity investment case, GCR Ratings said in a credit research report on Friday. This was despite the fact that GCR believed retaining dividends was supportive of their credit profile, the credit rating agency said in a research note on Friday. By law Reits have to pay 75 percent of the distributable income as dividends, subject to directors ensuring that the Reit passes a solvency and liquidity test. Many Reits have chosen to retain dividends to bolster their balance sheets during the uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic and after many tenants were forced to close their doors through the lockdowns last year. SA Reits provided more than R3 billion of relief to tenants.…

Thabo Makwakwa and Bongani Hans TWO out of the big four banks, Absa and the First National Bank (FNB) are accused of perpetuating apartheid-era tactics in South Africa’s embattled financial services sector. Industry experts and political parties have raised concerns, after accounts owned by black people continue to be targeted and shut down with impunity. Various analysts have alleged that black-owned businesses and scores of ordinary South Africans have found themselves at the receiving end, as banks in the country perpetuate what is described as “weaponised apartheid-era tactics” through financial exclusion of black people in the banking sector. In an exclusive interview at the weekend, well-known private financial consult and investigator Emerald Van Zyl said the apartheid tactics were currently in full swing and black people, as well as their…

NHLANHLA MBATHA IT WILL be business as usual for the Zondo Commission of Inquiry today following a burglary at the weekend. The commission’s Professor Itumeleng Mosala told SABC News yesterday that the commission hearings would continue today despite the break-in and theft of two computers at its Parktown offices on Saturday night. “The commission will hear parliamentary oversight-related evidence from the speaker of the National Assembly, Thandi Modise, on Monday. “The commission will also hear evidence from the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Mr Amos Masondo,” the commission’s spokesperson, Mbuyiselo Stemela, said yesterday. He said the commission was also scheduled to have an evening session to hear parliamentary oversight-related evidence from ANC national chairperson and former secretary-general Gwede Mantashe. Earlier, Stemela confirmed their offices were broken into…

STAFF REPORTER INTERNATIONAL advocacy organisation Global Citizen is drawing attention to the need to vaccinate, end Covid-19 and kick-start economic recovery for the world through Vax Live: The Concert to Reunite the World, featuring top international artists. The initiative will focus on aiding African countries with the vaccine roll-outs. The organisation is calling on world leaders to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines around the world. UN deputy secretary-general Amina Mohammed said the world would not see an end to the devastating effects of the pandemic, and the shutdown of economies, without access to the people’s vaccine. “To get this done, it is imperative that more resources are made available, that surplus from wealthier nations is shared immediately with front-line workers in lower income countries, and that the production…

Without clear communication, voters may be confused and suffer from poll fatigue Ebrahim Fakir 2021 is the year that local government elections are, or were, to be held. As per Section 159 of the Constitution, Act 108 of 1996, “Terms of Municipal Councils”, the term of a municipal council, may be no more than five years, as determined by national legislation and the Local Government: Municipal Structures Act 117 of 1998, with Section 24 prescribing that “the term of municipal councils is five years, calculated from the day following the date set for the previous election of all municipal councils”. The elections must therefore be held within 90 days of the date of the expiry of the term of municipal councils, hence a term of five years and…

Moscow yesterday reacted furiously to Czech accusations that two Russian spies accused of a nerve agent poisoning in Britain in 2018 were behind an explosion at a Czech ammunition dump four years earlier, which killed two people. Prague on Saturday expelled no fewer than 18 Russian diplomats, prompting Russia’s Foreign Ministry to vow yesterday to “force the authors of this provocation to fully understand their responsibility for destroying the foundation of normal ties between our countries”. The Czech Republic said it had informed NATO and EU allies that it suspected Russia of causing the blast, and EU foreign ministers were set to discuss the matter at their meeting today. The row is the biggest between Prague and Moscow since the end of decades of Soviet domination of eastern Europe in…

Washington: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday defended the US decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, saying the terrorism threat had moved elsewhere and that Washington needed to refocus resources on challenges such as China and the pandemic. President Joe Biden announced last week that the US would withdraw all forces from the country before this year’s 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Blinken said: “al-Qaeda’s capacity to conduct an attack against the US now from Afghanistan is not there.” The delay has had the Taliban threatening to resume hostilities against US forces. | AFP…

Niamey: Nineteen civilians were killed when armed men raided a village in west Niger close to the border with Mali in the latest bloodshed in the troubled region. “Two people were wounded in the attack by armed men on motorbikes in the village of Gaigorou,” in the Tillaberi region on Saturday evening, an official said. An unknown number of unidentified assailants, known locally as bandits, initially attacked people attending a funeral at a cemetery, before going on to the village where they “shot at everyone they saw”, the official said. The Tillaberi region is where the frontiers of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso converge and has regularly been targeted by jihadists affiliated to Islamic State, imposing Islamic taxes and stealing livestock. | AFP…

A brilliant start by Brad Binder in the third race of the MotoGP season propelled the Red Bull KTM rider to a top five finish at the Portuguese GP yesterday. The South African, starting from 15th place on the grid, jumped off the line with impressive aggression, carving his way to seventh in the field. To the surprise of all, Binder’s KTM eked out an extra second on his ride’s projected time, and it pushed him into sixth for a couple of laps before Francesco Bagnaia of Italy seized the position from him to eventually finish second. With seven laps to go, Alex Rins was forced into an error and crashed out while chasing down eventual winner Fabio Quartararo, and a lap later Johann Zarco endured a similar fate, lifting…

Kedibone Modise kedibone.modise@inl.co.za Gabriel Temudzani is celebrating 21 years of playing Chief Azwindini in the popular SABC2 soapie Muvhango and he’s thrilled about the direction his character is taking. Viewers recently witnessed Azwindini’s fall from grace. He was stripped of his chieftaincy, leaving him dejected and destitute. Azwindini’s luxury lifestyle disappeared before his eyes and while he struggled to adjust to the new normal, he discovered that his wife was having a baby with his arch-enemy. Chatting to IOL Entertainment, Temudzani said it was important for the show to use his character to shine the spotlight on the dynamics of power shifts, self-esteem issues and mental health. “I can relate with what Azwindini is going through right now. For a man, a husband, and a father to go through…

ITUMELENG MAFISA THE SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) has appealed to the taxi industry to stay out of “ANC factional battles”. This comes after taxi umbrella body, the SA National Taxi Council (Santaco), asked its affiliates and taxi owners to refrain from branding their taxis with images of politicians. Santaco reacted after a Limpopo taxi operator branded his fleet of taxis with Ace Magashule’s face and the words, “Hands off Ace Magashule”, on them. Magashule is the embattled ANC secretary-general who is expected to step down at the end of the month as he is facing serious charges of corruption. “As much as you are members of these political parties, do not enter factional battles. We have a fragile ANC going through a lot,” Satawu deputy general…

Baldwin Ndaba baldwin.ndaba@inl.co.za The North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria is set to formalise a date today for a full inquest into the deaths of 144 mental patients following their gruesome ordeal in 2016. Last month Judge Mnonoa Teffo, who was appointed to preside over the inquest, invited the families of all the victims to the first sitting of the inquest today at the High Court in Pretoria. The judge is expected to announce the date for the full inquiry after consultation with the families and their legal representatives. An evidence leader has already been appointed to lead crucial evidence about the disappearance of the victims, including their bodies being placed in mortuaries without the knowledge or consent of their immediate families. The patients were moved to NGOs which did…

Temporary Employment Services (TES) have been used mainly in First World economies whereby organisations have the flexibility to procure required skills on a part-time (ad hoc) or on a fixed-term (temporary) basis. These services are usually contracted in order to complete a project, cater for a business project (fixed duration), provide additional staffing due to fluctuations in volume of work, as well as to cater for seasonal work. Adopting a gig economy within South Africa could be the turning point in the lowering of the unemployment rate and increasing the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). In January, the US saw temporary employment rise by 81 000 jobs, which amounted to 83.5% of new jobs for the month. The latest unemployment statistics for SA showed an increase of 32.5% with 7.2…

EBRAHIM ESSA | Musgrave I AM TAKING an antidepressant that results in the same nightmare. It’s a nightmare of being back at university and struggling to understand advanced mathematics, while my colleagues in class don’t seem perturbed. On some nights, the nightmare shifts to high school where I battle with some geometric theorem. On other nights, I am again in my B.Sc class in India where I see my classmates coping fairly easily with the likes of Riemann’s theorem, while I feel nauseous, have a headache and feel fear. It's the same helpless feeling over and over again. My mind now shifts to the present day, where I have been a successful teacher of physical science. I am able to, with luck, encourage pupils to achieve some excellent…

Lauren Graham, Ariane de Lannoy and Leila Patel YOUTH unemployment is one of South Africa’s most intractable challenges, made worse by Covid-19. Prior to the pandemic the unemployment rate (including people who had given up looking for work) was just under 70% for people aged 15 to 24. A year later the rate had increased to 74% – despite government investments. So it is crucial to understand what interventions are working. But how do we evaluate whether youth employment programmes are successful, particularly when unemployment is caused by the structure of the economy? The obvious answer, of course, is whether a programme results in a young person getting employed. This is logical and easy to measure. It can easily be linked to the release of funding to programmes. And…

Allies of jailed, hunger-striking Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said they planned what they hoped would be the largest street protests in modern Russian history on Wednesday, to highlight Navalny’s declining health and a crackdown on his supporters. “Things are developing too quickly and too badly,” they wrote in a statement on Navalny’s website announcing their plans for nationwide protests. “We can no longer wait and postpone. An extreme situation demands extreme decisions.” The protests, which the authorities regard as illegal and have broken up with force in the past, are planned for the same day President Vladimir Putin gives an annual state-of-the-nation speech to the political elite. Navalny, a fierce opponent of Putin, started refusing food on March 31 in protest at what he said was the refusal of prison…

London: The leader of Ireland’s Sinn Fein party, once the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), apologised yesterday for the group’s killing of Prince Philip’s uncle, Louis Mountbatten. The IRA killed Philip’s mentor in 1979 as part of a conflict waged between Irish republicans and those who wanted Northern Ireland to remain in British hands. “I am sorry that happened, of course that is heartbreaking,” Mary Lou McDonald said. Her comment came a day after the husband of Queen Elizabeth II was laid to rest. It was the first time the political leader of Irish republicans has apologised. | AFP…

Zhezkazgan: Two Russian cosmonauts and a Nasa astronaut touched down on Saturday on the steppe of Kazakhstan following a half-year mission on the International Space Station. Russia’s Sergei Ryzhikov and Sergei Kud-Sverchkov as well as Nasa’s Kate Rubins landed on barren outside Zhezkazgan. The Soyuz descent module carring the trio landed upright after descending through a cloudless sky. Rubins, 42, and Ryzhikov, 46, were rounding off their second missions in space. During her debut mission in 2016, Rubins became the first person to sequence DNA in space. This time she also worked on cardiovascular experiments and oversaw a patch of radishes “as they grew in orbit, harvesting them for analysis”, said Nasa. | AFP…

Ashfak Mohamed ashfak.mohamed@inl.co.za HE might be the 400 metres Olympic champion and world record-holder but that doesn’t mean that nerves can’t get the better of Wayde van Niekerk. In fact, the 28-year-old says that neutralising the jitters before a race is one of the main battles he is fighting at the moment as he plots his path to Olympic glory once more in Tokyo. Van Niekerk won his third 200m national title at the Tuks Stadium in Pretoria on Saturday, bringing the heat in the second part of the race to finish in 20.38 seconds on a cool night in the South African capital. He wasn’t able to gauge his form against SA 200m record-holder Clarence Munyai, who had just crept into the final after finishing third with a time…

Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za ARCELORMITTAL South Africa (Amsa) said in its 2020 integrated annual report that it was committed to addressing the country’s steel shortages. Chief executive Kobus Verster said on Friday the group had experienced considerable delays with starting the N5 blast furnace in Newcastle. Verster said the N5 setbacks were frustrating, particularly because of the group’s intense focus on addressing customers’ steel shortages that had been building up since before Covid-19. “In the new year we have bud-geted and planned to fix the problems caused by the unusual post-pandemic start-up of N5 and to improve its reliability. Conversely, production of flat steel at Vanderbijlpark was very successfully resumed, from June blast furnace D and December (blast furnace) C,” said Verster. Amsa, South Africa’s biggest steel producer, has been under…

Two WEEKS ago I referred to the commodity super cycle that is under way. The stock prices of most resources companies have followed commodity prices on the way up. The big question I asked myself is where I can find value in the resources sector. My starting point was to look for stocks such as junior or emerging mining companies that are often ignored or not followed by analysts. I used the JSE-listed junior mining companies in South Africa to calculate a Junior Mining Company Index for South Africa. The index is based on market capitalisation and the weightings are recalculated at the end of each quarter. Coal-related mining companies were excluded, though. The final list of companies used to calculate the index were therefore Bauba Resources, Eastern Plats, Jubilee…

ACTRESS Michelle Rodriguez wants the Fast & Furious film series to crossover with Jurassic World. The 42-year-old actress stars in the action series as Letty Ortiz and says she is “all in” on a possible crossover with Jurassic World as both franchises are distributed by Universal. Asked about the prospect at a press conference to discuss the upcoming F9, Rodriguez said: "I love it, dude! I’m all in! “We were talking about this yesterday. It’s so funny, but I was talking about this yesterday. “Because once you reach a certain pinnacle, there’s nowhere to go but to a cross-brand and merge. "It's what big corporations do with each other when they get too big, you know what I mean? You just have to brand and merge with each other. But…

Stuart Hess stuart.hess@inl.co.za SOUTH Africa risks being without a national cricket side should Sports, Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa invoke the powers available to him, in terms of the National Sports and Recreation Act. Mthethwa has officially reached the end of his tether with Cricket South Africa (CSA), and specifically the organisation’s Members Council, following a special general meeting on Saturday, in which the council failed to implement the necessary changes to ensure administrative reform at the beleaguered organisation. Yesterday, Mthethwa said he would take “the necessary steps required to exercise his rights in terms of the law”. The powers available to Mthethwa in terms of section 13(5) of the Act give him the right to remove recognition of the federation as the authority on the sport, and to…

ITUMELENG MAFISA TRADE union Solidarity said it would be meeting with its lawyers today to discuss the way forward in the union’s legal action against the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra). The union said it was shocked to learn that Sahpra’s registration of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine contains provisions stipulating that only the government may purchase the vaccine. Solidarity has given Sahpra till the end of the week to respond to its demands. The union said it was acting on behalf of its 200 000 members. “This is a cynical attempt by the government to be the sole purchaser of vaccines. After initial attempts were halted by the courts, the government is now trying to maintain its unlawful position as sole purchaser through the back door,”…

Zintle Mahlati GAUTENG Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi said yesterday his reputation has been damaged because of claims that he had held a secret tender meeting. City Press reported on April 4 that Lesufi had been recorded at a meeting in Tshwane, appearing to promise to fix certain people’s tender issues. The newspaper has since retracted the story and issued an apology to Lesufi. “City Press would like to apologise to MEC Panyaza Lesufi. City Press retracts the allegation that the meeting was … a clandestine meeting,” it said. Lesufi had explained that “there was no ‘secret meeting’ and that the MEC was invited by Sanco, as part of a community meeting. His office said the Soshanguve community had grown concerned, after a school had gone months without electricity because of…

KEVIN GOVENDER | Shallcross THERE has been much conjecture and innuendo about what were the defining factors in bringing about a ceasefire truce between Pakistan and India. There is a temporary respite from the constant bombardment of shelling and sporadic enfilades along the almost 800km Line of Control. I wonder who will be the first to breach this act of good faith. History tells me it will be Pakistan. Think about Pakistan and one might get terrified. Few countries have so much potential to cause trouble. A third of its 16 million people live in poverty and only half of them are literate. In 2002, Pakistan warned India that if it was attacked, it would go nuclear. It has been selling its nuclear secrets to Iran , Libya…

CRICKET South Africa’s (CSA) provincial presidents, who make up the federation’s Members Council – its most powerful decision-making body – have for nearly two years dared Sports, Arts and Culture Minister, Nathi Mthethwa to take action against them. Yesterday, Mthethwa said he would. In terms of the powers available to him in the National Sports and Recreation Act, he can revoke recognition of Cricket South Africa as the ruling body of the sport in South Africa. That would mean that CSA cannot hand out national caps and that the Proteas would no longer be the representative national cricket side of the country. CSA’s Members Council pushed Mthethwa to make that decision. He has given the organisation ample opportunity to make the changes to its administrative structure, that would lead to…

A joint team of US and Chinese scientists have, in breakthrough research, grown human cells in monkey embryos in a laboratory for up to 20 days. The development, which has sparked ethical debates, has implications for developing new models of human biology and disease. Interspecies chimeras in mammals have been made since the 1970s, when they were generated in rodents and used to study early developmental processes. In the current study, detailed in the journal Cell, six days after the monkey embryos had been created, each one was injected with 25 human cells. The cells were from an induced pluripotent cell line known as extended pluripotent stem cells, which have the potential to contribute to both embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues. After one day, human cells were detected in 132 embryos.…

JERUSALEM: Israel and Greece have signed their biggest defence procurement deal, which Israel said yesterday would strengthen political and economic ties between them. The agreement includes a $1.65 billion (R23.6bn) contract for the establishment and operation of a training centre for the Hellenic Air Force by Israeli defence contractor Elbit Systems over a 22-year period, Israel’s defence ministry said. The centre would be equipped with 10 training aircraft produced in Italy and Elbit would supply kits to upgrade Greece’s T-6 aircraft and provide training and simulators. The announcement follows a meeting in Cyprus on Friday between the UAE, Greek, Cypriot and Israeli foreign ministers, who agreed to deepen co-operation between their countries. | Reuters…

ZURICH: A modified version of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine tailored to combat a coronavirus variant first documented in South Africa could be ready by the end of 2021, an AstraZeneca official in Austria said in an interview published yesterday. Sarah Walters, AstraZeneca’s Austria country manager, told the Kurier newspaper that studies, so far, indicating the existing AstraZeneca vaccine was less effective against the more infectious variant first documented in South Africa were “too small to draw final conclusions”. “In the meantime, AstraZeneca and Oxford University have started on modifications to the vaccine for the South African variant and we expect it will be ready by the end of the year,” Walters said. | Reuters…