Adriana Stuijt Reports

SA's 13,200 commercial farmers raise crops on only 0.79% of SA's total land mass

2007-11-21T10:11:00.000-08:00

Nov 21 2007 - Chronic famine is steadily creeping ever-closer to South Africa - the only country in southern Africa where commercial crops are still being produced on a professional scale.

From this FAO hunger-map it can be seen how important the SA food-production is for the rest of Africa south of the Sahara

With 4million South Africans now needing emergency food aid - including 1-million Afrikaner whites -- the spectre of chronic famine -- a constant in the rest of Africa is beginning to loom large. For the first time in its modern agricultural history, SA's grain silos have run dry two months before the start of the harvest season.

A total of 13,200 commercial farmers simply cannot produce enough food to help feed most of southern Africa - let alone for South Africa's own population of 43-million citizens plus 3-million Zimbabwean hunger-refugees....

The Mbeki regime is leaving commercial farmers with far too few land-holdings to grow food crops on: less than 1% of the country's entire surface area is now used for permanent crop-farming according to CIA satellite observations.

In spite of the burgeoning food prices and growing shortages inside SA, the Mbeki-regime is nevertheless still continuing its disastrous Mugabe-style 'land-reform', which in neighbouring Zimbabwe has caused out-and-out famine, with millions of desperately hungry people stripping the countryside of anything edible.

Yet the SA regime still continues to lie about the total land-surface still being utilised by 'white' commercial farmers, saying that '85% of the country is used for agriculture and forestry'.

This has NEVER been the case in SA's entire agricultural history. The country is so dry that in fact only 12.1% of the entire South African land-surface has ever been arable at all -- i.e. useable by crop-growing activities.

This downright ANC-lie -- designed only to sweep up the homeless black population in the country's burgeoning shanty towns against the country's few remaining white farmers -- can be easily disproven from direct satellite observation records and from SA's own 2005 tax-base.

According to the latest CIA factbook on South Africa - which obtains its agricultural-use surveys from its direct daily satellite observations -- only 14,980 square kilometres of SA's total 1,219,9122 square km of land surface were actually used as irrigated land last year.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sf.html

And while the country's total arable (i.e. useable for agriculture) land was only 12.1 % according to the CIA -- only 0.79% of this land was actually seen from space as being used for growing permanent (i.e. commercial) crops last year. This means that many thousands of former commercial lands are now lying fallow.

This very poor utilisation even of available agricultural land actually supports the SA government's own 2005 tax records, which show that South Africa only had 13,200 commercial, (white) taxpaying farmers that year producing excess crops and paying payroll- and income taxes.

100,00 black-emergent farmers produced NO excess food at all in 2005:

The country also has some 100,000 'emergent black farmers' on the tax-records who however paid no taxes at all - neither payroll nor income taxes -- and had produced no excess crops for the market, consuming their entire production themselves with their live-in extended families, who work for them for free.

In other words, these 13,200 commercial Afrikaner farmers (their number has become even less by 2007) only had the use of 0.79% of South Africa's entire surface of 1,219,9122 square km to grow the country's entire food supply on. They also are the second-highest employer-group in the country -- employing some 650,000 of the country's 16-million employable workforce on a fulltime and parttime basis combined. The Mbeki-regime is now deliberately destroying this entire commercial-agricultural taxbase for purely racist reasons.

21,5-million SA people live below the poverty-line:
The CIA Factbook also noted that a whopping 50% of the country's 43-m people (CIA stats for 2006)-- i.e. more than 21,5-million people, including 1-million Afrikaner whites -- lived below the poverty line of $1 a day by last year and that the population's actual growth rate had dropped to 0.40% due to the AIDS epidemic. The only reason the population still was growing was the large migration pattern from the rest of Africa. The child-mortality rates and death rates among young adults due to TB+AIDS have gone through the ceiling.

South Africa received $700-million in aid in 2005
Yet in spite of its self-proclaimed 'economic growth' -- caused mainly by its massive exports of unprocessed, raw materials such as uranium, platinum, coal and gold -- South Africa for some reason also required some $700-million in economic-aid from abroad in 2005.
The CIA page was last updated on November 15 2007.It's well worth a read.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sf.html

Also relating to the land-distribution issue is the dispute between South Africa and land-locked Swaziland. Its King Mswati has now lodged a claim with the International Court of Justice (in The Hague) to claim large swathes of northern-Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal provinces from South Africa.

Afrikaners celebrate Pretoria's 152nd year with protests against name-change

2007-11-18T04:40:00.000-08:00

Nov 17 2007 -- PRETORIA -- Afrikaner singer Steve Hofmeyr and Springbok rugby star Pierre Spies were among the crowd celebrating Pretoria's 152nd birthday on Saturday. The Afrikaans music-fest was held around Paul Kruger's statue on Church Square.
(Picture: Afriforum).

Rapport newspaper writes that some 10,000 people attended, many in family groups.

The party also was held to highlight the ANC's unilateral decision to rename the Boer-Republican city to "Tswane", the name of a ceremonial bull according to the Afrikaners.
The ANC claims the name would honour a historically-murky clan-leader who had been given refuge from tribal warfare at a Christian mission station several hundreds of miles away from the region. Three new Afrikaans protest songs were staged, written specifically for the occasion. Spies -- one of the Springboks who recently brought the World Cup to SA -- also delivered a rousing message.
In an earlier meeting between Afriforum and Pallo Jordan, the ANC's Minister of Arts and Culture, Jordan promised the Afrikaner delegates that 'the capitol city of South Africa is named Pretoria. And Potchefstroom is Potchefstroom."
He gave the assurance during the meeting that 'he would not take any decisions about name-changes for Pretoria while emotions are running this high about the issue.'
The Afrikaner delegates who were given this undertaking were Solidarity trade union leader Kallie Kriel, Alana Bailey of AfriForum, singer Steve Hofmeyr and Theo Venter of Action-Potchefstroom - one of the many traditional Boer-towns in South Africa which are also facing the name-change axe.
Jordan also undertook to ask the Pretoria metro-council's mayor Dr Gwen Ramokgopa to 'start negotiations and consultations with Afriforum to try and find solutions for the Pretoria-name dispute'.Thus far, the mayor has ignored all requests for meetings with Afriforum.
Jordan also took note of the documents they gave him about a recent court decision disallowing the planned name-change for the Voortrekker-founded town of Louis Trichardt.
The Afrikaners told the ANC-Minister that they would use all the necessary legal steps to retain their Constitutional-cultural rights to maintain the old Boer-names in these towns and cities which were founded and developed by their Voortrekker forebears.

http://www.afriforum.co.za/Index.php?cat=3&paged=2

http://www.realiteit.co.za/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1262

Listen to Radio Pretoria:
http://www.radiopretoria.co.za/

Afriforum bloggers:
http://www.realiteit.co.za/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1262

Massive destruction of southern African wildlife, environment recorded

2007-11-17T04:17:00.000-08:00

Three protected, endangered black rhinos slaughtered by 'men in Zimbabwe Army uniform" -

On Wednesday 7 November, the carefully-guarded, much-loved Zimbabwean black rhinos Amber, DJ and Sprinter were murdered on the Imire Wildlife Farm in Wedza, near Marondera.

The three tame, adult black rhino were shot dead by people described as 'poachers' but who were dressed in Zimbabwe army uniforms. Amber was pregnant, due to give birth this week, but her perfectly formed foetus died with her.

Their deaths represent a massive blow to black rhino conservation efforts throughout southern Africa. Its world population fell from 65,000 to 2,300 between 1970 and 1994 -- Zimbabwe 's black rhino population fell from 2,000 to only 527 in December 2005. No new statistics are available but there has been large-scale destruction of the great herds of Zimbabwe.

Imire Game Farm in Wedza, near Marondera, has been involved in wildlife conservation work since 1972. By 1987, Operation Rhino was launched -- which moved all the remaining rhinos from the Zambezi Valley to 'intensive protection zones' such as Imire. It was a last, desperate bid to save Zimbabwe’s last black rhinos.

Amber (pictured here), DJ and Sprinter, along with four other rhino orphans, began their new lives at Imire in 1987 as youngsters. Twenty years after this desperate rescue attempt to continue the species these three adults and one unborn rhino have now been senselessly slaughtered.

Internationally renowned conservationist Dr Ian Player, who spearheaded Operation Rhino was appalled at the new.

Johnny Rodrigues, chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, told SW Radio Africa this week that he believed the shootings were linked to the ongoing illegal eviction of commercial white farmers rather than poaching.

He said: "As far as I am concerned it is some greedy officer in the army or air force that actually wants that property and that’s one way of trying to get the people off. The fact that the poachers were dressed and armed just like Zimbabwean soldiers adds to the suspicion.
"So does the knowledge that the government frequently uses armed soldiers and militia to intimidate and enforce commercial farm evictions. It is also fair to say that the rarity and importance of black rhino conservation efforts to the whole world would be a major stumbling block to any 'greedy officer' who wanted to seize the farm.

"Killing them, dehorned or not, removes the stumbling block."

Large-scale destruction of Zimbabwe's beautiful environment:

The Wildlife Trust reports that the decimation of Zimbabwe’s wildlife and environment has been devastating. Estimates are that more than 80% of all the wildlife kept in conservancies and on commercial farms has been destroyed since the land invasions began in 2000.

"The total loss of murdered wildlife on private game ranches is believed to stand at over 90%, equating to a total of about 560,000 animals." In 2005, the Trust reported on the wide scale destruction witnessed in Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou National Park, writing:

"The formerly abundant grasslands had been devastated, grossly overgrazed by cattle and goats, which now wandered freely through the area. There was abundant evidence of the hunting and slaughter of wildlife with rifles. The game wardens who at one time jealously guarded the wildlife against poachers were instructed by their new political bosses to let things be.'

http://www.sokwanele.com/thisiszimbabwe/archives/690

Stop using S.Africa as a human laboratory

2007-11-16T01:02:00.000-08:00

Merck, the international pharmaceutical company, suddenly stopped its widely-hailed drug-trials for a "HIV-vaccine" in September 2007 in South Africa and elsewhere when participants became infected with the human-immune-deficiency virus (picture) which eventually kills people of infectious diseases due to acquired-immune-deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Participants had been assured - by jubilant advance publicity -- that they would be immune from the deadly infection while being injected with these drugs. Five clinics in South Africa participated in the trials.

These failed Merck HIV-vaccine trials were announced amidst a blaze of jubilant pre-publicity about this 'promising HIV-vaccine which holds out hope for millions."

Poor black participants in South Africa also were lured by the relatively large sums of cash handed out during such human drug trials. A couple of thousand dollars isn't all that much money in Western countries - but in South Africa, it's a small fortune to unemployed shack-dwellers who can't even afford the bus-fare to the local hospitals.

Now, just one month after the Merck HIV-vaccine fiasco, yet another two antibiotics, both 'promising TB-treatment candidates' are being market-tested in Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.tballiance.org/newscenter/view-innews.php?id=741

This time the companies testing the two new drugs are Chiron in California and the New-Jersey-based Bayer Pharmaceuticals, working with a non-profit organisation called "The TB-Alliance".
http://www.tballiance.org/home/home.php

Being tested are a drug designated only as PA824, developed by Chiron, and the antibiotic doxifloxacin, being hailed by Bayer as 'one of the most advanced potential new TB drugs in development."

It has just launched the so-called RemoxTB trials with some '2000 volunteers' in Kenya, SA, Tanzania and Zambia."

In the Moxifloxacin trials, these 2000 TB-patients will be subjected to replace their current standard four-drug cocktail's ethambutol or isoniazid with this antibiotic moxifloxacin for a period of 4 months.

Then they will assess whether this approach gives better results in their African guinea-pigs i.e. whether they would become more willing to continue taking this horrendous cocktail of drugs.
This trial is being backed up by University College London and the British Medical Research Council.

The PA824 trial is much smaller: it involves 60 NEWLY-DIAGNOSED TB-AIDS patients. Thirty patients will be given PA-824 for 14 days before starting standard treatment. The rest will get the standard treatment straight away. There will not be a healthy control group to test whether the drug has any side-effects in healthy people.

This trial is even more tricky: in South Africa it is often found that TB+AIDS co-infected patients die within 20 to 30 days of diagnoses if they fail to respond to any of the drug-cocktails.

Scientists want to compare how well PA-824 fought the TB bacteria infection in the first fourteen days of treatment.

They don't do this to try and cure the patient of TB: they just want to see whether the patient would 'tolerate" PA-824 better than current medications when co-infected with TB+HIV and while taking antiretroviral medicines at the same time.

Neither of these two so-called TB-vaccines were designed to cure anything -- they only hope to shorten the treatment period for drug-resistant Tuberculosis by two months with these experimental drugs.

Yet once again the press releases are jubilant and the SA news media remains totally uncritical -- blithely publishing these claims by the TB Alliance. Dr Maria C Freire, the CEO of the TB Alliance, is widely quoted as saying that 'there are now two promising new TB drugs in our portfolio moving forward in clinic trials; and that it's 'a historic milestone in our accelerated drive to develop new TB drugs that fight the disease in different, faster and better ways to help save millions of lives...'

What she doesn't say -- although she should -- is that in South Africa, her 'groundbreaking' new TB-drugs are going to be tested on yet another batch of empoverished, often poorly-educated human beings who will get large bonuses.

Only one of these two new TB drugs, PA-824, tries to address the co-epidemics of drug-resistant TB + AIDS. The much larger trial with Moxifloxacin ignores the AIDS-factor altogether.

In South Africa more than 350,000 people have died of the combined drug-resistant TB+AIDS co-infection last year and more than 6-m people are estimated to be infected with AIDS, of whom 60% are also co-infected with TB.

These two experimental drugs are only hoped to shorten the time of treatment for the TB patients so that the patients will "comply" better.

What does that mean, 'comply'? These scientists refer to those dreadfully-ill patients who can't bear the harrowing side-effects of these huge drugs-cocktails any longer, and walk away from treatment in isolation-wards to die at home, where they then infect others.

The problem here does not lie with the drugs and 'non-compliance' -- but with the SA government's policy which states that they do not want such infectious XDR-TB patients to be placed in enforced isolation, claiming that their individual human rights are being violated while totally ignoring the rights of the entire community to be protected from infection. This is a political issue which cannot be cured with a magic pill.

Said Freire: "A shorter TB regimen, which COULD be possible with new drugs such as moxifloxacin and PA-824, SHOULD lead to improved patient compliance...'

I urge the TB-alliance to by all means, go and test these drugs on human beings in other parts of the world and make certain that these people are much better-informed, more literate, far less poor and far less desperate than those South African patients.

The incredible suffering of these TB+AIDS infected S.Africans does not need to be increased by holding out false hope in drugs-trials which aren't even designed to try and begin to cure their conditions.

I urge drug companies and the TB Alliance to stop lying to these people and to above all, stop using the African continent as one gigantic human laboratory. Africa isn't Auschwitz.

http://www.ad-hoc-news.de/CorporateNews/en/14095020/TB-Alliance-Advances-Two-Drugs-in-Clinical-Trials-on-Path-to

TB alliance's "Compassionate/Emergency Use of Experimental TB Alliance Drugs outside the scope of clinical trials"

http://www.tballiance.org/downloads/publications/Compassionate_Policy.12.6.06.pdf

One-third of 3m white Afrikaners destitute in land of their birth

2007-11-14T04:59:00.000-08:00

South Africa's 3-million Afrikaners -- all multilingual people with a high standard Western education and a protestant work ethic -- are being forced back into destitution by the current ANC-regime's laws which bars "white" Afrikaners from the labour market because their skins are paler than those of the members of the ruling-party.

This article was translated and elaborated upon from the original Afrikaans by Adriana Stuijt.

Picture: impoverished Afrikaner children's feeding scheme through Solidarity Trade Union

South Africa has about 4,5-m ethnic-Europeans of whom some 3-million are Afrikaners -- people whose northern-European forebears had launched the country's commercial agricultural traditions some 350 years ago.

The Afrikaans journalist De Wet Retief wrote in Rapport newspaper about the findings of an extensive survey of the current living conditions of the country's Afrikaner community. This survey, carried out by the "Helping Hand" charity of Solidarity trade union, found that Afrikaners, within 13 years of ANC-hegemony, have now returned to the identical destitution they had been plunged into shortly after the Anglo-Boer war in 1902 right up to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

http://www.it-pro.co.za/helpendehand/english/index.php

During those years, this so-named 'poor Afrikaner' problem in South Africa was even highlighted by an international Red Cross report at that time - and international aid funding was made available to try and alleviate the destitution of poor Afrikaners in those years.

Now, the housing crisis for the country's 1-million destitute, unemployable Afrikaners again takes on criticial proportions -- this time far worse than their situation during the Great Depression, warns Dr Dawie Theron of the Helping Hand Fund - which is sponsored by Solidarity Trade Union's membership.

"Drive through Danville in the Pretoria district, through the Daspoort tunnel to Booysens, Pretoria-Gardens and Daspoort," writes Rapport.

"The size of the plots are all about the same, but look over the fences and you see the Wendy Houses, the shacks, and the tents housing the Afrikaner destitute families all stuffed in behind the main houses."And these are only a few examples of how the face of poverty has changed in South Africa.

"In fact a large, new Poor Afrikaner problem - with the identical squatter towns seen just after the Anglo-Boer War and during the Great Depression, when people migrated in large numbers from the countryside to the cities, is developing once again."

"It's no longer unusual to see Afrikaners begging, and according to the youngest official statistics from 2006, there were 900,000 unemployed Afrikaners in South Africa living in total destitution, with no incomes at all.The SA regime denies food-aid to empoverished Afrikaners - claiming that they belong to the 'previously advantaged class' and thus often do not 'qualify' - even children born after 1994, after apartheid.

http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=17522&

2,300 Afrikaner farmers murdered - only 13,000 remain to farm:

More than 2,300 of the remaining 13,000 Afrikaner commercial farmers also have already been slaughtered in the most brutal ways since 1994 in their homesteads.

Yet these are also the only professional farmers remaining in the country - people with consumate skill and years of experience of farming in this very arid landscape, still actually produce enough excess food to feed some 48-million South Africans.

Their food production has however more than halved since the Xhosa tribal-ruled ANC-regime took over hegemony of the country from 1994. And these farmers are producing this food on only 6% of the viable farmland in south Africa, which is a very dry country at the best of times. There also are 100,000 'emergent black farmers' who according to the 2005 tax records, have produced no excess food at all and paid no taxes -- their families consumed all they produced.

The ANC-regime is constantly lodging hate-speech campaigns against these Afrikaner farmers which can legally be defined as deliberate incitements to conduct violence against this small group of very capable food-producers. who are so skilled in marketing their products abroad that some have become world-famous: Rooibosch tea and the excellent Cape wines are but two examples.

An American expert on genocide - a law professor who helped write the UN Genocide Convention -- has warned that the way in which this slaughter of this tiny, very visible minority in South Africa is being carried out, is downright genocide. He points out that 'large numbers of people do not have to be murdered for such slaughter to be called a genocide'. In fact the genocide targetting the Boers is 'a silent genocide' because it remains largely unnoticed, this expert said.

See the interviews:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X38CW6l-em4&mode=related&search=

Afrikaner girl tied to dying dad in Pretoria by armed attackers

2007-11-12T03:54:00.000-08:00

Picture: the grieving Kerkhof-family together in Pretoria after their dad's murder from ltr: Adrian, 17, Matriarch Marilette Kerkhof (47), Helene who was tied to her dying dad (21), Marian (17) and Katrien (13). Picture by journalist Daleen van Manen, Beeld newspaper, Pretoria, South Africa.

Nov 12 2007 -- A young Afrikaner girl, Helene Kerkhof, 21, who had just returned to her home country South Africa after working for two years in Taiwan, was tied to her dying father Rian by four armed attackers shortly after arriving that same day. The four men stormed into the cottage, gunned the unarmed man down -- and then tied the young girl to her seriously-injured dad and terrorised the father and daughter for over an hour.

They even sat around eating food from the refrigerator while her dad just lay there dying and Helene was pleading with them to let her call an ambulance. They just laughed at her, she said.

The young woman eventually untied her bonds and managed to hide in the garden until the men had looted the house. Only then could she alert an ambulance and the police to their plight. Her father died later in hospital.

There have been many reports in South Africa of travellers having been followed from airports after arriving on international flights and attacked, robbed and murdered.

She had just arrived from an international flight from Taiwan and was catching up on some sleep when the armed men stormed in.

story on.....
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2219490,00.html

Millions of slumdwellers evicted ahead of World Cup 2010 in South Africa

2007-11-11T03:58:00.000-08:00

Nov 10 2007 - The shacklands of post-apartheid South Africa will only be removed to hide the shame of poverty ahead of the 2010 World Cup, slum dwellers are warning.

The ANC-regime is planning a mass-removal of millions of the country's poorest people in the vicinity of the soccer stadiums -- just to present a 'clean, healthy appearance' during the two weeks the FIFA international soccer tournaments are being shown on international TV.

FIFA has laid down tough laws about the appearance of host cities during the World Cup. With the World Cup being screened worldwide, Fifa has instructed that the locations of stadiums have picturesque surroundings -- similar to the Soviet Union's Potemkin villages, South Africa's millions of often desperately poor and hungry slum dwellers must be hidden behind pretty facades.

One Fifa rule, for broadcast states that no cranes or building sites should be visible on any city's skyline during the World Cup. This was one of the reasons the proposed Athlone stadium on the dreary, crime-ruled Cape Flats was turned down.

Cape Town's Green Point, with its backdrop of Table Mountain, was considered to be the perfect location. Cities such as Johannesburg have also started evicting inner-city dwellers so that footage shown of South Africa 'will project a good, clean country'.

The shackdwellers, who have not been told of their imminent evictions, have described ANC regime's grandiose, multi-million 'rehousing' plans as a way of hiding the shame of post-apartheid South Africa, where more people are living in abject poverty than ever did during apartheid. Monica Mjuqu, a shack dweller at KwaMyandu, near Durban, said the government didn't want visiting tourists to see that millions were being spent on a single event while the rank and file people of the country lived in poverty.

"They are just ashamed of us and want us out of the way so that visitors coming to the country won't see the conditions we live under," said Mjuqu.

"They know that tourists travelling to the Zwelithini Stadium will come in by train and will not be impressed by the slums. But why hide what we are? If they were truly concerned about us they would have built us houses long ago. They would not have waited for 2010," said Mjuqu, who has waited for a government house for the past 13 years. South Africa has thus far managed to build 1,5-m tiny new houses since 1994 - while some 7,5-million people are on the waiting lists and living in slum-housing.

Thembisile Mkhize, who is among the many dwellers who have spaza shops which line KwaMnyandu Station in Durban, said these forced evictions would see them lose their sources of income.

"I survive on this spaza shop. I hope that when they remove us and take us to our new houses, they will also provide us with an area where we can carry on with our business," said Mkhize.

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3045&art_id=vn20071111090426826C142596

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4065350

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4883926.stm

http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/civilrights.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=3935&all_topics=0

Merck's unethical, failed HIV-vaccine trials: frantic hunt for human guinea-pigs in South Africa

2007-11-11T02:55:00.000-08:00

Nov 11 2007 -- JOHANNESBURG. South African journalist S’Thembiso Hlongwane reports in the "City Press" newspaper that a frantic search has been launched for participants in "Phambili", the Merck pharmaceutical company's failed HIV-vaccine trial which was stopped abruptly last month.

It is not known how many of the 800 people participating in the countrywide HVTN-503 vaccine trial through the Medical Research Council of South Africa have now contracted HIV/AIDS in the belief that they were immune due to the ineffective vaccine.
http://www.saavi.org.za/7press2007.htm

Merck company stocks:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/06/news/companies/merck_outlook/index.htm

At Soweto's Phambili-clinic alone, 308 people were recruited - yet only 220 have thus far responded to their plea to report back to check whether they have been infected with HIV-AIDS.

Countrywide 800 people had enrolled, in Soweto, Cape Town, Klerksdorp, Medunsa and Durban.

Volunteers who became infected with HIV during this highly unethical study were "referred for HIV evaluation and to the appropriate medical sources for treatment and care," a Soweto-clinic director told the Soweto-based newspaper's journalist.

Authorities are keeping their mouths firmly zipped up about how many people may have become infected with the deadly HIV/AIDS-infection due to these trials.

Instead they issue reassuring messages that ''these HIV-infected would also be offered continued immunological and virological follow-up for an extended period. '

Prominent South Africans such as Archbishop-Laureate Desmond Tutu and Justice Edwin Cameron had publicly endorsed the shelved vaccine trials by the "HIV Vaccine Trials Network" and the "SA Aids Vaccine Initiative"
http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2007/step_statement.htm

Last month the trials were suddenly halted in SA after sister-trials in the US and Australia found that 'it provided no protection against HIV-infection.'

The trial was designed to find out if the vaccine could prevent HIV infection in HIV-negative people -- and whether it could also reduce the virus levels in those who do become infected during the study. It is not known why this unethical trial was approved by the SA medical authorities.

HIV is a deadly infection which, while it can be staved off for many years with huge dollops of medication, eventually does kill the patient of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS.

The director of the Soweto Phambili clinic, Busi Nkala, is now sending around urgent cell-phone messages, appealing to participants of the HVTN 503 vaccine trial, dubbed Phambili, to contact them urgently.

“When the trail was stopped last month we had recruited 308 people. To date only 220 have responded to our urgent plea,” said Nkala. “We invite you to come to Phambili clinic as soon as possible,” reads an SMS the clinic has sent out to participants. Besides the SMSes, officials from the clinic have also tried to reach the participants by visiting them at home.

Nkala said the cancellation of the trial took them by surprise. “We are shocked because we were very optimistic that this vaccine trial would bring us closer to a vaccine that can contain HIV,” she said. Nkala declined to disclose how many of the participants had tested HIV positive. “At this stage we are not sure how many have contracted HIV.”

Neliswa Kubheka (26), who was part of the Soweto clinic trial, said she was not worried about her status because she had been 'faithful to her partner'. “The stopping of the trial is a setback in the fight against HIV. When I enrolled I was aware of the risk associated with the study,” said Kubheka.

Nkala said the vaccine had been billed as the world’s most promising Aids vaccine candidate.“The trial was at the most advanced clinical stage of any HIV vaccine trial on the African continent.” Nkala said the vaccine’s safety 'had been borne out in earlier testing."

Researchers said volunteers who became infected with HIV during the study were being referred for HIV evaluation and to the appropriate medical sources for treatment and care.

These HIV-infected people would also be offered continued immunological and virological follow-up for an extended period."

Throughout both the HVTN 503 and HVTN 502 studies, volunteers were counselled about prevention strategies for avoiding exposure to HIV. Volunteers will continue to be advised on this essential need during follow-up meetings.

However -- how well-informed are these councillors themselves, judging from the fact that one participant had told City Press that she "was not worried because she had been faithful to her partner...'

About 5.4 million South Africans -- one in nine people are infected with HIV/AIDS.

The 'South African AIDS Vaccine Initiative' , partnered by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, was formed in 1999 as a lead programme of the Medical Research Council of South Africa. Primary funding was received from the Department of Health, the Department of Science & Technology, and the state-run companies Eskom and Transnet, the European union and the platinum mining company Impala Platinum.

http://www.news24.com/City_Press/News/0,,186-187_2219002,00.html

All Boeing 737s in South Africa grounded for safety checks

2007-11-10T10:17:00.000-08:00

Johannesburg, South Africa. Nov 10 2007 - The Airports Company SA (Acsa) has grounded Boeing 737 200's throughout South African airports to conduct safety checks, the government-controlled SA Broadcasting Corporation reported on Saturday.

This action comes after a Nationwide Airlines Boeing 737 carrying 106 passengers had to make an emergency landing at Cape Town International on Wednesday after an engine fell off during take-off to Johannesburg.

All the Boeing 737 in South Africa from all the country's airlines are now being grounded to carry out safety checks of the engine mountings.

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2218730,00.html

Waarom is terroriste Connie Braam een Nederlandse volksheldin?

2007-11-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

Door Adriana Stuijt - oud-journaliste Zuid-Afrika -

Fotos: Meer als 21-miljoen zwarte Zuidafrikanen moeten in de smerigste sloppenwijken overleven op minder als $1 per dag. Maar l de ANC-elitisten zoals Nelson Mandela bouwen reuze-landhuizen die miljoenen kosten. Dit is het optrekje van Nelson Mandela in de Oost-Kaap.

Nov 25 2007 -- De nieuwsmedia meldt deze week dat de Nederlandse terroriste Connie Braam - de vrouw die verantwoordelijk was voor vele doden en verminkten in ZA door haar hand-en spandiensten o.a. de smokkel met terreurbommen voor de African National Congress -- nu weer openbare lezingen houdt om haar jongste romannetje te verkopen

De allervreselijke beelden van haar slachtoffers -- en waarvoor zij met haar 'activisme" als voorzitter Anti-Apartheid Nederland volkomen verantwoordelijk was -- staan mij nog steeds op het oogvlies geëtst. Ik moest voor mijn krant veel van de dikwijls zwaarverminkte slachtoffers en hun gezinsleden in ziekenhuizen en thuis interviewen. Ik zag dus zelf hoeveel leed deze Nederlandse vrouw zulke onschuldige mensen heeft aangedaan. zij beweerde dat ze 'alleen blanken' als doelwit had, maar er vielen veel meer zwarte Zuidafrikaanse slachtoffers door de ANC-bommen dan onder blanken. En dat monster is dan nu een Nederlandse volksheldin die haar communistisch-getinte romannetjes zit te signeren in boekhandeltjes en als een heldin wordt behandeld door de nieuwsmedia?

Ik kan niet begrijpen dat zo'n (zelferkende) terroriste in Nederland als een heldin geëerd wordt terwijl onze jongens in Afghanistan en elders tegen dat soort lugubere figuren moeten vechten.

Braam, zelf zo trots op haar hand- en spandiensten voor de ANC dat ze een boek over haar heldendaden publiceerde, blijft nu doodstil over de huidige wantoestanden in ZA - o.a. de groteske zelfverrijking van haar oude ANC-fietsvrienden en de vreselijke armoede waaronder meer als 21,5-miljoen zwarte Zuid-Afrikanen nu gebukt gaan. Zo'n 4-miljoen Zuid-Afrikanen krijgen nu internatonale voedselhulp.

De smerige ZA krottenwijken breiden zich dagelijks uit. Honderdduizenden vooral jonge mensen sterven er jaarlijks in de tweeling-Tuberculose plus Aids-epidemieën -- en waartegen de ANC-regering niets onderneemt met de bewering dat er niet genoeg geld in hun gezondheidsbudget zou zijn.

Maar intussen bezitten de zichzelf snelverrijkende ANC-elitisten zoals Mandela, Mbeki en Sexwale de allergrootste, deftige herenhuizen en leven in ongekende luxe - en dit terwijl ze ook nog steeds actief geld lopen te bedelen in het buitenland 'voor het bevechten van de door apartheid-veroorzaakte armoede..." Zuid-Afrika ontvangt nu zo'n slordige $400-miljoen per jaar aan buitenlandse 'hulp' terwijl de ANC-elite zich aan zulke luxueuze uitbarstingen te buiten gaat...

Maar daarover hoor je Connie Braam met geen woord reppen. Welke Nederlandse journalist waagt het immers om zo'n volkheldin om haar opinie over deze toestanden te vragen?

Voor nog meer fotos van huizen van de ANC-elite zie
http://groups.msn.com/crimebustersofsouthafrica/ancelitistslifestyle.msnw

Connie Braam -- agenda boekpresentaties:
28 november 2007 Mondiaal Centrum Haarlem
Aanvang: 19.30 uur http://www.blogger.com/

29 november 2007 Beverwijkse Boekhandel Aanvang: 19.00 uur
1 december 2007 Erasmus Boekhandel, IJmuiden
3 december 2007 Café Camille, Beverwijk Aanvang: 20.00 uur
23 januari 2008 Boekhandel Blokker, Heemstede
http://www.boekhandelblokker.nl/

Guntoting SA pupil invades Pretoria school - no-one hurt

2007-11-10T04:44:00.000-08:00

PRETORIA, South Africa. Nov 9 2007 - A 13-year-old male pupil , showed up at an Afrikaans-language school with his dad's loaded handgun and threatened to shoot pupils who had been bullying a friend. He also tried robbing pupils of their cellphones. However no shots were fired -- he ran away when pupils raised the alarm. The armed 13-year-old was arrested by a senior police officer who just happened to be there to pick up his kid.

Pretoria police captain Dumisani Ndlazi said the teen had taken his dad's loaded handgun and had apparently 'only wanted to frighten the bullies of his friend'. No shots were fired.

This may be a race-related incident, although South African news media refrain from mentioning the backgrounds of the schools involved. The gun-toting pupil was from Lotus Gardens School - historically with many Asian-South African pupils.

Kwaggasrand Sekondêre skool, although now racially-integrated, historically was an Afrikaans-language school for whites:
http://www.findtarget.com/FT/World/Afrikaans/Streke/Afrika/Suid-Afrika/Skole

Lotus Gardens Schools, located in Lotus Gardens suburb of Pretoria West, historically has many English-speaking Asian-South African pupils.
http://lotusgardens.co.za/

Ndlazi said supt. Lazarus at the police headoffice in Pretoria, who was enroute to the school to fetch his child, had been phoned and warned about the armed pupil.

“Supt. Lazarus was enroute to the school to fetch his child. Upon his arrival he saw the youth running away and captured him."

Lazarus held the child captive and also confiscated the loaded handgun until the Pretoria West police arrived. Lazarus handed over his captive and the handgun to inspector Manie van Wyk of the Pretoria West police.

An attempted robbery charge has been lodged against the boy -- and a charge of culpibility against the father because he had not kept the gun in a safe place.

The pupils were very traumatised yesterday, Beeld newspaper reports.They were grateful that there had been no shooting.

Kwaggasrand School headmaster Dawie van Wyk said the children are receiving trauma-treatment.

He said the Kwaggasrand pupils are frequently robbed by armed young males while enroute to the school, usually of their cellphones - and even on a bus recently, he said.

The Lotus Gardens pupil was remanded in the care of his parents. It is expected that he will appear in court on Monday. It is not known whether his 'bullied friend' had been directly involved in the armed threats.

http://www.news24.com/Beeld/Suid-Afrika/0,,3-

SA Apartheid-Data Archive 1980 Population Census -- Schools:
http://www.nrf.ac.za/SADA/CodebookPDF/S0071.pdf

How safe is it to fly SAA?

2007-11-09T00:50:00.000-08:00

- why so many 'technical hitches' on SA commercial flights these days?

Nov 27 2007 -- Johannesburg, South Africa. It's becoming a familiar story: once again, SAA passengers were stuck for hours inside a plane on the runway of Johannesburg airport while technicians frantically tried to fix technical problems which should never have occurred while it was getting ready for takeoff: this time it was a 'broken navigation system'.

Exactly how could this plane have passed the laid-down battery of intensive safety checks which are always required under FAA and civil-aviation rules -- if it still had a 'broken navigation system' while already sitting on the runway?

SAA's technicians still believed on Monday-night that they could 'repair the fault', but it had 'taken longer than expected' and that's why SAA finally decided that the passengers had to be put on different flights later that day.

"The problem wasn't serious", said SAA's hard-working spindoctor Robyn Chalmers after the latest 'technical-hitch' fiasco, also repeating their now very familiar mantra that 'putting safety came first' and thus they decided to not use this particular plane this time around, but that the matter hadn't been 'serious' and had never 'endangered the passengers' in any way.
http://www.news24.com/Beeld/Suid-Afrika/0,,3-975_2228302,00.html

Also see previous reports this past month:

22-Nov-2007 Readers worried about SA aircraft safety http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=19977&
20-Nov-2007 Two more SA flights in 'technical difficulties' - how long before SAA loses its FAA approval? http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=19937&
20-Nov-2007 SA commercial airlines' growing technical problems: here's some reasons why: http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=19930&
20-Nov-2007 SA Express flight returns to CT Airport due to 'technical hitches' http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=19826&
16-Nov-2007 SAA aircraft-safety endangered by Mbeki's blacks-only hiring laws warn technicians:
http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=19826&
15-Nov-2007 SA Airways sued by Solidarity trade union to stop mass firing of white aircraft-maintenance engineers:
http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=19766&
12-Nov-2007 S.Africa: SAA was about to fire 1,000-2,000 skilled white technicians before the 737's engines fell off...
http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=19669&
12-Nov-2007 S Africa: 'Metal fatigue' caused loss of engine claims SAA
http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=19641&
09-Nov-2007 SAA airbus 'parts missing': 200+ passengers stranded in Dakar, Senegal http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=19605&