Author: Ground Up

By Liezl Human The R350 Covid grant should be increased to R413 in line with inflation, say the Institute for Economic Justice and the the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa. The organisations noted with concern that the only aspect under review for amendment was the “expiry date” of the grant. They also took issue with the qualifying means test and bank verification process which has seen millions of people excluded. The R350 Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant should be increased to a minimum of R413, in line with inflation, according to the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) and…

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By Matthew Hirsch Terry Pheto’s house in Bryanston, seized by the Asset Forfeiture Unit, went on auction on Thursday morning. But the property worth more than R4-million failed to sell. No bid over the starting bid of R3-million was received. The Lottery money used to buy the house was meant to go to an initiation programme. The auctioneer will market the property to prospective buyers in the coming weeks. A luxury home paid for with ill-gotten Lottery money by Tsotsi and The Bold and the Beautiful actress Terry Pheto went unsold when it went under the hammer on Thursday 2 March,…

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By Daniel Steyn “The work we do isn’t science until it’s shared with someone who isn’t a scientist,” says Amish Patel, a Signal Processing Engineer with the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. He is involved in the MeerKAT radio telescope. Patel was speaking on Friday at the second in a series of Science for the People seminars hosted by GroundUp and Bertha House in Cape Town. His talk was titled Astronomy in South Africa and Why it Matters. The MeerKAT radio telescope project in the Karoo derived from the aspiration to have a South African Square-Kilometer Array (SKA) precursor telescope. It has been operational…

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By Thamsanqa Mbovane About 100 people from a number of civil society groups marched from KwaLanga to Kariega Town Hall, carrying empty pots, blowing whistles and singing protest songs as Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana delivered his 2023 national budget speech on Wednesday afternoon. The marchers were demanding that the R350 Social Relief of Distress grant be made a permanent Basic Income Grant of R1,500 for all unemployed people. In his budget speech Godongwana told the nation that the R350 SRD grant will be extended until March 2024. “R350 is an insult. It is even less than the lunch of a…

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By Masego Mafata The four-day hearing by the Judicial Conduct Tribunal on complaints by activist group #UniteBehind against Judge Tintswalo Annah Nana Makhubele started today. A judge in the Gauteng Division of the High Court, Makhubele is accused of gross misconduct by #UniteBehind. Makhubele is the former chairperson of the interim board of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA). The three-person Tribunal has faced many delays since it was first recommended by the Judicial Conduct Committee in 2020. The Judicial Conduct Tribunal hearing on Judge Tintswalo Annah Nana Makhubele started on Tuesday in Rosebank, Johannesburg, almost three years after…

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By Neil Thomas Stacey Eskom’s financial reports from December 2022, read by candlelight as they may have been, paint a picture that may surprise. The embattled utility has been able to bring its debt burden down to about R400-billion, from a peak well over R500-billion in 2020. It has trimmed its other liabilities enough to bring its losses down to R12.3-billion which means that, were it not for debt servicing costs of R70-billion, Eskom would be a profitable venture. That financial picture, on its own, would suggest that it wouldn’t take much outside intervention to restore Eskom to a profitable entity,…

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By Chris Gilili Ahead of the upcoming State of the Nation Address (SONA), over 400 people, including members of civil society organisations, unemployed citizens and recipients of the Social Relief of Distress Grant (SRD), marched to the head offices of the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) and the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Thursday.Government introduced the SRD grant in May 2020 during the Covid pandemic. Since then the grant has been repeatedly extended and is now due to expire next month. The marchers want President Cyril Ramaphosa to clearly lay out the state’s plans for a basic income grant at…

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By James Stent Martha Ngoye, PRASA whistleblower, has been found not guilty on charges brought against her by the rail agency in an arbitration inquiry. Ngoye was found not to have been among those who recommended the Swifambo “tall trains” contract. Ngoye was also found not responsible for PRASA’s losses in the SA Fence and Gate matter, for which she is being sued by PRASA for R45-million. PRASA’s witnesses crumbled under cross-examination. Ngoye’s current position at the rail agency is unclear; PRASA’s appeal against a judgement that overturned her firing is to be heard in March. Martha Ngoye, the corruption-busting legal…

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By Nurina Ally The records on the Constitutional Court website are a crucial resource for lawyers, academics, journalists and the public. But in recent years record-keeping has been neglected and key documents are sometimes missing. Reliable, up-to-date information on the Constitutional Court’s website is all-important to ensuring transparency, participation, and accountability in the Court’s work. When first established, the Court appeared to be leading the way in effective online record-keeping. Justice Dikgang Moseneke was so in awe of the Court’s website when he first joined the Court, he described it as a “marvel”. But the zeal for innovation has seemed to wane. Worse, there are…

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A Gauteng attorney has been found liable to pay clients R1.4 million, the proceeds of the sale of a property they owned, which was stolen through a “business email compromise”. Attorney Gavin Hartog believed he was transferring the money into his client’s account, but he was unwittingly paying it into the Standard Bank account of a fraudster who had intercepted his email correspondence. The fraudster withdrew the money almost immediately and it has never been recovered. Hartog’s clients – Brigitte Daly, her husband Patrick Daly and her sister Karin Foulkes-Jones (now deceased) – first secured an order against him in…

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