R27m sale points to new faith in CBD

Original Permalink

By MATT MEDVED

A historic seven-storey building on Long Street in Cape Town’s CBD has been auctioned for R27.5 million, and this, say experts, is further proof of the inner city’s rejuvenation.

The 65-year-old building, which had been owned by a Namibian family, was bought by a UK recruitment agency.

Auction Alliance was given the mandate to sell the property, at 50 Long Street near Greenmarket Square, six weeks ago.

Auction Alliance communications head Morris Levine said it reflected renewed growth in the inner city.

“In the past, people have often been turned away from the inner city area.

“There’s been the perception of crime, that you’ll get mugged and that there’s no parking. But it’s a historical part of the city and the visible policing is encouraging tenants to return to the area. Subsequently, property demand has increased, as well as prices.”

Theo Yach, a city real estate broker with the Cape Town Partnership, said that at R27.5m the building was worth approximately R10 000 per square metre.

He said this marked a five-fold increase from just five years ago, when the building would have been worth just R2 000 per square metre.

“It’s dramatic, it’s a huge change,” said Yach.

“When we put the Cape Town Partnership together, it was doom and gloom. People were giving buildings away and tenants were running out. This is absolutely a sign of regeneration.”

Kim Faclier, of Auction Alliance, said the building was registered as a heritage site and was built and owned by the South African Permanent Building Society.

Faclier also said the price was along the lines of what both the Auction Alliance and purchaser had been expecting.

“The Cape Town Central Business District is experiencing a massive rejuvenation,” said Faclier.

“The area has become extremely popular recently, hence the massive interest in the property.”

Cape Town Partnership CEO Andrew Boraine said the sale was just one of R24bn in projects in the areas from Green Point to Salt River in the next three to five years, which includes the R3bn Green Point Stadium and expanded Waterfront project.

“The auction confirms the robust nature of the central city’s property market,” added Boraine.

Primary schools of crime: “We’re fighting a losing battle”

By MATT MEDVED

Manenberg Primary School principal Ebrahim Cader opens a door with a mangled lock and motions inside at the rows of gutted toilets.

“After the first break-in, we started using plastic instead of copper in the plumbing, but it didn’t stop the thieves from breaking in three more times while we tried to repair the damage,” he says. “They even came back for the urinal.

“All this money we spend for safety and infrastructure, millions every year, and there’s still no deterrence. It could all be going towards education.”

Manenberg Primary School is one of the 109 schools identified by Premier Ebrahim Rasool as “high risk” and has therefore received a police reservist as well as five Bambanani volunteers as part of an ongoing campaign to crack down on crime at schools.

However, since they introduced the programme, the school has still suffered between 30 and 40 break-ins since January, including R18 000 in damages after its mobile kitchen unit was stripped this month.

Cader says he has seen shootings take place directly outside the school grounds, which he surrounded with barbed-wire fencing after he became principal 11 years ago.

“I’ve seen gang members dropping off their weapons and pretending to be bystanders in a crowd after gunning people down,” he says.

He recounts a time when he heard gunshots and witnessed a shoot-out between a motorist and police officers in front of the main entrance. The gunman turned out to be the parent of one of his pupils, who had run a red light and was behaving violently while under the influence of drugs. “The pupils and teachers were severely traumatised; they experience this on a daily basis.”

More common, however, have been instances of intimidation and violence. Just earlier that morning, five youths who were trespassing were escorted off the premises.

Although he believes crime is “under better control” since the deployment, he says the city can do more. “The Manenberg police need to patrol the area more. They only come out when an incident has already occurred,” he says.

Cader points at a growing cluster of children, parents and loiterers next to a tuckshop. “That’s a gathering point. All of the children who live here are on tik. The drop-outs hang around here and sell drugs and the scrap collectors steal whatever they can after dark.”

The reservist approaches, flanked by two volunteers. A sergeant with the Manenberg police, who refused to be named, said she did not bring her gun to work yesterday.

“I was scared to walk through the gang-controlled area with a gun,” she says.

“Are you wearing a bullet-proof vest?” asks Cader. She shakes her head. “They ran out at the station,” she says.

“The primary schools are worse than the high schools,” says the reservist. “We’ve had to confiscate knives on a number of occasions. Without more police and volunteers, I promise you this school will be lost.”

Primary schools of crime: Cops to fight gangsterism in primary schools

By MATT MEDVED

Primary schools make up a third of 109 “high-risk” schools in and around the city, as the youngest group of pupils suffer gangsterism, drug-dealing and violence, a report given exclusively to the Cape Argus reveals.

Gang activity and drug-dealing on school grounds have prompted the provincial government to deploy several hundred police reservists and crime-fighting volunteers to the 109 schools most at risk.

And on Monday Education MEC Cameron Dugmore called on schools to take a “zero-tolerance” approach to all forms of abuse, including bullying, to prevent it from spiralling into worse violence.

In the report the province pinpoints schools that are “violence and drug-peddling hotspots”.

Of these, 34 are primary schools.

Khayelitsha, Mitchell’s Plain and Manenberg had the largest number of targeted schools, with Bonteheuwel, Delft, Eerste River, Gugulethu and Athlone on the second tier.

The revelations follow the latest school killing, in which Mogammat Sukarie Kannemeyer, a 17-year-old Grade 9 pupil at Eerste River High, was stabbed to death with scissors on Monday. A 17-year-old pupil has been arrested.

At another school on the list, Princeton High in Mitchell’s Plain, a new principal has been drafted in to tackle its epidemic of drugs and violence.

A total of 149 SAPS police reservists and 500 Bambanani volunteers have been deployed to the high-risk schools by Premier Ebrahim Rasool as part of his R1 billion anti-crime initiative.

Although department of education officials were reluctant to have the names of the schools released, the Cape Argus obtained a list of all 109 and the number of reservists and Bambanani volunteers to be deployed to each.

Safe Schools Project head Narriman Khan said 69 of the schools had received one reservist each, while two reservists had been deployed to the 40 schools most at risk.

She said the schools identified by the premier had been hit the hardest with substance abuse and crime.

“The volunteers are purely there as the eyes and the ears of the police,” Khan said.

“They will do the guarding around the school perimeter and protect the toilet and tuck shop areas.

“Sometimes if a learner belongs to a gang, they frequent those areas and force other learners to pay protection money for safe passage through there.”

Khan said the reservists would liaise with the volunteers and make arrests if necessary.

She also said that they would be enforcing “zero-tolerance” drug and weapon policies at the targeted schools, which would be worked into the schools’ codes of conduct.

“We get 40-odd shebeens operating in the areas immediately around these schools where illegal substances are sold, and learners sometimes bring the substances on to school premises to sell,” she said.

“This is the highest level of offence. Although we are developing support for learners who are addicted to drugs, we do not tolerate trafficking on the premises.”

Khan said the pupils and teachers at the schools would also receiving new programmes tackling behaviour modification, including conflict management and intervention training.

The premier’s programme has already met with resistance at schools.

In one incident, a Bambanani volunteer at one of the high-risk schools, Manenberg High, who refused to be named, said she had been attacked by a grade 9 student whom she had reprimanded.

After police intervened, the pupil had been suspended for five days.

L A Mnotoza, principal of Nelson Mandela Secondary School in Nyanga, said the reservists’ presence had served as a deterrent.

“The deployment has reduced drug-peddling remarkably. We rarely see an outside influence any more,” he said.

Dugmore said the provincial authorities were seeing a rise in vandalism and violence linked to the abuse of tik in communities, which affected the behaviour of children.

“Many incidents are occurring despite the efforts of the Safer Schools programme,” he said.

Reward for whistleblowers

Original Permalink

By MATT MEDVED

The City of Cape Town is to reward the four whistleblowers who busted an illegal water connection in Philippi that has diverted R2.247 million worth of water since August 2004.

The four Philippi farmworkers, led by the chairman of the Philippi Farmworkers Informal Settlement Urban Development Council, Abraham Fransman, will each receive a cheque for R2 000 from mayor Helen Zille today.

The city council has laid a charge of theft against the two implicated Philippi farmers, a father and son, with the police and expect to recover the stolen funds. The two have also been registered as debtors by the council.

“It was a vigilante operation,” said the city’s principal internal auditor, Andrew Jordaan. “The whistleblowers were actually originally in-volved in the digging of the trenches and diversion of the water. The farmer was paying them in water, which he was selling for 5c a litre.”

Jordaan said the farmers had allegedly used five different pipes to funnel 245 816 litres of water into their dams for the purposes of irrigation and profiteering. He said the operation had begun during the drought in 2004 with the installation of a 40ml pipe within a 100ml PVC pipe to “feed off” the main water supply.

He said Fransman had alleged that the elder farmer had begun the operation after one of his sons was shot dead in an attempted robbery in 2004.

The whistleblowers had reportedly been fed up with the living and working conditions and alerted the city.

Sonn fighting for his life after operation

Original Permalink

By MATT MEDVED

International Cricket Council (ICC) president Percy Sonn was still “critically ill” today and fighting for his life in the intensive care unit at the Durbanville Medi-Clinic.

George Hector, his personal assistant, said yesterday that Sonn had suffered complications following a minor colon operation last Monday.

“It is not looking good, but we are all hoping that he will pull through,” said Hector.

He said Sonn, 57, was unconscious and had been under heavy sedation since he was moved to intensive care on Monday.

The only permitted visitors were relatives, who have been at his bedside since the move.

“The entire family has rallied around him and his immediate family in these times,” said Sonn’s brother, Franklin. “We are very much hoping for his recovery.”

This morning, the hospital would not confirm Sonn’s condition. However, Hector said today that while he was in a stable condition, there had been “no change since yesterday”.

“It is a desperately sad situation,” ICC spokesman Brian Murgatroyd said yesterday.

“We were all with Percy not long ago in the Caribbean where he was his usual jolly self … Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and we have all got our fingers crossed for Percy’s full recovery.”

Thousands march over slow delivery

Original Permalink

By MATT MEDVED and ZARA NICHOLSON

Among more than a thousand ANC supporters who protested against the DA-led city council’s “failure to deliver services” was a wheelchair-bound Khayelitsha resident, furious that her water had been cut even after she had told the city that she received a disability grant.

ANC leaders, members and supporters took to the streets in the city centre yesterday with posters slamming DA policies on evictions, water cuts and high rates. The ANC said these policies were detrimental to poor communities.

The protest comes after the City of Cape Town sent pink letters, a final warning, to residents asking that they pay their municipal bills or their water or electricity supplies would be cut off.

Maggie Mogwera, 53, from A section in Khayelitsha, joined the huge crowd in her wheelchair as the protesters marched from Keizersgracht to the civic centre on the Foreshore to hand over a memorandum to Helen Zille, mayor and DA leader.

“Yesterday when I came home my water was off,” Mogwera said.

“I feel like Helen (Zille) is taking my rights away from me because if she is taking away my water, then I have no rights, that is why I am marching.

“I made arrangements after they sent me a pink letter and they know that I am living on a grant.

“This is the second time my water was cut off.”

Mogwera has been receiving a grant since 2000.

Her letter showed that she owed the city about R36 000.

Protesters reached the civic centre around lunchtime and were met by a heavy police presence.

The steps leading to Zille’s office were barricaded with with barbed wire two metres high.

The ANC provincial leadership, Premier Ebrahim Rasool and leaders of supporting organisations spoke to the crowd before their memorandum was received and signed by Dan Plato, the Mayco member for housing.

The memorandum said that under the DA-rule, the city had issued 455 000 pink letters threatening to cut off water and electricity supplies.

Most of these had been sent to poor people.

The memorandum also said that the city had cut water to 46 594 homes and electricity to 16 840.

“With such high rates and service charges, the aged, unemployed and poor simply cannot afford to live in dignity. If these are examples of your liberal values and so called professionalism in government, we reject them,” the memorandum said.

It also called on the city to ensure that evictions, water and electricity cuts “which target the poor” be stopped immediately.

Philippi resident James Miwnie, 47, said: “I have gone for three months without water and I was served one of those pink letters, my rates have gone up.

“I want to stand for my rights for a place to stay, water to drink and energy to cook my supper.”

Miwnie said he was struggling to feed and clothe his six children since he lost his job in publishing seven years ago, and had taken to selling sweets on the streets of Cape Town.

“Helen Zille must drop the costs because most people are unemployed and the rest are sick.”

In response to the march, the city’s multiparty government issued a statement saying that several of the points raised by the ANC march organisers “contain false allegations”.

“The complaints around service delivery are hypocritical, given that we have improved on the ANC’s previous performance in Cape Town,” the statement said.

Plettenberg Bay alert after helicopter chases shark from surfers

Original Permalink

By MATT MEDVED and MURRAY WILLIAMS

“The shark was really determined to get to those surfers …” So says the helicopter pilot who yesterday saved surfers in Plettenberg Bay from a shark encounter.

Pilot Glen Brown had been flying honeymoon couple Johan and Candice Fouche and a woman passenger on a pleasure flip in his Robinson 44 helicopter, which is fitted with flotations, at 3pm above Robberg beach.

“I was doing one of my normal helicopter flights – just over the bay and back. I was at 1 500ft when I spotted a Great White. You see them very rarely,” he told the Cape Argus today.

“So I turned around, and realised that the shark was starting to speed up to some surfers. I’m a commercial diver too, so I know what they’re up to when they start getting agro and doing a little dance in the water.

“I dived down and basically got myself and the helicopter between the shark and the surfers. I started to push him out with my rotor wash (the air that comes off the rotors). It looked a bit like a hurricane. We pushed him out to sea, then turned around to chase the surfers out.

“But when I turned around he was coming back again. So I chased him out again. He was really determined to get to those surfers. It was weird – usually they would just swim past.

“I told the passengers to make whatever hand signals they could to the surfers to get out.”

It appears, however, that the surfers waved back cheerily, unaware of the threat, but eventually realised and paddled to shore.

Brown monitored the shark as it left the area until it was lost beneath the sea surface.

“The whole incident took four or five minutes,” he said. “We were all quite shocked, but what else can you do?”

The couple, who are professional photographers from Table View, then showed the surfers the photographs they took during the incident.

The surfers said they were unaware of the shark’s presence until the helicopter’s intervention.

The National Sea Rescue Institute has issued a warning to bathers and surfers along the Plettenberg Bay coast following the incident.

“There has been noticeably increased shark activity closer in-shore over the past few days,” said NSRI Plettenberg Bay station commander Ray Farnham.

“The shark working group confirmed that the changing of seasons shows increased shark activity at shark feeding grounds.”

ANC leads march against DA-led city’s ‘failure to deliver’

Original Permalink

By MATT MEDVED, ZARA NICHOLSON and MURRAY WILLIAMS

More than a thousand ANC supporters gathered in the city earlier today for a march against the DA-led city council’s failure to deliver basic services.

Protesters, many of whom had arrived on a dozen Golden Arrow buses, carried banners slamming DA policies around evictions, water cuts and high rates, which the ANC said were aimed at poor communities.

Marchers moved down Keizersgracht shouting “Viva, ANC, Viva” and “Away, Zille, Away”.

Representatives from community organisations, Cosatu, SA National Civic Organisation and the SA Communist Party all took part in the march.

ANC chairman for the standing committee on finance and economic affairs Garth Strachan said the marchers were intent on handing over a memorandum to mayor and DA leader Helen Zille’s office at the civic centre.

The memorandum stated that the DA election manifesto had promised to address the problems of housing, unemployment, poor services and high tariffs for service charges

“Instead under the DA rule, the city has issued 455 000 pink letters threatening to cut off water and electricity supplies, mainly to poor families and evict the same families from their homes,” the memorandum stated.

Magwaza Zodwa of the ANC Women’s League said: “We are here because of the water cuts and the pink letters that Zille gave our people.

“It’s the poorest of the poor being affected,” she said.

“This is about service delivery and the DA has made empty promises.”

But Zille has accused the ANC of inciting an anti-city protest by propagating lies.

“I’ve received repeated reports today that the ANC is mobilising people on the basis of completely false information,” Zille said.

“I’ve received a report from the Nyanga area saying the ANC is going around with loud hailers saying water is going to be cut off for two weeks, and in other areas that we’re going to remove people and break down their shacks. They’re inventing stories … It’s complete and utter lies.

“I’ve also seen a copy of their pamphlet, and it’s one untruth after the other,” she said.

“It’s an indication of how desperate the ANC is and how they will do anything to return to the policy of mass resistance, rather than work through the structures and procedures of the council.

“Last night they tipped out dustbins in Khayelitsha so they could claim that there’s no service delivery there,” Zille continued. “But it’s complete and utter lies. Everyone in Khayelitsha will tell you how much cleaner it is since we’ve taken over.”

But Heinz Park resident Patricia Pekeur, 62, said she had joined the protest because the city had raised her rates and had cut her water.

While Patrick Lunguza from Khayelitsha lamented the fact that all the graveyards in township areas were full, while cemeteries in white areas were too expensive.

“Where can we bury our dead if the city does not respect our people?” Lunguza said.

Earlier DA provincial leader Theuns Botha blasted the planned protest as “unnecessary”.

“The ANC should rather spend its energy and efforts towards improving standards of governance and service delivery in the few municipalities it still governs,” he said.

Cosatu warns on sacking threat

Original Permalink

By MOSES MDEWU MACKAY and MATT MEDVED

Labour federation Cosatu has vowed to fight the government if any public servants are fired for downing tools in the planned national strike.

The threat was made after Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said the public sector unions had not notified her of any impending strikes or go-slow action.

She warned that anyone embarking on illegal industrial action could be fired.

Fraser-Moleketi said any action taking place over the next few days would be seen as an unprotected strike and measures would be taken against employees.

Cosatu has announced that the nationwide public servants’ strike, expected to see about a million nurses, teachers, police and others down tools, is set to start on May 28.

Cosatu regional organiser Mike Louw said yesterday that they took strong exception to Fraser-Moleketi’s threats regarding the impending strike and employees.

“Our view is that her attitude will exacerbate the situation. We will fight for the workers if they are dismissed because of the action.”

Louw said the public sector unions declared a labour dispute with the government after it refused to agree on a 12% wage increase, the filling of vacant posts and the improvement of working conditions.

The government is offering a 6% wage increase.

Louw said the public sector unions had met yesterday to plan a night vigil outside Parliament on Sunday as well as a march on May 25 in support of their demands.

“It will be a show of solidarity,” said Louw.

“We will be marching first to the provincial legislature to hand over a memorandum regarding the budget cuts and then to Parliament to hand over a memorandum regarding the wage disputes.”

Their members were expected to report to work and then leave at 10am on that day, to join the march.

National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) provincial secretary Suraya Jawoodeen said that, since Monday of this week, they had expected all public service workers to implement their work-to-rule call.

“This means we can only undertake work stipulated in our job descriptions.

“We will not do any work not in the job we are employed to do.

“This is not industrial action and is not illegal.

“It is a not a go-slow, which is industrial action.”

Jawoodeen said Fraser-Moleketi in all her public statements had deliberately conflated the two.

She said the employer – the government – must be forced to employ more people in the workplace in order not to compromise the quality of public service delivery.

Jawoodeen said they have asked various communities who continue to get poor quality service delivery to march with them to hand over a memorandum to Health MEC Pierre Uys regarding the R30 million budget cuts to Groote Schuur and Tygerberg hospitals.

She also said they intended to march to Parliament to defend their demands for a living wage increase of 12% in a single-term agreement and the filling of all posts.

De Lille slams ’stubborn’ government over wages

Original Permalink

By MATT MEDVED

ID leader Patricia de Lille yesterday trumpeted the cause of the public service workers who have threatened to go on strike in two weeks if they do not receive a 12% wage increase.

“The government’s stubborn refusal to budge on its 6% wage offer could lead to one of the largest public union strikes in our country’s history, and government will be to blame,” said De Lille.

“Civil servants are the backbone of our society and in terms of their contribution to our nation, they should be paid more.”

De Lille also said the ID would like to see better performance evaluations for civil servants. She blamed “a few useless individuals” for reflecting poorly on the others.

At its most recent meeting in Pretoria on Friday, Cosatu categorically rejected the government’s “paltry” offer of a 6% wage increase for public servants and reiterated their demand for a 12% increase.

“The biggest public service strike in a decade seems to be unavoidable,” said Cosatu spokesman Patrick Craven.

Craven said the strike was set to begin on May 28 and Cosatu expected nearly a million nurses, teachers and police officers to participate.

“Government has repeatedly said they should be paid more and that their working conditions should be improved so as to attract more skilled people into these essential professions,” said De Lille.

“Now that it finally has the opportunity to do so, it is revealing that its political statements have all been hollow rhetoric.”