British tourist, SA woman gang-raped by six-man armed gang at Hippo Lodge, Honeydew.

Sept 23 2008 – HONEYDEW. Police have set up a task team to probe rape attacks, hijackings and armed robberies targeting families inside their own homes as well as at businesses in Honeydew.

The entire greater-Honeydew area – a middle-class region north of Randburg/Johannesburg — has been suffering from a spate of violence-driven crimes in recent months.

In the most recent attack, two women were gang-raped at the weekend when six heavily-armed men broke into a chalet at the Hippo Lodge on Saturday night and held up its occupants.

They robbed the guests of all their valuables and cellphones — and then raped two women — one a South African, the other a British tourist. The men then fled in a stolen car.
http://www.telegraaf.nl/telesport/voetbal/1990973/__Luipaard_Zakumi_mascotte_WK__.html

Crowds of rioting pupils torch school in angry protest against FIFA WC2010 stadium evictions:

Sept 23 2008 – Nelspruit, Matafin township, South Africa.

In scenes very reminiscent of the anti-apartheid riots, hundreds of toyi-toying black South Africa schoolchildren yesterday burnt down their school while demonstrating at Mpumalanga’s 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium in Nelspruit on Monday.

Hundreds of stadium-workers were again prevented from entering the gates by the pupils. These children have been protesting for several months now.

Yesterday their anger at the local ANC-officials’ ignoring their plight, reached breaking point. In their weeks-long attempts to be heard, pupils – some as young as eight — joined in to protest about their stifling-hot ‘temporary’ Zozo-classrooms and delayed the stadium’s construction by yet another day.

Pupils evicted from the Cyril Clarke Secondary School in Mataffin marched the few kilometres from their temporary Zozo-classrooms to the stadium on Monday and again on Tuesday, just as they did last week and for several months before that — demanding to be let through the gates and stopping all construction work.

Among angry talk of “taking back our old classrooms” in the building site, the pupils danced and whistled, shaking fighting sticks and branches outside the stadium gates, with J&M Security and a heavy police presence keeping a watchful eye.

“Those classrooms are too hot, there is no fan or air conditioner and it is summer!” one of the boys shouted. The local health department confirms that at least six pupils a day collapse from the stifling heat inside the Zozo-classrooms in the moist Lowveld climate.

One group of pupils distracted the police, while another group torched a library and two of their hated temporary prefab-classrooms in protest against being evicted from their old, solid, brickbuilding-schools, just to make way for a football-stadium parking lot this week.

Letters to the Ministry of Labour  

The following are genuine extracts of letters received by the MINISTRY OF LABOUR (SOUTH AFRICA) from people enquiring after money on the grounds of hardship. They are exact copies as they were received. Neither the wording nor the spelling has been altered. 
 
Extract: 
1. I am glad to state that my husband died yesterday. I will be glad if you get me a pension. If you don’t hurry up I will have to get public resistance. 
2. I am enclosing my marriage certificate with three children. One of then is a mistake as you can see when you look into it. I am writing to say my youngest son is born two years old. Why not getting allowances for it. 
3. I am enclosing certificate with six childran. One of them twins died. You asked if he is christened: yes he was baptised on half a sheet of paper by a certain Captain in the Salvation Army. 
4. The man I live with won’t work and he wants to know if my husband is dead. Will you please search through your records office for him and let me know. 
5. In accordance with your Instructions I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope. 
6. I want money as badly as quisk as you can send it. I have been in bed under the doctor for weeks and he doesn’t seem to be doing me any good. If things don’t improve I shall have another doctor. 
7. Milk is needed for my baby. Father is unable to supply it. 
8. Re your dental enquiry, the teeth at the top are still alright, but the ones in my bottom are hurting me terrible. 
9. Please send me a form for cheap milk.I have a baby 2 month old and did not know about it until the neighbor told me. 
10. My son is unable to attend school. He has had diarrhoea through a hole in his shoe. 

These are actual letters sent by council building dwellers (JOHANNESBURG): 
1. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off. 
2. I wish to complain that my father hurt his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage. 
3. Their 18 year old son is continuously banging his balls against my fence. 
4. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the roof of the outside toilet and I think it was bad wind the other night that blew them off. 
5. The lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand? 
6. I am writing on behalf of my sink which is coming away from the wall. 
7. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant. 
8. I request your permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen. 
9. Can you please tell me when the repairs will be done as my wife is about to become an expectant mother. 
10. I am still having trouble with smoke in my built-in drawers. 
11. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared. 
12. Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny colour and not fit to drink. 
13. Our lavatory seat is broken in half and now it is in three pieces. 
14. Would you please send a man to repair my sprout. I am an old age pensioner and need it straight away. 
15. I want to complain about the farmer across the road; every morning at 6am his cock wakes me up and it’s getting too much. 
16. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous. 
17. Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third so will you please send someone around to do something about it. 
18. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would be pleased if you could do something about the noise made by the man I have on top of me every night. 
19. Please send a man with clean tools to finish the job and satisfy the wife. 
20. I have had the Clerk of the Works down on the floor six times, but still have no satisfaction. 
21. We are getting married in September and would like it in the garden before we move into the house. 
22. This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broken and we can’t get SABC2 (television station). 
23. I try to take just one day at a time but lately several days have atacked me at o

Bloemfontein – Seven young schoolchildren were allegedly repeatedly beaten on their backs by a teacher with a fan belt – as they helplessly hung in the air. Shortly afterward, they had to pack their bags and together recite the Lord’s Prayer in Tswana.

Teacher Dikeledi Moshe, 49, was arrested and appeared in the Bultfontein Magistrate’s Court on Thursday on a charge of assault.

She allegedly ruthlessly beat the seven children with a car part this week at a farm school near Dealesville in the Free State. She was released on bail of R1 000. The case was postponed to September 22.

The seven pupils all live on the farm Meerlandsvlei, where their parents work. The Rankunyane Primary School, which is attended by about 25 children, is 25km from the farm. Moshe is the only teacher, and had two classes.

Elisa Maditjane, whose 10-year-old son was one of the victims allegedly assaulted with a fan belt, said she was shocked and had cried when the children came home from school on Tuesday with bruises on their backs.

The children said Moshe was in one classroom while they were in the other. They were talking and making a noise, until she looked through the window and told them to quieten down.

When they did not, she allegedly came into the class and shouted at the children, “You don’t learn!” With the fan belt in her hand, she ordered one child to come closer. He tried to get away. The teacher then allegedly ordered of the bigger children to hold him.

The children demonstrated on Thursday how they were picked up, one by one, and held while Moshe beat them repeatedly with the fan belt. Four bigger children would pick up the children and let them hang upside down in the air while she beat them. Farm owner Hannes Linde said he was shocked when he saw the children.

So here we have it, at last. It has been a while coming, but come it has.

Not that it has been unexpected. It was bound to happen eventually,
in one way or another.

Many very astute and able writers have been trying – for some considerable time – to show how South Africa has been slowly descending into the abyss.

The pessimism, even despair, which has silently pervaded South African society over the last decade or so, is now gaining increasing momentum even amongst those who celebrated the most after the release of Nelson Mandela.

Now we begin to see the true colours of our Rainbow Nation; colours that were once purposefully and skillfully hidden behind shimmering nebulae of rhetoric and political razzle-dazzle are now being glimpsed more often as the perceived need for global political respectability is, more and more, discarded as the ANC and its puppet masters gain in confidence and arrogance.

Today, the legislation to disband the elite crime-fighting unit known as the Scorpions has been tabled in Parliament.

The Scorpions have proven to be a formidable and largely untouchable crime-fighting force that has shown little or no favour and has appeared to be indefatigable in the pursuit of those who would place themselves above the law. They have been a very necessary foil to the poorly performing South African Police Service.

Why the ANC has bothered to involve Parliament escapes me. South Africa is a dictatorship of the elected majority party, with absolutely no prospect of any realistic challenge to the current status quo being mounted through the ballot box anytime in the next couple of generations.

The ANC might as well come clean and rule by decree. It would save them and the rest of the world time, effort and embarrassment over the increasingly amateurish attempts to legitimize their fumbling realizations of their ambitions.

The signs have around for a long time.

• The selection of a party leader – soon to be the country’s President – who is awaiting trial on corruption and related charges investigated and brought by the Scorpions.

• The blatant and public protection by the current President of the country – with the tacit approval of the ANC – of the national Police Commissioner who faces serious charges investigated and brought by the Scorpions.

• The blatant and unashamed protection of numerous public officials and office holders who have either admitted or have been convicted of innumerable offenses ranging from drunk driving through fraud, embezzlement and worse.

• The blasé and indifferent approach to, and acceptance of, crime levels unparalleled outside of war zones such as Iraq. (An example – it is generally accepted that a rape occurs in South Africa every 23 seconds. Do the math – 1.4 million rapes per annum in a population estimated at around 45-50 million people).

• The awesome drift from reality embodied in the continuing and, until very recently, unquestioning support of rogue and repressive states such as Zimbabwe and Burma – behaviour which has led to the ridicule and scorn of the rest of the world, to say nothing of the loss of life and liberty of those poor unfortunates living in those countries.

And these are but a very few of the straws that have been blowing in the wind in recent years.

The Scorpions are but a single example of the lengths to which the ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist Party (all members of the tri-partite alliance which rules South Africa but of which only the ANC presents itself for election before the people of the country) are prepared to go in order to exclude themselves from scrutiny by both the courts and the electorate.

When will the people of South Africa – as well as the rest of the world – awaken to the fact of the immense confidence trick being played upon them at their expense?

Do we have to wait for the raids on the newspapers and televisions stations to become more frequent? Will we only realise our plight when the Internet and blogs are monitored, controlled and restricted? Will we have to wait for the situation in Zimbabwe to become a reality for South Africa (and so memorably and eloquently expressed by the unknown Zimbabwean who voiced it by saying “We have freedom of expression; we just don’t have freedom after expression”)?

The writing is on the wall. We ignore it at our peril. We run the risk of a bovine-like acceptance of the denial and corruption of the hopes and aspirations of an entire country already brutalised in the not-too-distant past. Or, simultaneously, we run the risk of opening the door to hotheads and armed reactionaries eager to turn back the clock.