As the skills shortage in South Africa worsens and the exodus of white artisans, engineers and maths teachers continues, racial affirmative action dominates all job adverts. Suppose you are a highly experienced white technician or project manager. You are looking for a job. In the careers section of a Sunday paper you see an advertisement for vacancies in your field. Then you see the words “employment equity” or “equity plan” or “designated groups” followed by the words, “Should you not receive communication within 2 weeks of the closing date, please accept that your application was unsuccessful.” You can be pretty sure any application from you would go straight into the bin. These words actually seem to mean: “White men need not apply.”

So you had better continue turning the pages of the careers section until you come to job advertisements from Australia or the Middle East. Apply there.

Now consider advertisements not for jobs but customers. Suppose a school was advertising for pupils, and said, “All of our teachers are affirmative action appointees”. How many parents would choose to send their children there?

How many people would choose to be represented in court by affirmative action lawyers? More important, how many poor people in the townships suffering bad water supply and sanitation would choose affirmative action engineers?

The ANC elite calls for affirmative action for the services other people receive but not for the services it receives. The Minister of Education does not send her son to a school where there are affirmative action teachers; she sends him to Bishops, a rich private school with mostly white teachers. Jacob Zuma did not choose an affirmative action lawyer to represent him.

Racial affirmative action is bad for whites and blacks. It is driving skilled whites abroad, demoralising blacks and harming the economy. It does not address the legacy of apartheid; it perpetuates it.

So how should we address our inequalities of the past? Just follow the example of the ANC elite who always choose services for themselves purely on merit. Allow all black parents to emulate the Minister of Education and send their children to the schools they think have the best teachers.

Andrew Kenny’s column appears in The Citizen every Tuesday.

Headlines are dominated by power cuts, soaring electricity tariffs, increasing petrol prices, increasing interest rates and rampant crime.

The UK and Australia remain the most popular destinations for South African migrants, and figures from the high commissions for both countries confirm the numbers are on the increase.

Ed Bossley, the deputy director of visa services for the British High Commission, said they had had about 200 more applications this year than last.

But he stressed that the figures seen by the consulates were not an accurate reflection of the number of South Africans living in the UK, and could be much higher.

“South Africans enter the UK under various other categories of our immigration rules that can eventually lead to permanent settlement. These include a long-term work permit holder or a highly skilled migrant,” explained Bossley.

South Africans who fell into these categories and who were already in the UK would lodge their applications with the Home Office there and so the South African consulates would not have these figures.

In addition, many South Africans had the right to live in Britain because of ancestry, and did not need to apply to go there.

Permanent residence applications were typically lodged by those seeking to join relatives or spouses in the UK.

Assessing these, the high commission needed to be satisfied that the relationship was genuine and that the sponsor in the UK could afford to “financially support and accommodate their relative in the UK without any recourse to public funds”.

The South African department of Home Affairs has not published emigration statistics since 2003, but research agencies have used other resources for their own estimates.

The South African Institute of Race Relations released a shocking report claiming that skilled white men were flocking to the United Kingdom.

The institute used Statistics South Africa’s mid-year population estimates, which they garnered from the national census, comparing figures for 1995 and 2005.

The institute said about 800 000 white South Africans had left the country, mainly economically active white men between 25 and 35.

The Australian High Commission said emigration application figures were higher last year than in 2006. More than 5 000 South Africans applied to emigrate to Australia between 2006 and last year.

On the other hand, the Homecoming Revolution, the organisation encouraging South African expats to come home, said more South Africans were inquiring about returning – as many as 10 inquiries in a week. 

The organization’s director, Martine Schaffer, said in other countries migrants often faced many of the same problems they would encounter in South Africa.

Source: Dated March 30 2008

                                                                                                                                                                          Durban – Three women believed to be part of a syndicate that supplies fake identity documents, police salary slips and letters of employment were arrested by Durban police, the Witness newspaper reported on Friday.

Durban central station commissioner Bala Naidoo confirmed the arrests and said the woman would appear in court soon on fraud charges.

Two of the women from the “Rent an ID” gang were tracked down at an Autopage Cellular Store in Greyville earlier this week.

A fake ID and a dead policeman’s salary slip were used to take out the contract for cellphones valued at R8 000.

It is believed the women took out contracts from cellphone dealers around Durban and then sold the phones to Nigerians living in the Point area.

After the arrests, police were led to a house in Umlazi (black township)where they found 20 fake IDs, bank statements, letters of employment and other fraudulent documents.

The homeowner was arrested.

One of the women told police that a Nigerian national made the fake IDs on his computer and supplied them to her.

She charged people fees ranging from R100 to R500 (what a bargin, and saves all the standing in ques at Home Affairs) for documents to apply for loans and cellphone contracts.

Autopage Cellular manager Lloyd Moodley said that although the documents looked authentic, the women seemed nervous about filling out the application form.

Moodley said the syndicate had huge implications for business and that it was impossible to safeguard companies against fraudsters.

If any of these scenarios seem overly familiar to you, you may soon find yourself in a spot of bother. South Africa’s top crime-fighters, seem to be obsessed with hounding otherwise-upstanding public servants who have committed only the occasional indiscretion in their shining careers.

Not only that, but they have made a habit of pressing multiple charges at the most inconvenient of times. But fear not why not follow the lead of other recent high-profile victims of the manipulation of state institutions for political ends?
For your easy reference, here is a check list of the top five legal (and not-so-legal) defence strategies you may want to try:

1. Before the bastards get you to court, bring your own counter-action in a higher court. In your application, it may benefit you to highlight the negative impact on service delivery, fixed investment and the South African trade deficit which your incarceration would have (not to mention the impact on the livelihoods of your four wives and 24 children).
2. Have yourself elected president of the ruling party and pass a motion at the party congress to have the nasty (stinging) cops dismissed, dissolved, castrated, sanitised and generally cut off and cast out. Just make sure that you can neutralise their sting before the date on which you are due to appear in court.
3. Arrange for the main prosecutor in the case against you to be arrested and charged himself. If possible, he should be charged with very similar offences to those with which he has charged you.
4. After being elected president of the ruling party, establish a broad front of convicted fraudsters and other politicians with dubious records, just to show that you are no worse than many other people in power and that convicting you and all your friends will leave no-one to run the country.
5. If all else fails, you may try suggesting that the whole affair is tribal in nature and based on a misunderstanding dating back to the 19th century when the colonialists turned kings into collaborators in their efforts to divide and rule. This last tactic is high-risk, especially if the acting head of the stinging police happens to come from the same village as your own grandmother, so check this out first.

If you try all of these approaches and nothing works, I’m afraid you may have to serve a lengthy jail term. Then innumerable so-called “liberal”‘ analysts are bound to waste kilometres of newsprint claiming that your conviction is an important milestone in South Africa’s democracy and that your failure to beat the system is proof that our judiciary and our democratic institutions are not open to cynical manipulation.
They may even argue that your demise has been of symbolic importance in helping South Africa to transcend a very difficult period in its history, in which an over-centralised ruling party, increasingly dominated by an small out-of-touch elite, has become highly prone to opportunism and factionalism, and is in danger of losing sight of its broader goal of transforming our society for the benefit of all.

But don’t concern yourself with this nonsense. Call in a few favours, and you’ll be out on parole in a month or two.

NOSEWEEK 30/06/2007

THE LADY’S CERTAINLY SHREWD, but whether she’s a shrewd businesswoman is another matter. She does make plenty of money, from service contracts with education institutions – but Dr Patricia Gorvalla doesn’t land these through business acumen, or by offering better services than anyone else.

At Cape Peninsula University of Technology, a 2005 audit reported that deals with companies associated with Gorvalla had earned her a cool R2,4m (see noses81&82). That’s nothing compared to what she’s making at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where from the provision of transport services alone she raked in a cool R3,5m between 2004 and March this year.

While sitting on the university council (as a nominee of her friend, Education Minister Naledi Pandor), Dr Gorvalla has landed numerous lucrative contracts with UWC; from offering student accommodation to transport services.

Is there any problem with her dual role? “There is absolutely nothing wrong with Dr Gorvalla offering services to the university,” claims Manie Naledi’s friend: Dr Patricia Gorvalla Regal, the UWC executive director of finance and operations. Some might agree. And, after all, what else would Mr Regal say? She’s one of his bosses.

But when Patricia Gorvalla’s companies clearly provide inadequate services, everyone wonders how she manages to pull it off, again and again, year after year.

For some years, Pat’s Transport (the DTI companies’ register carries a “Gorvalla Transport”) has provided transport services to UWC, but this was set to change when the university’s purchasing department sent a memo to the tender committee advising them that all transport vendors’ contracts had to be re-tendered. The committee then placed an ad in the Weekend Argus, and appointed 11 university officials to vet the applications.

Pat’s Transport duly submitted its application, along with those from 11 other companies – but when the adjudication came round, Pat’s Transport was the first to be disqualified.

Gorvalla’s company was accused of being responsible for students arriving late, inconsistent delivery and collection, vehicles not being kept in good mechanical condition and drivers not being properly informed of the routes. It was also noted that the provider had failed to address complaints repeatedly raised by students. Recommending that Pat’s Transport not be given the tender, the task team said: “Problems have escalated to the point where a new service provider must be appointed to meet the growing needs of the students.”

Only one team member did not vote against Pat’s Transport – UWC transport co-ordinator Kevin Lesar. Those voting against were Brighton Mupangavanhu (residential administrator), Dirk Saal (residential administrator), Harold Meyer (student administrator), Leslie Anthony (child & youth research & training), Maureen Davis (student affairs), Prof Thembisile Khanyile (nursing), Vinesh Jeaven (pharmacy) and Gerald Mhelembe (SRC). Trudi Fortuin (Community Law Centre) and Prof Mohamed Parker (dentistry) abstained.

Now who, after such a clear rejection, would have expected the university to turn around and put Dr Gorvalla’s company back in place? Especially when a number of other companies had scored seven and more positive votes. Certainly not the student body – Vilakazi Mxolisi, a student representative during the selection process, told noseweek that students were convinced that Pat’s Transport would not be included in the vendors’ list. “Gorvalla’s company wasn’t there. On top were Solomons, HG Transport, Golden Arrow and African End Tourism. The students were happy.”

But, Mxolisi tells us, “from nowhere”, Pat’s Transport was back in the race. “Other providers tendering were angry and so were students. Golden Arrow withdrew in protest – and then, before we knew it, it was all over.”

On 8 January, 2007, Manie Regal purportedly signed a letter authorising the inclusion of Pat’s Transport on the vendors’ list. However, Mr Regal, as he himself confirms, was at the time away, holidaying in Thailand and Indonesia. He wouldn’t explain to noseweek how exactly he’d managed to sign that letter. “How did you get copies of my leave details? Those are confidential documents!” retorted Mr Regal, referring noseweek to the media liaison officer, Mr Raymond Schuller.

Schuller said he would answer queries by email, but instead noseweek got a call from the university’s rector, Prof B O’Connell. “Please leave Mr Regal alone,” said O’Connell, “The guy just got married. All he did was confirm that Pat’s Transport was reinstated back to the list. The people to question are the members of the university’s tender committee, especially the chairperson.”

Prof O’Connell explained that after the team had recommended the removal of Dr Gorvalla’s company from the vendor listing, Mr D Pasquallie, the chairperson of the tender committee (and a member of the university council), convened a December meeting which reversed the recommendation. “It had nothing to do with Mr Regal,” Prof O’Connell told noseweek. According to O’Connell, the committee was advised that Dr Gorvalla could sue the university for terminating her previous contract.

Asked how come, since by agreeing to bid again in terms of the advertisement, Pat’s Transport had implicitly accepted the termination, Prof O’Connell replied: “I am not a lawyer.”

When noseweek tried to follow up on Mr Pasquallie, it transpired that he had moved to Johannesburg in September – and Prof O’Connell claimed not to have his new contact details. Yes indeed, the university’s chief executive claimed not to have the phone number of the chairperson of its tender committee, who was still arranging key meetings two months after he’d moved to another city 15 000km away. Noseweek is waiting for Pasquallie to return numerous calls from where he was traced – at the Gauteng offices of the South African Teachers’ Union, where at the time of writing he was engaged (as the union’s deputy general secretary) in negotiations around the public servants’ strike.

A source close to the team that rejected Pat’s Transport confided that Dr Gorvalla had approached some of its members, including Prof Khanyile, with R20 000 cash offers for them to change their votes. When Khanyile declined her offer, Dr Gorvalla allegedly informed her that it was her loss, since those who mattered “were already co-operating”. Contacted for comment, Prof Khanyile asked to be left alone: “Please don’t call me again. Please talk to the tender committee; we did our work and that’s it. It’s their baby now.”

Those ready to play ball with the “Mistress of Big Business” (as Business Day called Gorvalla in 1997), can expect her good favour. Mark Seal, the university’s director of residential services and catering, is one such person. Gorvalla has named one of her privately-owned student residences in Bellville, Mark Seal House.

The university once tried to purchase Mark Seal House from her, reasoning that it would become cheaper for students, but the bid was soon dropped, “after consultations at higher places.” How much higher, noseweek is yet to discover. The naming was once raised within the University Council, but Gorvalla reportedly explained that Mr Seal had done so much for the university that it should not be an issue. When noseweek visited the hostel it had no nameboard – and security guards said the name board had been pulled down some days previously. Is Mr Seal’s monument under threat?

Dr Gorvalla will clearly be around at least as long as Naledi Pandor heads the Department of Education. In the meantime, students at UWC should learn to accept being late for classes.

The student community isn’t too pleased. Mxolisi says they have petitioned the university administration over the tender being awarded to Gorvalla.

“We wanted to know why, but we were told that Pat’s Transport offered to provide transport at a few rands cheaper than Solomons. We suspect that somebody from the inside advised her on what Solomons was offering. The main thing is, she wasn’t meant to be there in the first place,” an angry Mxolisi told noseweek.

As we went to press, the students were still waiting for the outcome of their petition to the vice-rector, who has forwarded it to Mark Seal. In the meantime students say their options for further protest include walking to the university in protest.

‘Freeborns’, I would have thought that term refers to children of slaves born after emancipation, seems it is now a term used to refer to white South African youths who entered school after 1994.

Now, as much as I hope and wish for the sake of youngsters stuck in the AA nightmare that something will give, I don’t feel any warm fuzzy optimism that asking government nicely will help any. I remember some fat lip stating ‘AA is here to stay’ and will not be inclusive of any whites.
It’s a wonder that more whites haven’t turned to crime and formed gangs to make a living out of that ‘informal’ sector which the darkies have had as a ‘captured’ market.

Johannesburg – Trade union Solidarity is to ask Parliament to introduce an amendment act exempting the youth from affirmative action, it said on Monday.

Spokesperson Dirk Hermann said the union would ask Parliament onTuesday to consider the introduction of the Amendment Act on Freeborn South Africans.”The proposed amendment asks that the Employment Equity Act be amended to include all South Africans who have entered school since 1994 in the designated group, to benefit from affirmative action. “This then would widen the definition meaning that the designated group will be legally defined as black people, females and people with disabilities,” said Hermann.He said the proposed amendment act – signed by “thousands” of people – would be handed to the Speaker’s office on Tuesday. – Sapa

Young whites ‘lose out twice’

Young white South Africans are being deprived of equal opportunities twice thanks to affirmative action – once when applying to tertiary institutions, and again when they enter the job market.

We (the youth of SA) had nothing to do with the previous regime and now we are the ones bearing the brunt of a policy that is in fact not serving the academic aim but is used to oppress us.

..what can one say?

• Are you well groomed, go getter, willing to learn?
• Make your financial dreams a reality
• Ability to monitor, keep meticulous records and process all financial matters.
• Join the Gravy Train to financial success,
• mis-appropriation of funds, incentive bonus paid
• Business class air travel / 5 star accommodation / luxury car allowance / body guards included in package.
• Full “private” medical care as a government official
• To be considered for this lucrative post your good communication skills with ability to make promises without a conscience is required.

If your answer is yes to all the above:

BECOME A POLITICIAN AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS JOB OPPORTUNITY

As a elected representative of the voters, Ministers that do not drink, cheat,steal and lie are hopelessly out out of touch with the mood that is sweeping this country. At a news conference sweeping allegations are contemptuously denied, corruption with self enrichment the order of the day.

No matter how hard the government ,ANC or South Africa’s super rich black elite protest to the contrary, the reality of BEE in perception and practice is not for the have -nots.

South Africa’s dollar millionaires has risen a phenomenal 16%, well above the global average of about 6%.

Country has over 42 883 millionaires (ie net worth more than one million $us excluding primary residence.)

The now obsolete state lottery created 34 dollar millionaires.

Of Africa”s 75000 dollar millionaires half are in South Africa with a combined fortune of $700billion.

The BEE process of mainly party political players, has led to enrichment of those close to government.

The BEE Game continues with rages to super rich over night with well connected empowerment deals. 12000 millionaire in three years with a phenomenal 8000 becoming dollar millionaires in just 12 months.

A obviously noticeable difference between the western world millionaires is that they worked to make their money where in South Africa with the black economic empowerment(BEE) its simply given to you. There after you use this gift to enrich yourself further.

Urgent appeal for at 1300 teachers to apply for jobs, serious skills shortages, yet a white male and female with skills need not apply. From electricians and welders to competent IT and management the vacancies remain there as only blacks may fill these positions.

Go to a bank and attempt to make a uncomplicated query and your blood pressure skyrockets you almost go into cardiac arrest. Its one referral to the next, nobody knows what to do, you’re past on from one employee to the next.

What do you do, the telephonic route sends you into a raging mood from been re-connected from one useless consultant to the next. Nobody has the slightest clue how to solve your issue. Possibility our telephone company and them have a agreement to keep us on the line for the maximum period of time.

How can whites not even born in the previous regime be held responsible and penalized for their skin color. This kind of racialism will only aid in the racial divide.

Do our law makers suffer from Alzheimer’s. When they are need of medical attention they certainly do not go to the understaffed poorly qualified state hospital. oh! no, “private” thankyou.

South Africa is free falling down to Zimbabwe’s economy of ruin.

South Africa’s policy of black economic empowerment, is apparently a pragmatic growth strategy to realize the country’s full economic potential. All thats happened is that the country’s wealth has transfered to the black elite, leaving fundamental inequalities intact.

Now I have a theory as to what really happened here – so buckle up – and enjoy!

Once upon a time a petrol tanker was cruising along the R25 when out of nowhere, a brick fell bounced down the embankment. It then burst through the windshield taking the driver out.

Hell no – this wasn’t staged – no hijacking! People always carry buckets in Africa! They were running down to save the tanker.

The smart ones, carried 25 liters containers with their lunch.

And it wasn’t long before everyone was having a party! Even the Fire Department was assisting – ensuring nobody smoked near the fallen tanker.

For some, 25 liters was just not enough.

And as expected, nobody wanted to ruin the party by letting the police know that a petrol tanker had an accident and was leaking 7×25 = R175 containers!