Concern for South African Doctor Held in Abu Dhabi over Mystery Conviction

THE GUARDIAN: Cyril Karabus, 77, detained for two months over 10-year-old case he did not know about, while files remain missing

A South African doctor who dedicated himself to saving the lives of black children from cancer throughout the apartheid era has been refused bail by a court in Abu Dhabi, where years ago he was accused and convicted without his knowledge of killing a young leukaemia patient.

Cyril Karabus pioneered treatment for cancer and blood disorders at the Red Cross hospital in Cape Town, where he worked for 35 years, and trained numerous doctors at Cape Town University, some of whom now work at Great Ormond Street and the Whittington hospitals in London[.]

Now 77, he has been returned to the jail where he has been confined for the last two months. "He is an old, frail and very sickly man," said his lawyer, Michael Bagraims. "He has no travel documents or any means of escaping or jumping bail. There doesn't seem to be any heart in what is taking place.

"My reports from people who were in the court were that the man appears to be broken. He was hunched. He was shackled. He is almost 78 and he has a pacemaker and a stent because of problems with his heart. He appears to have his spirit broken as well. Yet the man has not done anything wrong." » | Sarah Boseley, health editor | Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Obamas' Freedom of Cape Town Honour Divides South Africa
THE GUARDIAN: Decision to honour Barack and Michelle Obama criticised by religious groups amid row over US impact on Middle East

Bestowing an honour on America's first black president might seem an uncontroversial choice for post-apartheid South Africa. But what was good enough for the Nobel peace prize committee is just the latest trigger for acrimony in the polarised city of Cape Town.

Its decision to grant president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, the freedom of the city has provoked a growing backlash from rival parties, churches, Muslim groups and trade unions, who branded it a "political gimmick".

They warn that if the couple ever set foot in Cape Town to accept the award, they will be greeted by mass protests drawing attention to America's human rights record. » | David Smith, Libreville, Gabon | Monday, June 11, 2012

Imam Blesses Union of Gay Muslim Couple in France

AL ARABIYA NEWS: Two Muslim gay men, deeply in love, tied the knot in France with the blessing of an imam.

Ludovic Mohamed Zahed, a French man of Algerian origin, and his South African partner Qiyam al-Din, were reportedly married in accordance to the Sharia (Islamic law) in the presence of a Mauritian imam named Jamal who blessed their union on February 12, 2012, according to a report in Albawbaba on April 2.

The two were previously able to marry in South Africa under the country’s same sex marriage laws, which also permits gay couples to adopt but France does not recognize same sex unions.

Zahed shared his story with France 24 TV, telling the channel how he met Din last year at a convention on AIDS in South Africa.

“I was in the lecture hall when an imam, who incidentally is gay himself, introduced me to Din. We discovered we had a lot in common and a mutual admiration was cemented. I stayed on after the convention for two months, deciding to get married, since South African laws were more friendly [to same sex unions],” he said.

After the wedding that was organized by Din’s family, the couple decided to return to France and settle down in a Parisian suburb, hoping that the French government would recognize the legality of their marriage.

But the French authorities refused.

Zahed, who has his family’s blessings for the marriage, says that he faces more obstacles with the French law than discrimination from Muslims. » | Al Arabiya | Sunday, April 08, 2012

Bring Back the Death Penalty, Says South Africa Medical Chief
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The head of the South African Medical Association has called for the return of the death penalty after one of the country's senior dermatologists was gunned down by carjackers in the capital Pretoria.

Dr Norman Mabasa told mourners at Dr John Moche's funeral that the country was "under siege".

"The number of people who die at the hands of criminals is higher than in countries embroiled in civil wars or natural disasters," he said.

"Crime has become so bad that soon we are going to have to put burglar bars around our beds."

Dr John Moche, a father to two young children and head of Steve Biko Academic Hospital's dermatology department in Pretoria, was one of just 166 qualified dermatologists in the country because of a skills shortage in specialist medicine.

He was dropping off a nurse at her home last Friday when he was shot through the heart by carjackers who sped off in his Range Rover. The car was later found abandoned in Atteridgeville, a township ten miles to the west. No arrests have been made yet. » | Aislinn Laing in Johannesburg | Friday, February 03, 2012

Men Who Stabbed and Stoned Lesbian to Death Are Sentenced to 18 Years' Jail
THE GUARDIAN: Cape Town court sentences four over the murder of Zoliswa Nkonyana, 19, in what activists say was a homophobic attack

A court in Cape Town has sentenced four men to 18 years in jail for a murder that rights activists say was carried out because the victim was a lesbian. » | Associated Press, Johannesburg | Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Burnt in Satanic Ritual
THE STAR: A TEENAGE girl is in a coma after she and a friend were doused with petrol and set alight in an apparent satanic ritual.

The girls, one 18 and the other 16, were among eight youngsters who went to a koppie behind the Linmeyer swimming pool on Julius Street on Friday night.

According to Samantha Theologia, her 18-year-old sister Kirsty has 75 percent burns to her body from the waist up.

Doctors had told them, she said, that they were worried about her sister’s recovery because her lungs and throat were damaged.

Kirsty was scheduled to have surgery today. » | ANGELIQUE SERRAO | Monday, October 24, 2011

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Teenage girl in coma after she's burned alive by friends in 'satanic ritual': An 18-year-old South African woman was in a coma Monday after being doused in petrol and burned alive by friends in a Johannesburg park, in what police suspect was a satanic ritual. » | Monday, October 24, 2011

Gay Rights Are Human Rights

LOS ANGELES TIMES – EDITORIAL: Recent violence against gay people in South Africa is a reminder that the struggle for gay rights is a global one.

When it comes to gay rights, South Africa is something of a paradox. Legally progressive, the country allows gay marriage and, in its Constitution, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Gay groups flourish — soccer clubs and church organizations included — and middle-class gay men and women live relatively openly.

But in some parts of the country, particularly in rural areas and townships, the progressive laws collide with deeply traditional views of homosexuality as un-African and as an import from the decadent West.

In the South African township of Kwa-Thema, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, a young lesbian woman who dressed like a man and played soccer as well as one was found dead in an alley on Easter morning, having been stabbed with broken glass, battered with bricks and apparently raped with a broken bottle. Two other openly gay women have been murdered in the township since 2008, and some gay men and women report having been raped by attackers who claimed to be teaching them a lesson.

The violence in South Africa is a reminder that the struggle for gay rights is a global one. A gay rights demonstration in Moscow was disrupted last month by counter-protesters, and Russian security forces detained people from both sides of the protest. In Jamaica, homophobic lyrics in dancehall music have been blamed for violent attacks on gay people. » | Monday, June 06, 2011

Zuma Meets with Gaddafi
May 30 - South African president Jacob Zuma meets with Gaddafi, marking the first time the Libyan leader has been seen in public since May 11. Deborah Gembara reports

President Zuma in Tripoli
South African President Jacob Zuma has arrived in Tripoli for talks with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Zuma is expected to attempt to revive an African roadmap for a ceasefire between rebels and government forces.

Al Jazeera's Cal Perry reports from Benghazi.

Aussie Dollar Boosted by Its Own 'Gold Standard'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Australian dollar is one of the strongest currencies in the world because it is a commodity-backed currency. That’s why it hit a 29-year high against the US dollar today – and it’s all related to the gold price.

The gold price is hitting new all-time highs on a daily basis because many investors have lost faith in paper money. They believe that central bank printing presses are devaluing currencies on a daily basis.

It is the same lack of belief in paper money that has been boosting the Aussie dollar. Paper money used to be backed by gold held in a central bank, but this was abandoned all over the world, allowing central banks to print money via processes such as quantitative easing.

Today, no currency in the world is on the gold standard – all money is “fiat” money.

However, Australia has significant resources of gold, uranium, iron ore, coal and many other important and valuable commodities. They are in the ground, not in a central bank, but this is the nearest thing the world has to the old gold standard. That’s why the Australian currency is so strong.

The same is also true of currencies in Canada, South Africa and Russia. They are effectively backed by commodities in the ground. » | Garry White | Friday, April 08, 2011

Xenophobic Violence in South Africa
Poor South Africans are taking out their frustrations on poor foreigners.
Watch NYT video here

Apartheid Haunts South Africa's Schools
Celia Dugger reports from the Kwamfundo School near Cape Town on South Africa's struggling public education system.

Car Crash Tragedy of Gay Couple in Kiss Photo that Rocked South Africa
THE GUARDIAN: One dead, the other seriously injured in crash one month after moment of passion was controversially published in newspaper

Mark Dean Brown and Bjorn Czepan at the annual Soen in die Laan (Kiss in the Avenue) Stellenbosch University event. Photograph: The Guardian
Theirs was a kiss that stunned a conservative town. When a moment of passion between two men was published on a newspaper front page, it provoked fierce debate in one of South Africa's oldest communities.

In a single photograph Bjorn Czepan and Mark Dean Brown became unwitting symbols for tolerance and gay rights at the predominantly Afrikaner, rugby-playing Stellenbosch University.

Just a month later, there is a tragic postscript. Czepan is dead and Brown is critically ill in hospital after a car crash.

The students were involved in an accident in Woodstock, a suburb of Cape Town, last week, the Cape Times reported. Czepan, from Germany, was killed and Brown is now on a ventilator at the Netcare Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital.

The hospital said a third student, Brian Kline, was admitted late last Thursday night after the crash. Brown and Kline were critical but stable.

The Cape Town University couple's fleeting moment of fame came at last month's annual Soen in die Laan (Kiss in the Avenue) event at the nearby university, when lesbian and gay students decided to join the traditionally heterosexual event.

The photograph was published on the front page of the student newspaper Die Matie, triggering furious debate on social networking sites. Copies were torn up or defaced in protest but there were supportive comments from gay students. >>> David Smith | Thursday, September 09, 2010

Dubai Court Sentences British Man to 15 Years for Murder of South African Girlfriend
THE TELEGRAPH: A British executive has been jailed in Dubai for 15 years for killing his ex-girlfriend and dumping her body in the Gulf after a row.

Mark Arnold denied the allegations made against him in a long-running court case despite the prosecution's use of a confession made after he was arrested at Dubai airport following a trip to Britain.

He admitted arguing with Kerry Winter, a South African, but claims she was alive when he last saw her.

Judge Hamad Abdul Latif told him he would be jailed for 15 years after a brief hearing at Dubai's Court of First Instance on Monday.

The sentence is regarded as lenient as the death penalty remains in force for premeditated murder. The full judgement will be released later this month.

But afterwards Arnold told his lawyer: "There is no evidence - how can the court find me guilty?" >>> Richard Spencer in Dubai and Aislinn Laing in Johannesburg | Monday, June 07, 2010

‘We’re in the Final Days of White Life in South Africa’
TIMES ONLINE: The gunman leant forward and pushed the pistol hard into Manie Potgieter’s neck. “Listen, you white bastard,” he whispered, his breath heavy with alcohol. “I have Aids. We are now going to rape your wife and give her Aids too. Then, we kill you, got it?”

From his position on the floor, hands tied behind his back, he could hear his assailant’s three accomplices pulling the tracksuit bottoms off his wife, Helena, 28.

“I was sure they were going to shoot me, but I just prayed she would be OK. She was telling me in Afrikaans not to worry. I just prayed,” Mr Potgieter, 30, a blond giant of a man, told The Times.

Suddenly, a clang of metal echoed through the early morning air — and the attackers took fright. They had been in the remote farmhouse for an hour and dawn was fast approaching. “Let’s go, someone is coming,” one of them shouted in panic. Without firing a shot they were suddenly gone.

The Potgieters’ nightmare was over — but it was one of the very few happy endings to a spate of attacks on South Africa’s white Afrikaner farming communities in which an estimated 3,000 people have been killed since 1994. >>> Jonathan Clayton in Vredefort | Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Police Investigate Homosexual Link in Terreblanche Killing
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: South African police are investigating whether there was a link between homosexual sex and the murder of far-Right leader Eugene Terreblanche at him farm.

Police had earlier said a pay dispute led to the killing of Eugene Terreblanche. Photograph: The Telegraph
Puna Moroko, the lawyer for Chris Mahlangu, 28, the elder of two people accused of the killing, said that "something shocking happened on that day".

A police spokesman confirmed that was among possibilities being investigated. Police had earlier said a pay dispute had led to the killing of Mr Terreblanche, on the political margins since his efforts to preserve apartheid in the early 1990s.

"We are not going to focus on one thing," said Musa Zondi of the Hawks investigative unit, adding that a sexual link was among the many accusations being made over the case.

"We will investigate all pertinent facts that have a bearing on the matter," he said.

General Jan Mabula, head of the Hawks in the North West Province, said the suspects' clothes were to be examined as part of checks into whether there was a sexual link. >>> Sebastien Berger In Johannesburg | Sunday, April 11, 2010

South Africa: A Separate Homeland for Afrikaners?
THE TELEGRAPH: The death of Eugene Terreblanche has revived Afrikaner demands for their own homeland - and risks civil war. Jane Flanagan reports from Ventersdorp in South Africa

Supporters of slain white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche, salute his coffin as it is driven from the church in Ventersdorp. Photo: The Telegraph
As I drink tea in the sitting-room of Daniel and Margrieta Dreyers, it is easy to forget that apartheid ever ended. The couple, wearing the combat fatigues of the right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) movement and surrounded by nick-nacks from a lifetime's devotion to preserving the rituals and traditions of the Boers, South Africa's original white settlers, are mourning the loss of their leader.

Mr and Mrs Dreyers have just returned from the funeral of Eugene Terreblanche and are filled with quiet anger over the loss of "Oom Gene" (Uncle Gene), under whose command of the AWB they had served for almost three decades. Looking through their "reminders of the golden years for the Afrikaners" offers them some comfort.

The porcelain ox wagon and drawings of the stout granite Voortrekker monument, arranged carefully around the room, bear testament to the Great Trek into the unforgiving South African hinterland 175 years ago, 
which earned the Afrikaners independence from the British and a reputation for being among the toughest and most resourceful pioneers in history.

"These treasures remind me why Afrikaners belong here, why we could never leave, and why we and South Africa are one and the same," Mrs Dreyers, a 64-year-old grandmother of five, explains quietly.

Her husband adds: "We fight to keep our land because our people suffered so greatly to win it. We fought wars and lost fine men for it, we worked this soil until our hands bled. We made this country what it is. Nothing bad can be done to us that does not serve to make us stronger."

Like an increasing number of Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans, Mrs and Mrs Dreyers believe the lawlessness in rural areas, which claims the lives of two or three white farmers or family members every week, can only end with another separation of whites and blacks. "A homeland for Afrikaners is what we want, and it is what God wants for us," Mr Dreyers, 70, says, before expanding into the sort of rhetoric that made his leader reviled by both the black population and liberal whites. >>> Jane Flanagan in Ventersdorp, South Africa | Saturday, April 10, 2010

THE OBSERVER: After Eugene Terre'Blanche's murder, the boers prepare for war once more: Many Afrikaners believe the killing of Eugene Terre'Blanche was part of a plot to unleash a deadly onslaught against white farmers >>> Alex Duval Smith | Sunday, April 11, 2010

Uniforms and Nazi Salutes at Terre'Blanche Funeral
Some among the congregation performed Nazi salutes during the service. Photograph: Times Online
TIMES ONLINE: Thousands of followers of Eugene Terre’Blanche, the murdered white supremacist, attended his funeral amid tight security today.

Mourners, many dressed in combat gear, sang the apartheid-era national anthem as the coffin entered the church. Some among the congregation performed Nazi salutes during the service.

Other who could not fit inside the church filled the streets of the small farming town of Ventersdorp, 62 miles (100km) west of Johannesburg.

South Africa’s pre-apartheid flag and Terre'Blanche's party's flag, which resembles the Nazi swastika, fluttered from pickup trucks in the surrounding streets.

Reverend Ferdie Devenir told the congregation that Mr Terre’Blanche had been “a good leader”.

“The world was against him, they looked for the bad things about him.”

Two of Mr Terre’Blanche’s black workers have been charged with beating and hacking him to death on his farm last Saturday.

Police suspect the murder was financially rather than politically motivated but the killing has exposed the country's persistent racial divide 16 years after the end of white minority rule.

Helicopters circled above the streets and police were out in force. Few black South Africans were among the crowds. >>> Joanna Sugden | Friday, April 09, 2010

Tension as Terre'Blanche is Buried in South Africa

Tensions Rise at Terre'Blanche Hearing


Related:

MAIL ONLINE: Stephen Robinson: Drunken Racist Buffoon Who Bewitched A Blonde Liberal >>> Stephen Robinson | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

Zuma Calls for Calm Over Terre'Blanche Murder


MAIL ONLINE: Stephen Robinson: Drunken Racist Buffoon Who Bewitched A Blonde Liberal >>> Stephen Robinson | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

Furcht vor neuen Rassenkonflikten in Südafrika: Zuma nach Tod von Rassist Terre'Blanche um Ruhe vor Fussball-WM besorgt
NZZ ONLINE: Zehn Wochen vor der Fussball-WM droht der gewaltsame Tod eines bekannten Apartheid-Befürworters Südafrika wieder zu polarisieren. Präsident Zuma bemühte sich stark, die Lage zu entspannen.

Südafrika fürchtet neue Rassenkonflikte: Nach dem tödlichen Anschlag auf den Rechtsextremisten Eugene Terre'Blanche am frühen Samstagabend warnte Südafrikas Präsident Jacob Zuma vor neuem Rassenhass. «Die schreckliche Tat» dürfe nicht dazu missbraucht werden, «Rassenhass anzustacheln oder anzuheizen», betonte der Führer des Afrikanischen Nationalkongresses (ANC).

«Niemand darf das Gesetz in seine Hände nehmen», sagte der Präsident im sichtlichen Bemühen, zehn Wochen vor der Fussball-WM in Südafrika die Lage zu entspannen. Auch der ANC, hervorgegangen aus der schwarzen Befreiungsbewegung, verurteilte den Anschlag «auf das Schärfste». >>> sda/Reuters/dpa/afp | Sonntag, 4. April 2010