Dlamini-Zuma & sun Edward Zuma, looks like it runs in the family !!!

 Some aggrieved South Africans have gone ahead to change.org website to append their signatures for the immediate removal of Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma from office all through the period of Coronavirus the petition reads. Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma have been accused of playing pranks with South Africans for not stating the true reason for alcohol and cigarettes ban. Dr. Zuma had proposed that the government move the ban on cigarettes to level 1 against the earlier suggested level 3 which is making many south Africans angry that she may have an ulterior motive behind her actions. She had been under intense criticism since she made the announcement 

 However, those signing the petition doubled after it was revealed that the cigarettes that have flooded the South Africa black markets are those being produced by Edward Zuma, a prominent member of the Zuma’s family. There is also a statement in her Wikipedia page under her biography, controversies precisely where it was stated that she was once linked to a certain cigarettes smuggling syndicate operating in South Africa and also went ahead to publish her photographs to back up the claims. However, it is unclear if she is still with the smuggling syndicate. People are confused how all these cigarettes came to the streets of South Africa without the police doing anything about it. 

From Opera News Hub

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s, they do not reflect the views of Opera News. Please report any fake news or defamatory statements to feedback-newshub-za@operanewshub.com

This is why the rest of the World is laughing at South Africa!

There is no apparent reason for the ban on cigarettes that can be honestly mentioned to the citizens of South Africa. The ban on cigarettes have been issued illicitly and it is considered unlawful.

No other countries, have issued a ban on cigarette due to health reasons associated with contacting the coronavirus, with reduced lung functions or other reasons that have been considered.

NDZ is under pressure over the cigarette ban that she had implemented at the start of the lockdown 60 days ago. Which we had come to understand that level 4 would allow the ban to be lifted and cigarettes to be allowed for legal purchase, that had later been postponed to level 3. However, before the onset of LEVEL 3, cigarettes smokers came to realise that the ban would only be further extended to level 1.

This issue has caused a stir in society and citizens are very unhappy about this. Aside from citizens, tobacco companies and tobacco farmers are likewise disgusted with the continued ban on cigarettes. The DA party also has alot to say about the ciggarette ban as they are also against it.

The fight for the uplifting of the cigarette ban continues with various legal parties and authorities including the 11 million somewhat smokers from South Africa.

We are to recieve relief sooner than we think, the ban is surely backfiring on NDZ and she is now required to provide reasons as to why the ban had continued.

Further to that, there has been information leaked that NDZ has ordered the ban, so that citizens would flock to purchase these cigarettes from the black market, which is run by her son. As well as other information stating that she, herself is also linked to the black market sales of ciggarettes.

Level 3 is expected to commence on Monday, 1st June. Which, within this time we should hear more about the uplifting of the ban.

It’s not just the smokers of South Africa who are fighting hard for the ban to be lifted, this also shows that there are several other legal parties who are all in the fight together.

This goes to show, that the ban will be lifted sooner than we imagined which will Bring relief to all smokers in South Africa.

We will be able to purchase cigarettes legally and at normal prices.

If alcohol sales is to resume on Level 3, considering the health issues associated with it, like the damage to one’s kidneys, the excessive insulin imbalance, diabetes (which is also a risk if one had to contact the coronavirus) – aside from health risks we should also take into account domestic violence and accidents. As alcohol is only allowed to be consumed in your homes, then why not cigarettes be allowed to be consumed in your homes too, or in your backyard? There could have been rules made for if one is caught smoking in public he will be subject to a fine.

There were many ways around it, however. The reasons for the cigarette ban remain illicit and unlawful.

Nevertheless, cigarettes will be allowed soon enough as the ban finally backfires on NDZ and the others who are working closely with her to keep the ban implemented.

What are your thoughts about this matter? Do you believe the ban on cigarettes will crash soon?

From Opera News Hub

In 2017 Sunday Times Linked Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma To Cigarettes Smuggling

https://www.operanewsapp.com/news/detail/8bb6ddd9a9bce47b82a19035082a5daf?product=news

Sunday Times Newspaper in November 2017 linked Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma To a cigarettes smuggling syndicate operating in South Africa by publishing her photographs. This information appears boldly on her Wikipedia page under controversies. So when people say that Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is benefiting from cigarettes smuggling, they may not entirely be wrong because in the past she was linked to a syndicate group involved in smuggling of cigarettes. In every rumour, there could be an element of truth. So, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma involvement in cigarettes scandals did not start today.

Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is one of the most vocal people who do not want cigarettes to be unbanned but smuggling of the products is happening and the smugglers are making huge money by selling their smuggled products at high prices, but they are not paying taxes to the government. In everything the government and the citizens are losing while the smugglers are becoming increasingly richer and wealthier yet Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma does not want the government to unban the product. What is really happening?

Do you know that experts in medical field have been quoted saying that the ban and cigarettes have nothing to with fighting Coronavirus. Since the ban on alcohol and cigarettes, South Africa have reported more than 20,000 cases of Corona virus while countries that didn’t ban have less than 6,000 cases

From Opera News Hub

From which planet does our lockdown tobacco law come from? asks FMF

Johannesburg – Police Minister Bheki Cele has decided that smoking with receipts is healthier than smoking without them, the Free Market Foundation (FMF) said on Sunday.

“He did not say whether he had a receipt for whatever his advisors were smoking,” FMF CEO Leon Louw said in a statement.

“Unwittingly, he produced proof of life elsewhere. On my planet small and informal traders do not issue cash register receipts, yet he requires all consumers to have them. On my planet smokers dispose of supermarket receipts in recycle bins. On my planet laws are made by law-makers, not ministers on the fly. On my planet no one told coronaviruses [Covid-19] to discriminate against cigarettes without receipts. On my planet no one thinks that receipts are vaccines.

“Cele whimsically decreed that people with receipts may smoke. No, that is not a joke or fake news, and, no, it was not another planet. It really happened. Here,” he said.

Since most till slips did not list items, Louw advised smokers to “wave any old receipt at an obnoxious cop demanding a receipt by either definition: bribe or worthless paper”.

If police wanted cigarettes listed, all smokers needed was one old receipt. It would suffice for limitless cigarettes. “If you have a few receipts, sell them in the new government sponsored illicit receipt market,” he said.

Loony aspects of lockdown drove harmless people into the hands of criminals who, gleefully supported by the government, prosper while normal lives were ruined. The government was carpet bombing its own country. By the time the tobacco ban was lifted, it might have cost the economy R450 billion – enough to replace all shacks with houses, or give all unemployed people informal jobs, Louw said.

Fuelling the rage of 11 million victimised smokers, and millions more subjected to their rage, Cele briefed media thus: “It is not illegal to smoke cigarettes in your house,” he said, “only … when you fail to show us when and where you got the cigarettes.”

“Seriously, that is what he said. His decree was neither to combat illicit trade, which this move promoted, nor to combat infection. It supposedly establishes when cigarettes were bought. Since cigarettes do not have serial numbers, they can not be linked to even itemised receipts.”

Policymaking ought to be a carefully considered process, based on scientific evidence, cost-benefit analysis, and public participation. For such measures to be constitutional, there had to be a rational connection between cigarette receipts and Covid-19 transmission. “On my planet, there is no such evidence,” he said.

If Cele had secret evidence, he owed it to the world where, in virtually all countries, tobacco sales were lawful. He should tell Dr Anthony Fauci of the US and the World Health Organisation (WHO) why demanding receipts did not induce such life-threatening laughter that patients needed respirators. Maybe his advisors found out how to get viruses to bypass receipt-holders.

“More concerning than policymaking on the fly is that the economy is in tatters, yet the finance minister and the revenue service are silent about their tobacco revenues going up in smoke while puritan prohibitionists promote illicit trade,” Louw said.

Instead of the SA Police Service (SAPS) being a service distributing advice, masks, sanitiser, and gloves, it was back to being a police “force” as under apartheid. Like its precursor, it now had to enforce ludicrous laws. Instead of protecting harmless people, it criminalised them.

“While citizens confront mortality, unemployment, bankruptcy, depression, and anxiety, it is beyond dystopian to harass them for proof of cigarette purchase. The ban and the ’till slip’ law are devoid of science, precedent, or common sense. The virus will be with us for months during which rules should be based on facts, data, sanity, and compassion.

“The government says smoking is addictive. If true, humanity and decency call for treatment and support, not criminalisation and oppression.

“The government should heed the call to discontinue ill-conceived, if not unlawful, measures. Instead of the rule of law, we have the law of unintended consequences. South Africans are forgiving people who want responsible and responsive government, not suspension of all constitutionally protected rights and liberties,” Louw said.

African News Agency (ANA)

SA government confirms Dalai Lama’s visa application

The international relations department on Thursday confirmed that Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama made a visa application in India for entry to South Africa.

He was due to attend the 14th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Cape Town next month.

“The application will be taken through normal due process. The relevant authorities will communicate with the applicant thereafter,” department spokesperson Clayson Monyela said in a statement.

Monyela confirmed that the South African High Commission in New Delhi “has received a visa application from the office of … the Dalai Lama for a planned visit … to South Africa”, but provided no further details.

Visa denied

The Cape Times however reported earlier on Thursday that the Dalai Lama was refused entry to South Africa.

The Dalai Lama’s representative in South Africa, Nangsa Choedon, said officials from the department of international relations had phoned her office in the past week to say the Tibetan spiritual leader would not be granted a visa. 

The office had yet to receive written confirmation. “For now the Dalai Lama has decided to cancel his trip to South Africa,” Choedon was quoted as saying. 

The summit, an annual gathering, is being arranged by a local organising committee formed by the foundations representing four South African laureates; Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk, and Albert Luthuli.

The Cape Times also reported that other Nobel Peace laureates told Tutu they would not come if the Dalai Lama was not permitted to enter the country. This is the third time in five years that the Dalai Lama could not secure a visa to enter South Africa.

The department could not confirm nor deny whether the visa had been refused. Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille, who would be hosting the event, had instructed city officials to write to the government to establish whether he had been denied a visa. 

“We have not heard from them yet, but I will not give up hope that our government will not humiliate the Dalai Lama again,” De Lille was quoted as saying. – Sapa

Spy tapes D-day: Zille to announce handover status

Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille will be in Pretoria on Thursday for the deadline of the handing over of the so-called spy tapes.

Accompanied by DA Gauteng leader John Moodey, Gauteng north chairperson Solly Msimanga and national spokespersons Marius Redelinghuys and Phumzile van Damme, Zille is expected to announce the status of the handover to the DA supporters who are expected to gather outside the high court in Pretoria at noon.

Last week the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) had to comply with a previous order to release the tapes within five days, in an application brought by the DA. The recordings, internal memoranda, reports and minutes of meetings dealing with the contents of the recordings also had to be provided.

President Jacob Zuma had opposed the move, bringing an application to prevent the release of the spy tapes and relevant related documents to the DA. His application was however dismissed.

At the time, a serving high court judge not involved in the matter said that the president had “exhausted his options on delaying the provision of the record”.

After many years of sometimes highly imaginative resistance to the handing over of the tapes, last week Thursday’s order by the court seems to represent the end of that particular road.

Zuma charges may be a ‘long way off’
The DA demanded the tapes as part of the record of the decision to drop corruption charges against Zuma. With that record the party can – depending on the contents – launch an application for a judicial review of the decision to drop the charges. If that review is successful, the charges may be brought again.

But although the DA celebrated the order that it must get the tapes, its actual goal – having charges pressed against Zuma – may still be a long way off.

“The spy tapes were always just a red herring, preventing the courts from the considering the real issue,” says constitutional expert Pierre de Vos. “That fight has been lost, but in the Stalingrad strategy you say ‘this block has been lost, now we fight for the next block.’”

“Stalingrad” has become shorthand for Zuma’s legal strategy of fighting every technicality in every available forum. It has been successful, and could well continue to be so.

“Once you have a review application then a whole lot of possible options open to the respondent [Zuma] to make technical points,” says the serving judge. “There’s probably still a good year or two ahead before the review would be heard, then the appeals all the way up … It’ll be another five-year saga before there is an outcome.”

Conspiracy against Zuma
In April 2009, then acting national director of public prosecutions Moketedi Mpshe said the intercepted telephone calls on the tapes showed an abuse of process verging on a conspiracy against Zuma, and so he had decided to drop the case. 

The tapes allegedly reveal collusion between the former heads of the Directorate of Special Operations – the now defunct Scorpions – Leonard McCarthy, and the NPA’s former head Bulelani Ngcuka, to manipulate the prosecutorial process before the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007. Zuma was elected ANC president at the conference.

Although Mpshe released very limited excerpts of the recordings, the only parties known to have, or have had, copies of the actual recordings are Zuma’s legal team and the intelligence services. – Sapa, staff reporter

EFF still seeks Nkandla answers as Mbete defers suspension case

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MPs will demand answers from President Jacob Zuma the same way party lawmakers did over a week ago in Parliament, if given another opportunity.

EFF national spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said his party would continue to seek answers on tax monies spent on Zuma’s Nkandla homestead until the president replies in a satisfactory manner.  

Twenty-five EFF MPs were let off the hook by National Assembly speaker Baleka Mbete on Monday, after she deferred the matter to the powers and privileges committee of Parliament. Mbete was expected to ask the National Assembly on Tuesday at its sitting to suspend the EFF MPs, however she changed her mind on Monday – allowing the committee to handle the issue.

The MPs are however not entirely safe, a multiparty committee will look at whether it is necessary to reprimand them and what action would be appropriate for that. Three allegations that the committee needs to investigate against EFF MPs are: disruption of procedures, adjournment of Parliament as a consequence of disruption and prevention of Parliament from finalising its schedule. 

Money ‘unduly spent in Nandla’
Mbete’s decision to halt the move to suspend EFF MPs was viewed as some sort of a victory by Julius Malema’s party. Spokesperson Ndlozi said the speaker’s decision was “one of the first vindications” of the new opposition party’s position and protest in Parliament over a week ago, demanding that Zuma pays back part of the money “unduly spent in Nkandla”.  

Last week, Mbete suspended Parliament after EFF members started banging on their hard hats shouting  “we want the money” and “Nkandla must be paid”.

Public protector Thuli Madonsela’s report on security upgrades at Zuma’s Nkandla private home  recommended that the president pays back a portion of the money spent on upgrades that are not related to security needs. Ndlozi said: “EFF maintains that none of its MPs acted outside the rules of parliament and that it will proceed to robustly demand answers from the executive without any fear or favour”. 

Concerns raised
At the meeting of the powers and privileges committee, some MPs questioned why EFF lawmakers such as the party’s chief whip Floyd Shivambu and Khanyisile Litchfield-Tshabalala are allowed to serve on a structure that will take a decision about their fellow party MPs. Shivambu offered to “recuse myself when the committee looks at me, but when you look at all other members, I will be here. This is not a group charge, these are individual charges,” he said. 

In a letter written to the EFF, Mbete’s lawyers said she was of the view that the committee should be given “the space to proceed with the process in an expeditious manner”. Litchfield-Tshabalala raised concerns about Mbete’s objectivity and said it was difficult to know if ANC MPs were sitting on the committee as “honourable members or as representatives of their party. Their party has already made judgments and pronouncements in public”. 

The ANC has called for EFF MPs to be punished for their disruption of a Parliament session where Zuma was answering questions.

ANC chief whip’s wife in court

Port Elizabeth – ANC chief whip Stone Sizani’s wife Portia Sizani appeared in the Port Elizabeth Commercial Crimes Court on fraud and money laundering charges, City Press reported on Wednesday.

She is alleged to have defrauded the department of education of more than R1.2 million between 2009 and 2010 when she worked as the Port Elizabeth district education co-ordinator of the early childhood development unit.

The State is alleging that Sizani organised work for “ghost” teachers, who didn’t exist, and had people sign assumption of duty forms, which were also signed by school principals on her insistence.

She was arrested in December 2012 and the trial was reportedly delayed for more than a year due to alleged ill health.

The trial would continue on Thursday. – Sapa

Petrus Meyer Knysna man accused of dragging dog behind car in court again 5 Sept 2014

http://www.heraldlive.co.za/knysna-man-accused-dragging-dog-behind-car-court/

Arms deal inquiry accepts de Lille dossier

Barry Bateman

PRETORIA – The Seriti Commission of Inquiry on Thursday revealed it would accept a dossier from arms deal whistleblower Patricia de Lille.

The hearing is investigating claims of fraud and corruption relating to the 1999 procurement.

The Cape Town mayor started giving evidence at the inquiry in Pretoria earlier on Thursday where she asked to submit the documents.

The dossier contains more details on certain allegations.

She says the file was first given to her by concerned African National Congress members of Parliament 15 years ago.

The senior Democratic Alliance member says the information therein led to the conviction of Schabir Shaik and Tony Yengeni, and should be viewed in light of President Jacob Zuma’s role in the saga.

De Lille told the commission she wanted the president to be investigated fully.

She asked why the former heads of the Scorpions and National Prosecuting Authority were never probed for interfering in the matter.

De Lille said she personally laid charges against Leonard McCarthy and Bulelani Ngcuka in 2009 for alleged undue influence leading to the withdrawal of corruption charges against Zuma.

The then-acting national director of public prosecutions Mokotedi Mpshe based his decision on the so-called spy tapes.

The tapes are alleged to be recordings of McCarthy discussing the timing of the charges being brought against Zuma.

De Lille says she wants the commission to establish whether charges against the pair were ever investigated.

By her own admission, de Lille had insufficient personal knowledge of the allegations contained in the dossier she presented.

This led Judge Willie Seriti to rule that the evidence would be accepted for consideration but de Lille would not be examined on it herself.

Seriti said she was merely the messenger and should not be questioned on evidence she could not support.