Inhaltsverzeichnis für 2025-03-26 in Mercury

HIS Holiness Mahant Swami Maharaj heard the sad news of the passing of Ashwin Trikamjee, who was a beacon of selfless service as the president of the South African Hindu Maha Sabha and the chairperson of the National Religious Leaders Forum. His work for the betterment of society, the community, and South Africa has left an unforgettable mark, and his contributions will be remembered by all who were touched by his dedication and leadership. May his family find solace in the knowledge that their father’s legacy of service, compassion, and devotion to the greater good will continue to inspire and guide others. Swamishri also offers his blessings to Trikamjee’s family for the strength and wisdom to carry forward his remarkable work, ensuring that his vision for a better society continues…

OH BOY! Just one point in it. The damsels of the Pub With No Name, in Morningside, were in a frenzy as this match between Italian side Zebre and the Sharks see-sawed back and forth. Our guys scored two converted tries early on, and it seemed an avalanche was building up as our pack sent the Italians scrambling backward in the set scrums in a way I cannot recall happening before. But the Italians adjusted and fought back, eventually taking the lead. How did our fellows manage to disintegrate in this way? The damsels of the Pub With No Name were frantic at this point, and there was anticipation of once more supplying elastic – in the unlikely event of a turnaround – for a fashioning of catapults for the…

The High Court in Mpumalanga has issued a preservation order which was sought by the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) and the Asset Forfeiture Unit for a Toyota Hilux single-cab bakkie which was allegedly used to transport unlicensed firearms. The preservation order prevents the disposal of assets while investigations or legal proceedings related to potential forfeiture continue. Hawks spokesperson in Mpumalanga, Warrant Officer Thandi Tshabalala said the vehicle is valued at R320 000. The preservation order was granted on Monday. “On November 7, members of the SAPS flying squad unit were doing their normal patrol duties around R537 between White River and Sabie. The members noticed a Toyota bakkie that was driving at high speed. Members tried to stop the bakkie but the driver sped off,” said Tshabalala. A…

Experts are warning that South Africa is on the brink of an avian influenza disaster. This is according to the National Council of SPCA’s (NSPCA), who said if the government failed to act, thousands of birds could be affected. Without urgent intervention, another outbreak will tear through the poultry industry and even threaten wild bird populations, the NSPCA said. “The fastest and most effective way to stop the spread of the disease is culling infected birds. However, vaccination could also play a crucial role in reducing outbreaks.” The NSPCA said on November 25 last year, it urgently called on Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen to drive vaccination and its access, with sufficient biosecurity measures. “However, the poultry industry seems to be barred by impractical policies, such as the unrealistic biosecurity protocols,…

The KwaZulu-Natal police have raised the alarm about criminals impersonating police officers to carry out house robberies and other crimes. The warning comes from the Office of the Provincial Commissioner following incidents in KwaMashu, with authorities urging the public to remain vigilant and verify the identity of anyone claiming to be part of the SAPS. The police revealed that a syndicate has been entering homes under the pretence of searching for firearms. “The suspects usually wear different pieces of police uniform, such as a bulletproof vest, a police cap, a mask, or a raincoat. Once they are inside the premises, they point firearms at the occupants, while others ransack the house before fleeing,” police said. Police said that in a recent incident in KwaMashu, two men who claimed to be…

Any attempt to distort, trample on, or challenge Resolution 2758 is doomed to fail This year marks the 20th Anniversary of China’s Anti-Secession Law. Two decades ago, “Taiwan independence” separatist activities became increasingly rampant and seriously threatened China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity. In order to reject and curb “Taiwan independence” separatism and promote national reunification, the Chinese government, in response to the strong calls of the people of the Chinese nation, both home and abroad, made the momentous decision to formulate the Anti-Secession Law. The third session of the tenth National People’s Congress voted overwhelmingly to adopt this law, marking a historic milestone in the history of cross-Strait relations. Over the past 20 years, China has fully implemented the Anti-Secession Law, continuously enriched the legal framework for punishing “Taiwan…

Somalia officially became the 53rd member of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) on Monday, as the East African country seeks to boost intra-African trade and economic growth. The African multilateral financial institution said Somalia formally acceded to its establishment agreement, which is expected to bolster Somalia’s economic landscape by facilitating access to financial resources and investment opportunities aimed at enhancing infrastructure, trade facilitation, and capacity building. Hirsi Jama Ganni, Somalia’s state minister of the Office of the Prime Minister, said the milestone agreement signals their commitment to becoming a key player in regional and continental development, especially through trade, under the framework of the African Continental Free Trade Area. | XINHUA…

Brazil’s Supreme Court weighed yesterday whether to put far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro on trial for allegedly masterminding an attempted coup after losing elections in 2022. If convicted, the 70-year-old risks a prison sentence of about 40 years. According to the charge sheet, Bolsonaro led a “criminal organization” that had sought to unseat leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to whom he lost October 2022 elections. The former leader claims to be a victim of “persecution” and hopes to be allowed to run again in the 2026 presidential election despite being barred. “I am innocent,” and if jailed, “I have no doubt that in 30 days at the most, they will kill me,” Bolsonaro said in a podcast on Monday, without specifying who was behind the alleged plot. A week…

If you find yourself constantly reaching for chips, pretzels or salty popcorn, you’re not alone. Craving salty foods is more common than you think and it could be your body’s way of telling you something, whether it’s dehydration, stress or just habit. But while salt can make everything taste better, too much isn’t great for your health From high blood pressure to cardiovascular issues, salt has earned its reputation as a silent killer. Yet, understanding its impact and making small, practical changes can make a world of difference. Like many others around the globe, South Africans consume far more salt than recommended. The World Health Organization (WHO) advises a maximum daily intake of 5g of salt (about a teaspoon). However, the average South African consumes nearly 8g per day. This…

AFTER serving society tirelessly for over half a century in a plethora of spheres, Shree Ashwin Trikamjee attained his eternal moksha. Society competed for his time, which he gave unselfishly, and we will sorely miss his wisdom and counsel. We will never forget that lanky and towering figure, sporting salted sideburns and imbued with a boyish smile and a defining swagger. But behind the soft-spoken and mild-mannered demeanour, lay a steel mind with cutting-edge brilliance and intelligence, incisive and perceptive in thought. Over the decades, I bumped into Trikamjee on many occasions because of my association with the late PV Lakhani, a former president of the South African Hindu Maha Sabha (SAHMS), who worked with me. In the ’80s, there was always a chat at Currie’s Fountain and in the…

THE passing of human rights icon Ashwin Trikamjee has created a void that will take decades to fill. While words can never fully express how much someone means to us, language can still provide comfort, solace hope and even inspiration following the death of a person who did so much for so many over such a long time. Trikamjee was an icon of the times. This apostle of caring and giving, is a promise to South Africa that there is hope even in the most seemingly hopeless conditions. His monumental contributions to the community reaffirm our faith in humanity. Nobody can forget this exemplar of devotion to all the tasks that he undertook. His life was a fabric of compassion, the main strands of which was helping the men,…

OFFICIALS in the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport have been given an ultimatum to address irregular expenditure amounting to billions of rand or resign from their positions. IFP member of the provincial legislature and member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), Lourens de Klerk, gave the officials a tongue lashing, accusing them of not taking seriously the issues raised regarding the irregular expenditure and calling for their resignation. “We all know that the departments of Education, Health, and Transport are the ones that report irregular expenditure. Why do you have irregular expenditure? Just follow the law,” said De Klerk. Other Scopa members also voiced their unhappiness about the issue. Over the years, the department has accumulated a staggering R33 billion in irregular expenditure, one of the highest among KZN…

The adage “obey now and grieve later” (which requires employees to obey lawful and reasonable instructions by superiors and to challenge any indiscretions later) holds true today, a judge said. He found that the firing of a prison official who twice refused to take an inmate to hospital was fair. The Johannesburg Labour Appeal Court remarked that the “obey now and grieve later” concept is even more fundamental in law enforcement institutions, where obedience is imperative. A prison official, who worked at the Atteridgeville Correctional Centre, west of Pretoria, was fired by the department for disobeying an instruction to take the prisoner to hospital. The CCMA later confirmed his dismissal, while the Labour Court deemed it unfair. It ordered his reinstatement, coupled with a final warning. Unhappy with this verdict,…

The health ministry’s banning of foodstuffs derived from cannabis and hemp-derived products took the country’s burgeoning cannabis sector by surprise. The ministry published a notice prohibiting the sale, import or manufacture of all foodstuffs – commonly known as edibles – containing any part of/component derived from the cannabis and/or hemp genus, Cannabis sativa L. The prohibition also applies to hemp seed oil and hemp seed flour with ingredients derived from Cannabis sativa L. The sector said the prohibition did not align with the country’s economic goals to grow the cannabis and hemp sector. In a webinar by Cheeba Cannabis & Hemp TV, Ras Gareth Prince, a lawyer and chairperson of the Cannabis Development Council of South Africa, said everything has to start with the legislature. “We have a legislator that…

School principals in KwaZulu-Natal are increasingly finding themselves in a precarious financial situation, as they are compelled to use their personal salaries to run school operations. They said this was due to the Department of Education’s failure to disburse the necessary allocations for the term. This comes as teachers’ unions and political parties raised concerns about the national Budget allocations for education. Many principals have reported being harassed by suppliers of stationery, who have yet to receive payment for their services. The affected institutions are primarily Section 21 schools, which were supposed to receive their allocations last year to procure essential supplies for the current school year. Section 21 schools are those that manage their funds. Teachers’ unions and members of the Education Portfolio Committee have acknowledged the severity of…

President Cyril Ramaphosa has expressed concern about the increasing number of South African nurses moving to work abroad amid a growing shortage of nurses in the country. “We are seeing a decline in training numbers,” Ramaphosa said in his address at the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa’s (Denosa) ninth congress in Boksburg yesterday. The three-day conference is expected to discuss several issues currently facing the healthcare sector. He said apart from the issue of fewer people seeing nursing as an attractive career, he urged the conference to address the matters facing the healthcare system. This includes issues of nurses, doctors and other medical professionals going out of the country for work. “You need to discuss how we deal with this spectre of recruitment that is taking place among those…

Yemeni movement Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, said it launched two ballistic missiles at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport, the Almasirah broadcaster reported yesterday. CENTCOM has published a video on X of fighter jets taking off from a runway with the words “Give ’em Hell Harry,” which may be a reference to the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier. The Houthis also attacked the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and other warships in the Red Sea with missiles and drones, the report added. Over the weekend, the US mounted dozens of strikes targeting Yemen’s northern and central regions under Houthi control, including the capital of Sanaa. The strikes killed more than 50 people and injured almost 100, according to the Houthis. | SPUTNIK…

Japan has said that it backed close security cooperation with South Korea and India in the Indo-Pacific, days after the Philippines’ military chief said a US-backed security group wanted both nations to join to counter China in the region. Japan’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement to Reuters on Monday that it supported building a multi-layered network of alliances in general, but declined to say whether it has given its consent or made any specific considerations on the expansion of the Squad group. The Squad is an informal multilateral grouping made up of Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the US, focused on defence cooperation, intelligence sharing, and joint military exercises and operations. “It is important to build networks among allies and like-minded countries organically and in a multi-layered manner,…

A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents 12 500 yen ($83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in Japan, where gaining a retrial is notoriously hard and death row inmates are often informed of their impending death just a few hours before…

The Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz) has expressed growing concern over alarming statistics from Statistics SA that revealed an unsettling increase in food insecurity across the nation. Data released in February showed that the percentage of food-insecure households rose significantly from 15.8% in 2019 to 19.7% in 2023, raising serious questions about the well-being of millions of South Africans. According to Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at Agbiz, an increasing number of households were struggling to secure basic food needs although South Africa stands as a formidable leader in agricultural exports within Africa. “If you look at Agricultural Trade Data, South Africa is the only country from Africa in the top 40 global exporters. In 2024, South Africa's agricultural exporters reached a record $13.7 billion (R248bn). Some of the…

Telkom has officially entered the Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) market through a partnership with a renowned Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE) platform provider. This agreement not only allows Telkom to comply with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) spectrum licence conditions but also facilitates the onboarding of multiple MVNOs, particularly those that are black-owned. The MVNO landscape in South Africa is witnessing unprecedented growth, fuelled by the involvement of banks, insurance companies, and major retail chains eager to leverage the telecom sector’s potential. According to the Africa Analysis MVNO Report released in February 2024, the market’s revenue is projected to reach R83.6 billion, highlighting robust growth opportunities for new entrants. Since the inception of the MVNO sector in 2006, subscriber numbers have surged by 51% year-on-year as…

Pam Andrews, the South African actress who rose to fame in 2001 after her success on Coca-Cola Popstars, recently shared more about her unconventional relationship with her husband, Voytek Pieron, shedding light on their open marriage and why they choose to live separately. In a social media post, the actress opened up about her 11-year marriage. “Me and my husband have been married for 11 years now, we don’t live together and we have an open marriage. It just works for us,” Andrews shared. The actress, who, despite being a household name, left acting a few years ago and is currently living in London, explained the reasoning behind their arrangement. “As soon as we are under one roof, we are just fighting and driving each other crazy,” she confessed, giving…

The increase in incidents of air traffic navigation system issues, air traffic controller capacity issues, and dilapidation at airports across the country demands proper investigatory oversight and accountability from Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Transport. The DA will write to the committee chairperson, requesting an appearance by Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy for her to explain the status of these, her plans to fix them, and for her to provide the content of an independent investigatory report to the committee. Minister Creecy is in receipt of a report by a panel of experts into the failures of the Air Traffic Navigation Services (ATNS) company, which found gaps in safety practices and reliability issues in surveillance, navigation, and communication systems of the national ATNS, but this report has not yet been provided…

What does it mean to be and live and think like an adult? We take responsibility for our lives despite past neglect or trauma we may have endured. We do what we can to live and love without blame. We are aware of growing in the understanding of where we begin and end. This is the art of knowing the span and the limits of our responsibilities to ourselves, our families, and our communities. We try to see people, acknowledge others, recognise that we did not get to where we are – wherever that may be – on our own and neither did anyone else. We know there are no “self-made” individuals no matter the extent to which they may make the claim. We know we need people and that…

THE joke of the year from Donald Trump was that he would stop the Ukrainian war in two hours. Months down the line the US president is still playing pat-a-cake with Vladimir Putin. Putin is either playing Trump for a sucker or the two of them are conspiring to further advantage Russia. The so-called “ceasefire talks” are a hoax, designed to lull Ukraine into sleepiness. While these talks carry on, Putin is slowly advancing on Kyiv. Why Trump is ignoring Putin’s middle finger and putting out fake news about the “success” of the negotiations? Is he frightened of Putin? Frightened of sparking Word War III? There has not been a single compromise from Putin. Trump is soft on Russia. He’s released Putin from the cage Biden put him in and…

THE KwaZulu-Natal government has received a pat on the back in the form of an additional budget allocation from the National Treasury for spending its previous financial budget better than other provinces, Finance MEC Francois Rodgers said. Rodgers, who was delivering the provincial annual budget of R158 billion in Pietermaritzburg yesterday, said the province’s good financial expenditure had resulted in the Treasury allocating additional funding to it, including funds that were not spent by other provinces. Before delivering his speech, Rodgers had received a memorandum from members of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, who were demanding that the Cabinet should not approve the VAT increase announced by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. In his budget speech, Rodgers said R100 million had been redirected to KwaZulu-Natal from the R200m…

THE Department of Home Affairs has announced that it is rolling out a comprehensive upgrade to its digital verification system that sits at the heart of national security and both public and private sector services in South Africa. “This verification system enables government departments ranging from National Treasury to the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), as well as businesses in the financial sector, to verify the identities of clients using biometric features like fingerprints and facial recognition against the national population register,” the department said. It said the use of this system will come at an extra cost to companies in the private sector and will come into effect on April 1. Public sector users, including government departments and agencies, will remain exempt from these new fees. The Minister…

The lawyer representing Steveno van Rhyn, one of the accused in the disappearance of 6-year-old Joshlin Smith, questioned the State witness’s intention behind linking her client with the child’s disappearance. Lourentia Lombaard, a former accused in the matter who turned State witness after the charges were dropped against her, testified that she overheard the missing girl’s mother Racquel ‘Kelly’ Smith tell her boyfriend Jacquen ‘Boeta’ Appollis that she had sold her daughter to a sangoma. Joshlin went missing from her Middelpos home on February 19 last year. She had been in the care of Appollis while her mother was at work. Kelly, Boeta and Van Rhyn face kidnapping and human trafficking charges. They have pleaded not guilty. Lombaard had testified that Kelly had sold Joshlin to a sangoma for R20…

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun on Monday rejected the possibility of the country’s participation in a potential peacekeeping contingent in Ukraine after the end of the conflict. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in late February that Russia had not discussed the possible involvement of Chinese peacekeepers in the context of resolving the conflict in Ukraine. On Saturday, the German newspaper reported that China was discussing with European countries the possibility of its participation in a peacekeeping mission. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on March 6 that Russia sees no possibility for achieving a compromise on the possible deployment of European peacekeepers in Ukraine. Media reports emerged earlier in March that French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer are trying to convince 37 countries to join…

India is open to cutting tariffs on more than half of US imports worth $23 billion in the first phase of a trade deal the two nations are negotiating, two government sources said, the biggest cut in years, aimed at fending off reciprocal tariffs. The South Asian nation wants to mitigate the impact of US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal worldwide tariffs set to take effect from April 2, a threat that has disrupted markets and sent policymakers scrambling, even among Western allies. In an internal analysis, New Delhi estimated such reciprocal tariffs would hit 87% of its total exports to the US worth $66bn, two government sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Under the deal, India is open to reducing tariffs on 55% of US goods it imports…

Samsung Electronics co-CEO Han Jong-hee, credited with boosting the South Korean tech giant’s television business on the global stage, died of a heart attack yesterday aged 63, the company told AFP. A Samsung spokesperson said Han was survived by his wife and three children. Han joined Samsung in 1988 and was seen as having played a key role in getting its high-end TV sets noticed worldwide. “Han was central in the unveiling of Samsung’s world-class LED TVs,” the firm said in a company biography. | AFP…