by 013NEWS Reporter | Feb 20, 2019 | Politics
He said as a young person he had no choice but to enrol and empower himself educationally.
ANCYL deputy president Desmond Moela is getting a diploma in March 2019, he told this paper.
Moela said he’d been with the Tshwane University of Technology since 2015, studying public management.
The graduation ceremony will be held March this year, he said.
“I am going to graduate this year. Now in March. And I have also been accepted for a BTech degree and I’m studying again this year,” he said when he spoke to the 013NEWS reporter at the eMalahleni banquet hall the past weekend.
Moela had attended safety and security MEC Pat Ngomane’s foundation gala dinner that aims help fund the poor to access tertiary education.
Both Moela and businessman Gabriel Ngomane addressed the event of about 50 people before Pat delivered the main address.
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While on stage, Moela said he had now “defeated the people who have been saying that I am a drop-out because this year I’m graduating”.
He told 013NEWS that he will study his BTech degree as a full-time student.
“At the end I want to become a doctor. I want to be called ‘Dr. Moela’,” he said on Saturday night.
“I’m not going to rest until I’m called ‘Dr. Moela’,” he added.
In his address, Pat Ngomane said he took the advice of his late spokesperson Joseph Mabuza who said they should instead register a foundation where businesspeople would pump money towards the tertiary education of those who cannot afford.
He said for some time now they would identify pupils from poor families and help send them to universities.
He said they did it “the old way” but the foundation “I think is coming to assist a lot”, saying many young people found themselves frustrated by the processes of the National Financial Student Aid Scheme (NFSAS).
Ngomane said the door of learning “should be opened even wider”.
“When I urge all of us to keep the door of learning wider open I mean that all of us are responsible or can contribute,” he said.
He added it was important that even those ones who are not able to reach university are assisted.
“We must not abandon [them] and say ‘because they fail we don’t need them’.
“Last year I paid for another kid and he failed everything. But we took a decision and we said, ‘No, because he failed let him re-register all the subjects and pay from his own pocket and if he passes the subjects this year we will pay for him next year but then soon afterwards I remembered that myself I had somebody paying for my tuition fee and I failed all the subjects the first year.
“The person who was paying for me came and said, ‘No, I will pay for you again. Get a second chance’ and I was able to improve and passed the following year,” he said.
Former Nkangala ANCYL chairman Mduduzi ‘Mswati’ Nkosi who also runs a foundation introduced Ngomane on stage.
Mayor Linah Malatjie, SASCO’s Jacob Tau and Faith Msibi as well as youth league treasurer Sam Masango formed part of those who came to Ngomane’s foundation launch.
(edited by MLM)
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by 013NEWS Reporter | Feb 20, 2019 | Blackvoice
She was only a 22-year-old unskilled labourer when she began operating a conveyer belt at Matla Coal Mine.
BY SUE GRANT-MARSHALL
Nomvuyo Ketiso manages a team of 100 mostly male employees…
They clean coal mines, move cables, help to install new machinery and maintain a network of roads – both underground and above it.
These are just a few of her company’s functions.
She was a 22-year-old unskilled labourer when she began operating a conveyer belt underground for Matla Coal Mine in Mpumalanga, which, she says, she loved doing.
But, after three years of – as she puts it – “eating coal dust and having my lungs filled with it”, she decided she needed to invest in herself and learn about managing her own business.
“So I resigned in 2007, started my own business and later on began to do catering for Absa in Nelspruit.”
The love of mining, however, resulted in her accepting an invitation in 2013 from the founder of Dyrex to become its BEE partner and help to grow it.
“It was a huge opportunity for which I will always be grateful because it indeed empowered me,” says Ketiso.
At the time she became a business partner at Dyrex, it was contracted to Anglo American and, with confidence gained from working with the giant mining company, “we landed an even bigger contract with Exxaro Resources at Matla Coal”.
Ketiso was only 33 when she became the sole director of Dyrex, a challenge for someone without any formal qualifications or training in business.
“Assuming that level of responsibility was a bit overwhelming at first, but I had a really excellent support system. Furthermore, Exxaro really lives up to its reputation as a business with values, which made it easier,” says Ketiso.
Dyrex cleans three different areas in the Matla Coal Mine and, among other functions, it operates the conveyer belt that takes coal to Eskom.
Ketiso no longer works underground, but when the opportunity arises to go down, she jumps at it, putting on her overalls and boots with joy.
Over the years, she’s learnt to handle meetings in which she’s often the only woman in the room with aplomb.
Furthermore, 90% of her employees are married men, “and I’m a single mother of two boys, so here’s this ‘boss lady’ running the business”.
She says it is how you communicate with your staff that matters. She tells the men: “I am not here to put you down, and I’m not here to be put down by you.”
She asks them if they are “comfortable” with the manner she adopts towards them and listens carefully to their views.
“Mining is a melting pot of diverse people, languages and customs, and, make no mistake, it is a really stressful working environment because of the importance of production and of safety issues.”
She adds that “my employees are tough – just like me”.
Ketiso attributes the fact that they’ve not had one accident in the past three years to a spirit of “let’s work together in harmony”.
She believes that growing up in the small mining village of Matla, where her father was a clerk in human resources, helps to make her feel as comfortable as she does around mine workers.
Gradually, she’s empowering young women, particularly single mothers, to work for Dyrex.
“So many women come from impoverished backgrounds and it is wonderful to see how their sense of self-worth and dignity flourishes when they have work,” she says.
Ketiso is so invested in creating jobs that she hesitates when the word ‘technology’ pops into our conversation.
“We’re manual workers and we need to create more jobs, especially for women, because then there will be more opportunities to make South Africa a better place for all.”
The rate of growth in her company sometimes gives her pause for thought: “We can’t have instant growth because we are growing people – that takes time. Success can also be a slippery slope; it disappears as fast as it arrives if you do not take care.”
However, she plans to see substantial growth in Dyrex by 2025.
“Who knows, maybe one day my sons [four and nine] will take over.”
*This article first appeared on City Press.
by 013NEWS Reporter | Feb 20, 2019 | Business
The union says it was never consulted about plans to unbundle the state-owned power utility.
South Africa’s biggest mining union NUM has threatened they will not support the ANC at the May 2019’s polls if plans to unbundle Eskom go ahead.
The union says it only found out about the plans in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address a week ago.
“The ANC has just taken a decision to go to Parliament to announce that they are going to unbundle,” said NUM President Joseph Montisetse last week.
Montisetse said they were angered because the ANC saw “no value” in them despite being the majority union in the power generations industry.
They didn’t see the need to “sit around the table and share views on how to navigate the problem”, he said.
“Our members on the ground, especially in Mpumalanga are very angry,” Montisetse said.
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“There is no way that this kind of business model can actually rescue Eskom from the deepest crisis that it is. The deepest crisis of Eskom from our analysis is that it does not have an effective board,” he said.
(edited by MLM)
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by 013NEWS Reporter | Feb 16, 2019 | National News
Experts say the rains will begin to disappear on Sunday (17 Feb).
South Africans should expect more rainfalls throughout the weekend, the weather service has said.
The service said despite these cloudy conditions, residents could expect warm temperatures ranging above 23ºC.
Weather forecaster Puseletso Mofokeng said there were cloudy conditions with a 50% chance of rain over the eastern parts of the country.
“Currently we are seeing cloudy conditions over the Eastern regions, including Gauteng, North West, Mpumalanga and Limpopo, which is where we are expecting a good chance of rain, as well as in KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State,” Mofokeng said.
“While temperatures will be slightly warm over 23 degrees, and we expect lots of rainfall in Mpumalanga at about 55 millimetres, because it’s in a short space of time we can expect flooding in some parts.
“We see similar occurrences in KZN because storms are stationary,” he said.
Mofokeng said the rain would begin to drop off on Sunday.
“On Sunday we will see the rainfall fade off and therefore there is not much chance of rain over much of the country from Monday.”
(edited by ZK, with ANA)
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by 013NEWS Reporter | Feb 16, 2019 | News
The crimes declined in KZN and North West.
While national figures on rhino poaching went down in 2018 it increased in Mpumalanga, according to government.
The department said the number of rhinos poached in the province increased from 49 in 2017 to 51 in 2018.
Also in Eastern Cape the numbers of rhinos that were poached in the past year increased from 12 to 19.
Environmental affairs minister Nomvula Mokonyane said 1,028 rhinos were killed nationwide in 2017.
But last year the number dropped to 769.
“This is a decrease of 259 rhino,” the minister said.
“It is also the first time in 5 years that the annual figure is under 1000,” Mokonyane said this week.
422 of the 769 cases happened inside a SANParks facility.
421 were at the Kruger National Park and one in the Marakhele National Park.
Mokonyane said it was the work of the Integrated Strategic Management of Rhinoceros Approach that has brought such achievements in fighting the crime. The approach was adopted by government in 2014.
She said this type of approach brings together her department, the justice department and cops to work together.
“The decline is not only indicative of the successful implementation of the Integrated Strategic Management of Rhinoceros Approach countrywide, but also a confirmation of the commitment and dedication of the men and women working at the coalface to save the species,” said Minister Mokonyane.
142 rhinos were killed in KZN in 2018 compared to 222 in 2017. The figure in North West went down from 96 to 65.
“There are currently 318 rhino poaching-related cases on the court roll involving 645 accused and 897 charges – 275 of these cases are trial ready,” the department said.
(edited by MLM)
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