Login to BlackFacts.com using your favorite Social Media Login. Click the appropriate button below and you will be redirected to your Social Media Website for confirmation and then back to Blackfacts.com once successful.
Enter the email address and password you used to join BlackFacts.com. If you cannot remember your login information, click the “Forgot Password” link to reset your password.
[SAnews.gov.za] As part of its weekly programme, the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) met on Wednesday to receive updates on the management of the current third wave of COVID-19 in South Africa.
South Africa is one of the hardest-hit countries in Africa with over 740,000 infections.
The country recorded 60 more virus-related deaths on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 20,011.
Ten South African universities are pulling out all the stops to complete the 2020 academic year before the end of 2020. The other 16 are aiming for next year.
Ace Magashule is officially a wanted man. The ANC veteran has been issued with an arrest warrant from the Hawks - and a court appearance is looming.
Pangolins Need Protection
Pangolins, the world's only mammals with scales. Unique creatures sometimes called scaly anteaters. Not well known and yet among the most poached and illegally trafficked animals in the world and nearing extinction because of high demand for their scales in Asian traditional medicine. Going for around 20,000 USD, many poaches ruthlessly hunt them for profit. Professor Raymond Jansen, the chairman of the African Pangolin Working Group, describes the undergoing poaching and trading operations, \"The majority of trade leaving Africa are dead pangolins in the form of loose scales in large sacks. But in southern Africa they are often brought to a willing buyer, someone perceived to be a wealthy individual where they ask large volumes of money for a living pangolin.\"
Local Pangoolin-Protection Initiatives
The African Pangolin Working Group in South Africa — a team of veterinarians and wildlife experts — have been rehabilitating pangolins rescued from poachers for nearly a decade.
Many pangolins arrive traumatised at a Johannesburg wildlife clinic. Nicci Wright, the founder of the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital, gives an inside look into the situation, \"When we receive those pangolins, they're all compromised. Whether they've been with the poachers for a couple of days or sometimes up to two weeks. So we see pangolins in a variety of different physical states. Some are very emaciated, they're skeletal, they got wounds, they got injuries, they go snare wounds. It's pitiful, very very difficult to emotionally deal with that kind of suffering and abuse.\"
Hope is on the Horizon
The group has recorded 97 tons of pangolin scales seized last year from smugglers attempting to transport them out of Africa — which equates to roughly 150,000 illegally trafficked animals - a 20% estimate of the total figure as not all cases are known by authorities. Nevertheless, steadily growing anti-poaching initiatives in South Africa work in collaboration with the police to identify and catch poachers and traders, who often in undercover operations — to protect the country’s pangolins.
So you couldn't catch the latest episode of Skeem Saam? Don't worry, we've got you covered. Be warned of spoilers!
BY VANESSA GONYE ZIMBABWE has reportedly lost between 30 and 34 tonnes of gold which was smuggled to South Africa last year in a new wave of illicit financial flows (IFFs) that are affecting the country, the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (Zimcodd) has said. In a recent report on IFFs, Zimcodd said the bulk of capital flight currently affecting Zimbabwe was happening in the gold mining sector. The revelations also come at a time suspended Zimbabwe Miners Federation president Henrietta Rushwaya is in custody following her arrest last week at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport on charges of attempting to smuggle 6kg of gold to Dubai. Zimcodd said a recent study by the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development estimated that between the period of 2009 and 2013, Zimbabwe also lost US$2,83 billion through IFFs, which translates to an annual average of US$570,75 million. It said this was the number one cause for the country’s loss of money, which has led to underdevelopment. “Of the cumulative outflows, 97,88% of US$6 billion IFFs were in the mining sector. In 2019, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development (Mthuli Ncube) is quoted to have said that Zimbabwe may have lost between 30 tonnes and 34 tonnes of gold to smuggling in the neighbouring South Africa,” Zimcodd said. “During this week, both mainstream and social media platforms were awash with stories of the arrest of Rushwaya at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport while trying to smuggle 6kg of gold to Dubai in contravention of section 182 of the Customs and Excise Act, which sets out penalties for any person found smuggling goods into or outside the country. “The attempt by Rushwaya to smuggle gold with an estimated worth of US$333 000 is only a microcosm of the macrocosm of the huge sums of gold and other precious minerals smuggled out of the country. If the figure is anything to go by, if sold officially, the amount from the gold would go a long way in covering the financial gap existing in the public service delivery sector.” The debt watchdog said government must now consider an upward review of the foreign currency retention threshold in the gold sector to motivate gold producers to sell their gold through the formal market in order to curb gold leakages. “Lack of political will and political interference in the operations of the anti-corruption institutions undermines the effectiveness of institutions and legislation responsible for combating illicit financial flows. There is need for the government to demonstrate political will to arrest and prosecute perpetrators and guarantee the independence of the responsible institutions,” Zimcodd said, adding that government should invest in information communication technologies to curb under declarations of minerals.
Ashish Lata Ramgobin was found guilty of tender fraud dating back to 2015, and her sentencing has on Tuesday been postponed to November.
[New Frame] Exaggerated reports on social media of human trafficking syndicates snatching people in broad daylight legitimate xenophobia while deflecting from the real problems in society.
Press Release - Angola will be making a return to the COSAFA Women's Championship for the second year running in 2020 as they take their place among the 10 teams who will compete in Nelson Mandela Bay from November 3-14.
[allAfrica] As of November 09, the confirmed cases of Covid-19 from 55 African countries have reached 1,882,818. Reported deaths in Africa have reached 45,360 and recoveries 1,587,135.
A Queer Visual Activist
South African photographer and self-identified visual activist Zanele Muholi celebrates the black queer experience in South Africa by way of portraits (and self-portraits) that capture the beauty, creativity and intimacy of a community facing tremendous persecution and abuse.
Her first major exhibition in the UK — originally scheduled to open in April, then in November, is once again being delayed due to the second UK lockdown in light of the covid-19 pandemic. Sarah Allen, the Assistant Curator of International Art, Tate Modern, is still hopeful about the eventual opening of the highly-anticipated exhibition, \"It (Muholi's work) needs to be seen and it will be seen. We very much hope to reopen in December along with government guidance. A colleague had this really lovely expression to me yesterday, that this is a 'sleeping beauty of an exhibition', and it's just going to wait for that moment to wake up and to reinvigorate the public, and I have no doubt that people will be ready and people will hopefully want to come and see and be inspired by this work.\"
Black and Queer in South Africa's Apartheid
Born in 1972 and raised in Umlazi, a township on South Africa’s eastern coast, Muholi’s childhood was marked by the racial brutality of Apartheid — a white supremacist regime that systematically oppressed non-white people in the country and whose systems still linger today. Muholi - on a mission to commemorate the battles and triumphs of her community, has spent the previous two decades creating and tracing a visual history of South Africa’s LGBTQIA+ population.
The collection of images to be displayed at the Tate Modern art gallery showcase same-sex intimacy as well as trauma and seek to empower the queer community — black lesbians, black gay men, black transgender people and all non-binary people alike.
#BlackQueerLivesMatter
Allen shares her impression of the visual impact of Muholi’s visual art pieces, \"Definitely that sense of gaze is so important. In these photographs here 'Faces and Phases' (collection), but also in the adjoining room 'Somnyama Ngonyama' (collection of self-portraits) — so it goes back to what we were talking about there about power dynamics and about the camera and the history of photography: who holds the power? In these images, the participants dare the camera down and they engage the viewer in this amazing dialogue.\" The 260 artistic images on display which critique centuries of anti-Black sentiment, oppression and erasure are in line with the recent global racial injustice movement as they cry, \"Black Queer Lives Matter.\"
Eskom and Hawks say they are working to trace all those who illegally sell and buy cut-price prepaid electricity. Strong action promised.
Self-proclaimed prophet Shepherd Bushiri and his wife have fled South Africa for Malawi, in contravention of their bail conditions.
develop me :Tapiwa Gomo SOUTH AFRICA is not only one of the young nations in the world but one of the richest. Its independence was born out of both struggle and negotiation and these two informed the underlying narratives of the country. First, its constitution is described as one of the best in the world and there are many reasons why this is the case. It is largely the Western inclined voices that have been vocal about how good the constitution is, simply because it allowed Nelson Mandela to come out of prison and ensure he recited the constitutional stanzas without expressing what that really meant. Mandela played ball by solidifying the tenets of the constitution and this was crucial as it meant that South Africa would avoid taking the same route as other African countries in addressing the historical and economic imbalances created by the settlers. In short, the South African constitution protected property rights of the settlers while granting the majority civil rights. In simple terms, the constitution cemented the pre-existing economic imbalances while granting the black majority all their freedoms and rights. It meant that those who had snatched the land, minerals and all the economic opportunities during the colonial period, the reasons for which the struggled was fought, were left untouched, free to keep their loot while enjoying the protection of the new constitution. They were the biggest beneficiaries of the struggle. The settlers, who stole from the black South Africans, could now confidently retain their colonial loot, while the majority enjoyed all the freedoms and rights, including to protest against their own and new black government. Problems that informed the war of liberation were handed over to the new black government, which on the other hand, was constrained by the constitution from addressing the issues other than make false political promises to its people. Second, this formed the foundation of the much-touted democracy in South Africa were the majority were hoodwinked after fighting for real change to accept rights before winning the real war on the means of production. To quell future dissent, South Africa was then described as a rainbow nation — a concept coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and advanced by Mandela in his first month of office, when he proclaimed: 'Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld — a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.” Third, the concept of the rainbow nation was to blind black South Africans to see, hear or say no evil about the new political arrangement built on the assumption that the white minority, who still owned the means of production, would be sincere in supporting the equitable distribution of wealth. That was part of the negotiations. The concept of the rainbow nation was also intended to encapsulate the unity of multi-culturalism and the coming together of people of many different nations, in a country once identified wi
The EFF aren't happy with President Ramaphosa, and although that's not exactly a surprise, one MP feels that things are set to get very ropey in SA.
Nine teams have already qualified for the 2021 Rugby World Cup ahead of the draw, which takes place in November.
Petal Search integrates Huawei's AI to enhance a user's search experience, ideal for users who are accustomed to an efficient and mobile-centric lifestyle.
Hank McGregor has won another national canoeing title in Upington, triumphing in the first stage of the Orange Descent.
