Legalbrief | your legal news hub Sunday 26 September 2021

An application to declare the grave of Dimitri Tsafendas as a place of national heritage was dismissed and other news...

* South Africa's National Heritage Council has dismissed an application to declare the grave of Dimitri Tsafendas, murderer of then Prime Minister HF Verwoerd, as a place of national heritage. The council held that such a move would not be in line with the National Heritage Resources Act. The application was made by Christian Martins, ANC MPL in the Eastern Cape, who contended that Tsafendas should be honoured for delivering the country from the 'most racist pro-Hitler militant of our time'. But David Bloomberg, who acted as Tsafendas' attorney in 1966, says the parliamentary messenger was just plain crazy and had no political motivation. - Rapport

* Four people were arrested in south-eastern in the ritual killing of a five-year-old boy whose body was mutilated before being dumped in a water tank. Promise Osakwe was abducted on 11 October by unknown people in his hometown of Aninri and his body was found without a head or genitals.Kidnappings for ritual killings are rampant in Nigeria, particularly during election campaigns. - News24 * Robbers have shot dead a Swiss tourist near a popular resort town in southern . The exact circumstances of his death on Friday were not immediately clear but the Swiss national was killed when criminals opened fire after robbing a shop near Diani, a beach town on the Indian Ocean. - News24 * The US Government is under pressure to provide reasons why hundreds of former South African struggle veterans are still blacklisted and prevented from visiting America. Former President Nelson Mandela's lawyer says he will investigate whether Madiba is still classified as a terrorist by Washington. Bali Chuene was with businessman Tokyo S exwale when he was briefly detained at JF Kennedy Airport last week while on a business trip to New York. S exwale has now requested the US Government to remove his name from the list. - SABC News * African National Congress deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa is to appear before the Marikana Commission of Inquiry chaired by retired Judge Ian Farlam. He will be asked to explain the alleged pressure he exerted on police, ahead of the killing of 34 miners in Marikana last year. A transcript of a high-level meeting has come to light in which Ramaphosa was further implicated as a force behind the ramped-up police action that preceded the miners' deaths. - City Press * A Chinese man was arrested at Zimbabwe's main airport last week trying to smuggle ivory out of the country, wildlife authorities said, after reports of hundreds of elephants being poisoned. The 34-year-old man was trying to board a flight to Malaysia carrying raw ivory and chopsticks and jewellery worth around $28 250, parks and wildlife authority spokesperson Caroline Washaya-Moyo said. - iafrica.com * A military colonel who committed an armed robbery at an Eastern Cape police station 18 years ago, has handed himself over to South Africa's military police, the Defence Department said. Brigadier General Xolani Mabanga said Colonel Nceba Patrick Bobelo reported to the joint operations headquarters in Pretoria on Wednesday. Bobelo's appeal against his prison sentence failed in 2001, but neither the army nor the Justice Department were able to explain why Bobelo, commander of the military's joint tactical headquarters in Mpumalanga, had avoided jail. - City Press * Journalists have been barred by security agents from covering the scheduled arraignment of 17 suspected members of Boko Haram sect before a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, Nigeria. In addition, State Security Service (SSS) agent ordered some lawyers to leave the Lagos court due to space constraints. The media restrictions appear to have come from the office of the president. The suspects face an eight-count charge bordering on acts of terrorism and being in possession of prohibited explosive substances, firearms and ammunition. - The Tribune * The Pentagon has no plans to scrap the US military's Africa Command despite growing pressures on the defence budget, the general who leads the headquarters said last week. As it prepares for another round of automatic budget cuts, the defence department is looking at cutting back spending on regional headquarters and senior positions, fuelling speculation that Africa Command could be dissolved and its responsibilities taken over by other commands. - News24 * South African-born but -based Jeremy Ganga claims he was 'too black' to land a top job at the Anglican Church's St John's parish, in Wynberg, , and has taken his fight to the Labour Court. Ganga (51) has accused the church of racially discriminating against him in favour of Duncan McLea, who was an associate rector at the church at the time, and of flouting job-interview ethics by giving McLea a copy of his (Ganga's) CV and letter of application. - The Times * Pirates have seized two US sailors from an oil supply ship off the coast of Nigeria. The captain and chief engineer of the US-flagged C-Retriever were taken on Wednesday by armed men who stormed the boat, they said.US officials said it was not a terrorist act, but were concerned about the rise in piracy off West Africa. - BBC News * Sanele Goodness May, the driver accused of killing 24 people in South Africa when his truck crashed through an intersection, was denied bail in the Pinetown Magistrate's Court. Magistrate Gwendolyn Robinson said May was in the country illegally, and for her to grant him bail the court would be required to legalise his residency status while he was awaiting trial. - News24