http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=120993

SABC board explains suspension of CEO
SABC claims it would face a cash crunch had the board not taken over the drawing up of a turnaround plan.
CHANTELLE BENJAMIN
Published: 2010/09/15 06:17:37 AM

THE SABC board has justified its decision to suspend CEO Solly Mokoetle, saying in a submission to Parliament that the broadcaster would face a cash crunch had the board not taken over the drawing up of a turnaround plan.

In a document presented to the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications, the board, excluding its chairman Ben Ngubane, said the broadcaster would not be able to meet its first R150m debt repayment to Nedbank in February 2012 unless a “turnaround strategy is developed and implemented in the next three to four months”.

It warned that the government may “still be required to honour its guarantee and cover a new deficit” because of delays in carrying out the turnaround plan.

The board said it had suspended Mr Mokoetle; taken over the drawing up of a turnaround strategy (which was Mr Mokoetle’s job); and highlighted the divide between the board and its chairman, Mr Ngubane, to prevent the “escalation of (a) crisis which manifested itself in the 2008 to 2009 financial year”.

In that period, CEO Dali Mpofu was suspended over his poor performance, the previous board was dissolved and the SABC reported a R1bn deficit.

The interim SABC board had secured a guarantee for a R1,473bn loan from the Treasury on the understanding that a R1bn loan would be raised from Nedbank, and the remaining R473m would become available once the SABC had satisfied the Treasury’s requirements, including a revenue strategy and reduction of the wage bill. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has become increasingly anxious about the SABC’s ability to meet the loan deadlines.

The board said between 2003 and last year, expenditure had shifted from radio and TV content to administrative costs. Between 2005 and last year the head count increased 29%, but the wage bill increased 128%.

Kate Skinner, spokeswoman of the Save Our SABC Coalition, yesterday praised the board for taking action. The Democratic Alliance yesterday called for President Jacob Zuma to discipline Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda for asking the board to review the appointment of acting CEO Robin Nicholson, saying he had exceeded his authority.

Forensics
Date: 12 September 2010 07:00
Producer: Peter Groenewald

Presenter: Annika Larsen

Show: Carte Blanche

Over the years, Carte Blanche has done numerous stories on crimes that remain unsolved because of the backlog in processing forensic evidence.

Not much has changed – and many bereaved families still seek answers.

Sandra Tate: ‘It’s hard to bear and it’s just – what can I say? – I mean we just don’t know how she died.’

Charlotte Swanepoel: ‘I asked him, I was absolutely appalled, I said to him, ‘Three years?’ He said ‘Well, there’s a tremendous backlog and that, if I’m lucky, I would get it in approximately three years.”

Eleanor Srot: ‘Oh, no, I was finished, I was angry, I was shocked, I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it.’

Annika Larsen (Carte Blanche presenter) : ‘Forensic evidence – such as DNA, fingerprints, bodily fluids and ballistics all form the building blocks which investigators can use to piece together the puzzle of what really happened at a particular crime scene.’

Sandra: ‘As far as I can see, it is just total incompetence from the side of the pathologist, or not pathologist, the forensic laboratories.’

The death of Johannesburg mother of two, Tana-Leigh Critchfield, has left her family unable to reach closure because of the doubt surrounding her mysterious demise.

Sandra: ‘So I asked her friend, who was very concerned about her, to go and check on her as I was in Cape Town, which she did, and found her dead.’

Sandra was informed by police that she would have to wait up to five years for her daughter’s autopsy results to be released.

Sandra: ‘Well I’m sure that there are many, many sad stories and many people in my position. Uh, our hands are tied, aren’t we? There’s just nothing we can do, or if there was anything we could do I’m sure we would have all done it.’

A recent report by the Auditor General shows there are still severe backlogs in the processing of forensic samples at the Department of Health Forensic Chemistry Laboratories, and at the Police’s Forensic Science Laboratories.

An estimated 23 000 forensic samples remain unprocessed.

Media reports have highlighted the negative consequences that racial selection at these labs is having on the processing of forensic evidence.

Rigid affirmative action policies are said to have contributed to these backlogs.

Dr David Klatzow (Private forensic investigator): ‘What I would like to call ‘aggressive affirmative action’. That is the appointment of really unqualified and untrainable staff.’

Dr David Klatzow is a private forensic investigator and acknowledged as a forensic expert.

Dr. Klatzow: ‘The raw material that’s coming into the recruitment centres for the police is poor. But that is compounded by a problem of racial selection, which means that even if the person being interviewed for the job is incompetent, they’re very likely to get the job if they happen to be of the right ethnic group. That spells disaster.’

Alice: ‘She was lying with her eyes open. Then I took her fringe out of her face to see if it is my daughter.’

21-year-old model Lizel Polley was found brutally murdered in the bathroom of her home in January 2007. Her case remains unsolved.

Her mother Alice has yet to receive the official autopsy results.

Annika: ‘How long did it take for you to get your daughter’s autopsy results?’

Alice: ‘Look I’ve asked them quite a few times, ‘Why can’t I have a copy of the autopsy report?’ And they said because of a murder case it should be in the police in the docket. I’m not allowed to have it; it took them three years and three months to tell me – more or less – what she died of.’

Dianne Kohler-Barnard (DA Shadow Minister of Police): ‘Of course they fall under two different divisions. We have the blood test for example for drunken drivers; they all fall under the health ministry. And then we have samples from rapes, murder cases, etc, they fall under police. So we have two different lots, but frankly one is as bad as the other.’

The Democratic Alliance’s Dianne Kohler-Barnard is at the helm of establishing ways to eradicate forensic backlogs, and what she believes is the incompetence of laboratory staff.

Dianne: ‘It’s extremely difficult for any unit to function when your core of expertise is literally driven out. If they’re told, ‘No, but you’re a white person, or no, no, no, you’re an Indian person, you will never be promoted here,’ they become disheartened and they leave.

Because there is often no forensic evidence available to assist investigations, cases are often thrown out of court. As a result, suspected criminals are released.

Sandra: ‘As far as the police are concerned, I’m very angry about the way they handled this because I don’t feel that they did a proper and full investigation on the matter at all.’

Dianne: ‘The forensic laboratories have been a problem for a long time. Not one of the forensic laboratories in this country is registered, they’re not accredited, in fact I’m waiting for some clever lawyer to go to court and say, ‘I reject all of this evidence because it’s not from accredited labs.”

The Auditor-General’s report, and information provided by the DA have revealed the severity of the backlogs at forensic facilities.

Between June 2007 and June 2009, the backlog in samples at the SAPS Forensic Science Laboratories increased by 330%.

Department of Health Chemistry sample backlogs were up 295%, and the backlog of Scientific Analysis samples increased by 370%.

Eleanor: ‘The first tests the results came back and they told us, um, there were drugs. It was from a like drug overdose. And the drugs that were mentioned are those that are used for people who suffer from Parkinson’s and schizophrenia.’

Eleanor and Irving Srot still cannot come to terms with the sudden death of their 19-year-old son Darren. To make matters worse, his toxicology results were mixed up with those of a woman.

Eleanor: ‘At 4 o’ clock in the morning he came home with his friend, Dale, and Dale came into the flat and shouted for me to come because Darren had collapsed outside. And I went outside and I shouted for the neighbour, in fact I was trying to do CPR on him.’

Irving Srot: ‘I couldn’t believe the results. I then decided to find out about a private laboratory. About ten days later they sent me a written report to state that his blood sample did not match the urine sample and they were from two different people.’

Eleanor: ‘It was that of a different sex; it was that of a woman. And I freaked out completely. I actually said to this gentleman, ‘If you gave us those results, what results were given to that woman’s family?’ And he couldn’t answer.’

Annika: ‘This is the site of a new forensic facility that’s being built in Plattekloof in the Western Cape at a cost of R359-million. Facilities like this are responsible for the processing vital evidence which is later presented in criminal cases such as murder, rape and theft.’

This facility could at least help ease forensic backlogs in the Western Cape.
But it’s hardly likely to be an effective solution to the nationwide problem.

Dianne: ‘Well I think the impact of the backlog is just felt throughout the country. We have people who are really fighting to get court cases through the system and frankly the backlogs in courts matches the backlog. If you look at the forensic laboratory in Johannesburg the backlog is 23000 cases… samples.’

Charlotte Swanepoel’s son Danzell died mysteriously in June last year.

Charlotte: ‘It was just said that ER24 on arrival said that he had died and he was with his friends on the backseat of their car and according to them, he had choked to death. Well when it was taken to the police mortuary in Pretoria, we were actually told that the body had been frozen and it was another three or four days before the actual forensics and the autopsy could be done, but that the actual results would take approximately three years.’

Annika: ‘Would having an official cause of death make closure a little easier for you?’

Charlotte: ‘Eventually I just gave up. I just gave up and just accepted that my child is my only son and my only child, and that he has passed, he has gone, and I just need to accept that. And the closure and the reasons for it I have not been privileged to have.’

Annika: ‘Carte Blanche made numerous attempts to contact the Divisional Head of the SAPS Forensic Laboratory in Pretoria, Mr Pierre Botha, but to no avail. We’ve also made dozens of calls to General Edward Ngoka at the same unit – our calls were never returned.’

Dr Klatzow: ‘If the government was serious about fighting crime, they would do something, they would take some advice about how to run their labs, they would ditch these unbelievably foolish affirmative action policies, and they would make certain that people are put into positions to do the work based purely on qualifications and ability.’

All that the families of Darren Srot, Lizel Polley, Tana-Leigh Critchfield and Danzell Swanepoel can do is wait, but unless something concrete is done to ease forensic backlogs, they may never get the answers they want.

Eleanor: ‘You must always investigate if you know, you’ve got that instinct, that you know that couldn’t have been. You must go out there and investigate it, don’t just sit back and accept it.’

Johannesburg – The representation of white South Africans in the professional sector decreased radically between 1994 and 2008, the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI) said on Tuesday.

The number of registrations of white professional engineers decreased by 54.1%, while the number of white attorneys who were admitted between 1999 and 2008 decreased by 36.8%.

By contrast, the number of qualified black South Africans in professions in this sector, including accounting, information technology and the medical industry, rose by between 30% and 507%.

According to Johan Kruger, head of the SRI, the number of black South Africans (Africans, Indians and Coloured South Africans) who are registered with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) increased by 248% between 1994 and 2008.

The number of registrations of black professional engineers increased by more than 111% in the same period.

In the information technology industry the number of black graduates rose by 507.6% between 1996 and 2005.

Furthermore, the number of black medical practitioners increased by more than 30% in three years (between 2007 and 2010) and the number of black attorneys admitted, increased by more than 78% between 1999 and 2008.

These findings form part of the SRI’s fifth report of the SA Transformation Monitor (SAT Monitor). The SAT Monitor is designed to determine the extent to which black South Africans have benefited from black economic empowerment since the start of democracy in South Africa.

Hey Gwebs,

Here’s more.

“Transformation in the workplace remains very slow, the 10th Commission of Employment Equity Report released on Thursday says.

The report shows that 10 years after the introduction of the Employment Equity Act, whites continue to dominate at nearly every occupational level, particularly at the middle to upper ones.

The report says white women still benefit the most from affirmative action measures, while people with disabilities and African and coloured women have benefited the least.

“Employers have a tendency to recruit and promote more males than females at their workplaces,” the report says. “The representation of the other designated groups at the various levels would have been much more equitable if employers had made a concerted effort to capitalise on recruitment and promotion opportunities by proportionally distributing them according to population size.”

Employers tend to provide whites at the higher levels with more training opportunities than other groups, the report says. “The disproportionate representation of training opportunities for the black group impacts negatively on employment equity,” it notes.

http://za.mg.co.za/article/2010-07-30-minister-talks-tough-on-equity-targets

The focus has been on the wrong end of the marketplace too long.

Why? Because everyone in the ANC aspires to be CEO of Anglo.

It has to stop.

Those 269 CEO’s control millions of jobs, pensions etc. They can also make or break the SMME you are talking about.
I thought you would have connected the dots.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=116790

Another pre-occupation of the petit-bourgeoisie and the wannabes!

How many small businesses have started up since we started obsessing about BEE? How many have been destroyed by it?

http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Letters/BEE-stats-a-complete-shocker-20100802