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CITY PRESS, 27 DECEMBER, 2015

CITY PRESS, 27 DECEMBER, 2015

news

news

We were riveted...

By the saga going on at the Hawks.

Independent Police Investigative Directorate
(Ipid) head Robert McBride came out in
support of suspended Hawks head Anwa
Dramat and Gauteng Hawks boss Shadrack
Sibiya over their alleged role in the illegal
renditions of ve Zimbabweans into the arms
of their police. After a soap opera to rival Days
of our Lives, Dramat was eventually canned
after not putting up much of a ght, Sibiya lost
his disciplinary case and his job, but McBride
ultimately won at the Constitutional Court
against Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko, who
had suspended him

The police soap opera continued with the

appointment of Major General Mthandazo
Ntlemeza as head of the Hawks. He was
described by Judge Elias Matojane of the
North Gauteng High Court as biased and
dishonest. A good choice? Maybe not

We fumed...

When Oscar Pistorius started his year off

in jail and was due for release in August.
After Justice and Correctional Services
Minister Michael Masutha intervened, he was
eventually released into house (read mansion)
arrest in October. Then the Supreme Court of
Appeal overturned Judge Thokozile Masipas
culpable homicide ruling and found Pistorius
guilty of murder. The disgraced Olympian will
now appeal to the Constitutional Court. Will
he go back to jail? We dont know, but hes
lucky to be spending Christmas at home with
Uncle Arnold

When in May, police commissioner

General Riah Phiyega told President Jacob
Zuma she would refuse to quit. Eventually,
Zuma suspended her after instituting a board
of inquiry into her tness to hold ofce, which
has yet to sit.
Western Cape police commissioner
Arno Lamoer was suspended and appeared
in court charged with 109 counts of
racketeering after he and three senior cops
accepted bribes and gifts worth R1.6 million
from Cape Town businessman Mohamed
Salim Dawjee

By the war at the SA Revenue Service (Sars),

with the new leadership suing former
acting commissioner Ivan Pillay for
R110 million. Sars asked its former
commissioner and now Finance Minister
Pravin Gordhan to testify against his former
colleagues. Sars then brought out three
reports against them two of which featured
no interviews with Pillay and his crew. The
war is not over yet...

We were horried...

At the revelations contained in the so-called

spy cables, which detailed some of the
goings-on in the South African intelligence
community and had spies running for cover.
We found out that our spooks had been
monitoring the White
Widow, Samantha
Lewthwaite, for a year
before the Westgate
Mall attack happened
in Nairobi, that Iranian
front companies were
operating on our shores,
and state laptops
were being stolen for
the information they
contained

When the #RhodesMustFall movement

began at the University of Cape Town
after student leader Chumani Maxwele
ung poo at a statue of old Cecil John. The
offending statue was eventually removed,
but not before student protests against
colonialism and its vestiges broke out
countrywide

By #FeesMustFall, a massive student

movement countrywide, which forced
government and universities to suspend
fee hikes for next year after protests from
Parliament to Potch. The students, with few
exceptions, protested peacefully and with
dignity, and government was forced to listen.
A new generation of leaders was forged

When US Attorney General Loretta Lynch

charged nine Fifa ofcials with corruption
in a scandal that has continued to rock the
world football body. Her 167-page indictment
revealed that co-conspirators 16 and 17 were
South African ofcials who facilitated a $10
million payment to the then president of the
Confederation of North, Central American
and Caribbean Association Football, Jack
Warner, for the African Diaspora, allegedly
a disguised bribe for his vote for South Africa
to host the World Cup in 2010

When retired Judge Ian Farlam released

the report of his inquiry into the Marikana
massacre in which he found that police had
lied, Phiyega was a bad witness, and mining
house Lonmin failed to build proper housing
for its employees, which fuelled the tensions

We were agog...

At the goings-on at Eskom, which announced massive

load shedding after spending billions on diesel to run
turbines to keep the lights on. After dark mutterings of
an impending two-week nationwide blackout, then CEO
Tshediso Matona and some of his management team
were suspended and later left. Brian Molefe took over,
which many now consider one of governments best
decisions of the year. No load shedding for months! Who
would have thought?
When President Zuma suspended then
national director of public prosecutions
Mxolisi Nxasana, who appeared to be
doing a good job. After the inquiry into
his tness to hold ofce was aborted at
the last minute, Nxasana quit and the
president gave him a R17 million golden
handshake
When we discovered that then Passenger Rail Agency of SA
(Prasa) CEO Lucky Montana and his PhD-less chief engineer
Daniel Mthimkhulu spent R600 million on Spanish trains that
could only run between Kimberley and Port Elizabeth. They
were too high for the rest of the countrys rail network. Now
Prasa board chair Popo Molefe is trying to get their money back
from middleman Swifambo Rail Leasing, whose boss, Auswell
Mashaba, bought a game farm for R27 million cash just days
after being paid. Nice work if you can get it
During the opening of Parliament this year when
the State Security Agency jammed the cellphone
signal in the House and then later said it did
it to enforce a no-y zone above the building.
WTF? And then we fumed even more when
presidential protection ofcers and burly riot
cops in white shirts threw out the Economic
Freedom Fighters after they interrupted
President Zumas state of the nation address,
demanding that he #PayBackTheMoney. Few
people, except for the ANC, remained to listen to
the president speak after that
When government let
Sudanese president Omar
al-Bashir leave the country
despite a court order that
he be arrested in line with a
warrant issued for him by the
International Criminal Court.
Al-Bashir remains wanted for
crimes against humanity

Compiled by Nicki Gles

At the unfolding jobs blood

bath this year, with Anglo
American announcing it was
downgrading its operations in
SA at a cost of 50 000 jobs. City
Press reported in August that
23 000 people had been given
notice that they were about to lose
their jobs between April and June

When the SA Rugby Union

picked a mostly white team for
the rugby World Cup in England

At the goings-on at SAA. First City Press reported

that chairperson Dudu Myeni, in her capacity
as the head of the Jacob Zuma Foundation, was
selling face time with the prez. And then there
was the R6 billion Airbus deal that Treasury said
was unaffordable, which she wanted to go ahead
with anyway through some mystery company
playing middleman. This is an airline, not a two-bit
business. Run it properly!

We grieved...

When in January an estimated 2 000

Nigerians were slaughtered in the northern
town of Baga by Boko Haram militants
in a massacre eyewitnesses described as
indiscriminate killing going on and on. The
militants left the dead and injured lying in the
streets, and then burnt the town to the ground

When Ipid gave Deputy

Police Minister Maggie
Sotyus daughter, Boniwe,
the plum job of deputy
director of investigations
in the Free State without
her having the right
qualications. She was given
the job over a candidate with
22 years of experience. What
followed was a witch-hunt
by Ipid, which suspended
many ofcials it believed
leaked the information to
City Press
When President Zuma
red Nhlanhla Nene
as nance minister,
replaced him with noname-brand Des van
Rooyen, only to replace
Van Rooyen with Pravin
Gordhan all in ve days.
No man. This is no way to
run a country

By the Cape Town res that

burnt houses and vast swathes
of the city for a week. Its still
not known what started the
blaze

When much-loved Skwatta Kamp

rapper Nkululeko Flabba Habedi
was murdered by his girlfriend,
Sindisiwe Manqele, who stabbed him
in the chest with a knife. She was
found guilty of his murder by the
South Gauteng High Court and will be
sentenced in March. For now, she is
out on bail

At the Syrian refugee crisis that saw

hundreds of thousands of people
trying to ee to Europe. What really
shocked us was the photograph
of three-year-old Aylan Kurdis
body washed up on a Turkish beach.
He drowned trying to get to Greece
alongside ve-year-old brother Galip
and their mother, Rehan

By the case of Peter

Frederiksen, the
Danish man who is
on trial for allegedly
mutilating womens
genitals and keeping
their body parts
in his freezer in
Bloemfontein.

When armed Islamic State gunmen attacked

the Bataclan theatre and cafs in Paris, killing
130 people and injuring more than 80 in the worst
concerted terror attack on European soil. This took
place in the same year 11 cartoonists at satirical
French magazine Charlie Hebdo were killed by
two brothers afliated to al-Qaeda in Yemen.
The magazine had carried cartoons depicting the
Prophet Muhammad

When we learnt that rapper AKA and DJ

Zinhle were madly in love and having a
baby earlier this year then many happy
Instagrams later, they split days after the
baby was born because AKA was alleged to
be in a relationship with TV hottie Bonang
Matheba. We dont know, hey?

At the goings-on in the Gigaba household. Never

far from a headline, Minister Malusis wife Noma
caused an unprecedented outbreak of gossip
by taking on alleged nyatsi Buhle Mkhize. Their
Instagram war is now the stuff of legend. As for
Minister Malusi, he is #DenyingEverything. Cant
say we blame him

At the news that First Lady

Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma
was allegedly behind a plot to
poison her husband. She denies
this, but iyoh!

We celebrated...

We said farewell to...

When xenophobic attacks broke out in Soweto and 120

foreign-owned shops were looted in late January. Then,
in April, Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithinis comments that
foreigners must go ignited a further wave of attacks
on foreigners in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere in
the country. At least six foreigners were killed, including
Mozambican father Emmanuel Sithole, who was knifed to
death in Alexandra. At least his killers were convicted

When Top Billing presenter

Simba Mhere was killed with
his friend, Kady Shay OBrien,
in a horror car accident on
Johannesburgs M1 highway,
allegedly caused by a drunken
driver

When al-Shabaab militants

killed 148 students at the Garissa
University College in Kenya and
injured 79 in retribution for Kenyas
military presence in Somalia and the
mistreatment of Muslims in the
country

Former national police commissioner

Jackie Selebi, who succumbed to
kidney failure early this year

When the Ebola virus

was nally brought
under control and the
outbreak ended in west
Africa after claiming
more than 6 000 lives.
A vaccine was developed
that proved successful in
trials

Presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj,

who quit his job this year. We miss his
clarication of his boss comments and his
insistence that Zuma was quoted out of context

We laughed...

At how Dube
TradePort CEO
Saxen van Coller
not only faked her
qualications to
climb the corporate
ladder but once
duped one of South
Africas wealthiest
men, Johann
Rupert, into giving
her a job

At the one about Alex

Matsobane, a convicted
criminal, who pitched up at
the Seshego Police Station,
told them hed been
sent from national, and
proceeded to work there
for years without anyone
knowing what he was up
to. He did such a good job
he was even promoted to
the stations detective unit.
Hes now nally in jail

At some of SABC COO Hlaudi

Motsoenengs comments. One of his
gems this year was that if the media
reported on crime it would encourage
people to commit crime. About his lack
of a matric which the Public Protector
found he lied about he said: You have
two kinds of people in this world. You have
certicated people and educated people.
You can have many degrees, but also in
that you need a brain. After an SABC
disciplinary hearing found him not guilty of
all charges, we are not laughing any more

When Nigeria went to the

polls this year and power
was handed peacefully to
President Muhammadu
Buhari from the outgoing
Goodluck Jonathan. It was
the rst time there had
been a peaceful transfer
of power in Africas most
populous nation

When Wayde van

Niekerk won the
400m gold medal
and Anaso Jobodwana
came third in the
200m, after superstars
Usain Bolt and Justin
Gatlin, at the IAAF
World Championships

We were
fascinated...
When Police Minister Nkosinathi
Nhleko released his report into the
wild overspending on supposed
security upgrades to President
Zumas Nkandla home, which cited
beam-busting chickens as a security
threat. What made us giggle the most
though were his re pool videos
in which ofcials were at pains to
demonstrate why the presidential
swimming pool wasnt one. Then he
travelled the country trying to convince
editors to believe his spin

By the discovery of Homo naledi in a deep cave in the

Cradle of Humankind by accountant and caver Steven Tucker.
Archaeologists from Wits University, led by Professor Lee
Burger, had the world enthralled at the news of a new human
ancestor

When Desmond and

Leah Tutu celebrated
their 60th wedding
anniversary in July

When Trevor Noah bagged

the top comic job of anchor
on The Daily Show, giving us
something and someone
to be proud of

We told you so...

That President Zumas guards

were still living in guesthouses
in Eshowe because their security
village at the presidents private
home in Nkandla was not furnished

That now National Director

of Public Prosecutions
Shaun Abrahams would
be the one to take Nxasanas
place. We knew before he
knew

RUDI LOUW, Graphics24