By ZONGEZILE MATSHOBA The little literary festival in the middle of Karoo invites you to “come mentally hungry, and go home with lots to chew over”. That hungry mind will be well fed at the upcoming Schreiner Karoo Literary Festival (SKWF) in Cradock from 16-21 June 2022. The Amazwi South African Museum of Literature will kick-start the SKWF with a Youth Day event on 16 June. The youth will meet the elderly, sharing stories about elderly treatment as part of the World Elderly Abuse Awareness Day commemoration. Makhanda, the festival city, will feature prominently on the main programme on Friday,…
Author: Rod Amner
By MARECIA DAMONS Payments for the new cycle of the Covid R350-a-month grant will be made from mid-June, according to deputy director-general of the Department of Social Development Brenda Sibeko. The Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant, introduced in May 2020, was due to end in March 2022 but was extended in February this year to March 2023. But all those who got the grant have to re-apply in the new cycle. Under the new regulations, all applicants will undergo a means test, and anyone earning R350 a month or more will be disqualified. Previously, means tests were only conducted if applicants appealed…
By CHRIS TOTOBELA Makhanda’s sports lovers came in numbers to pay their last respect to gentle giant and local hero Fundile ‘Jeff’ Budaza at his funeral at the Joza Indoor Sports Centre on Friday. Speakers from various sports organisations and federations all sang Budaza’s praises. The Department of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture’s Anga Ngcebetsha told the mourners that Jeff Budaza helped a lot of youngsters in Makhanda who went on to represent the province and the country in different sports codes. Maru FC members pay their last respects to Jeff Budaza at the Joza Indoor Sports Centre on Friday.…
By GEOFF EMBLING, Democratic Alliance Ward 4 Councillor Geoff Embling, Democratic Alliance councillor, Ward 4. Part of the agenda for the Makana Municipality Council meeting on Friday, 27 May, involved choosing a new chief financial officer (CFO) for the municipality. Councillors received an additional part of the agenda about selecting the CFO, which was labelled “confidential” less than 24 hours before the council meeting. Not all councillors received this part of the agenda in their pigeonholes. The Speaker began the meeting by stating that the meeting must finish at lunchtime because he had to be somewhere. The agenda was rushed,…
By JONATHAN WALTON Jonathan Walton “Public office, in any of the three arms, comes with a lot of power. That power comes with responsibilities whose magnitude ordinarily determines the allocation of resources for the performance of public functions. The powers and resources assigned to each of these arms do not belong to the public office-bearers who occupy positions of high authority therein. They are therefore not to be used for the advancement of personal or sectarian interests. Amandla awethu, mannda ndiashu, maatla ke a rona or matimba ya hina (power belongs to us) and mayibuye iAfrika (restore Africa and its wealth) are much more than mere…
By SHAUN BERGOVER, Attorney at the Rhodes University Law Clinic This week’s article continues last month’s theme by investigating other rights and duties applying to credit agreements, which many members of the general public may not be familiar with. Right to information held by credit bureaux Credit bureaux play an important role in providing credit providers with information regarding the consumer’s creditworthiness. Information held by a credit bureau includes a person’s credit history, payment patterns, defaults, termination of credit and other related information. Increasingly such information is reduced to a “credit score”, often accessible via an app. The consumer has…
By ROD AMNER A moratorium was placed on non-emergency overtime from the start of June 2022 at a Makana Council meeting on 27 May. This is to stop excessive overtime costs, which were over R1-million a month. In an official statement, Makana Municipality said its work teams would only work during regular working hours. “No call outs will be attended to after hours unless it is a pre-approved emergency. There will be no working during weekends and public holidays unless it’s a pre-approved emergency. Therefore, all reported faults will be attended to the next morning,” the statement said. The only…
By ROD AMNER Several members of Makhanda Against Mandates (MAM), without a salary for four months, were forced to abandon their legal challenge to the Rhodes University vaccination mandate largely because of the unsustainable financial burden that the applicants had to bear, according to an official statement. Since reopening in 2022, Rhodes has implemented the vaccine mandate as a condition for entry onto campus for all staff, students, and visitors. In their statement, MAM said “the sheer necessities of life have forced us to make alternative arrangements”. “This means that the need and motivation to pursue the review application, which,…
By MONICA NEWTON, CEO of the National Arts Festival In three weeks, Makhanda will welcome the artists and audiences returning to the first live National Arts Festival since 2019. It’s a significant reunion; a symbol of our collective resilience and our fervent hope that the arts can resume their vital role in reflecting on the past, present and future. But it’s also happening within an environment that still requires 50% capacity in indoor venues and mandatory mask-wearing in all indoor spaces. Our Festival has been designed for these new realities. The programme is tighter in its curation but with more…
By ROD AMNER The Eastern Cape Treasury is set to make an “urgent intervention” in Makana Municipality, one of eight municipalities in the province red-flagged as on the brink of collapse. But, local opposition politicians and activists are unimpressed. In October 2021, National Treasury identified 43 municipalities in the country – eight in the Eastern Cape, including Makana – that would require urgent intervention in terms of S139 of the Constitution to avoid further litigation and possible national intervention. In Makana’s case, the Provincial Executive Committee has invoked S139 (5) (a) of the Constitution, which imposes a Financial Recovery Plan…